Bottom Line Up Front: If you loved Far Cry 5 you will love the Hours of Darkness DLC.
Let’s start off this review by level setting expectations for the consumer.
A) Hours of Darkness DLC is only 1/3 of the scheduled content for the Far Cry 5 season pass that you can pick up for ~$30 US. The remaining 2/3rd of the content is schedule for release later in the year (Lost on Mars, and DeadBottom Line Up Front: If you loved Far Cry 5 you will love the Hours of Darkness DLC.
Let’s start off this review by level setting expectations for the consumer.
A) Hours of Darkness DLC is only 1/3 of the scheduled content for the Far Cry 5 season pass that you can pick up for ~$30 US. The remaining 2/3rd of the content is schedule for release later in the year (Lost on Mars, and Dead Living Zombies). So if you are one of those bean counters looking to price the content on some superficial $/hour of gaming you should use the calculus of this DLC should reasonably be completed in ~6 hours of gameplay for a cost of ~$10. That is, if you focus on actually playing the game to achieve all of the objectives and not running straight to the extraction point to finish as quickly as possible. My recommendation is, if you want to enjoy this slice of content, take the time to bask in the level of detail and craziness awesomeness of this story. So back to those bean counters… this slice of content offers entertainment for less than $2 an hour if you play it once and never go back. Additionally, the season pass includes a digital copy of Far Cry 3. So, additional value there however you want to price that? For me that was nice but I already own on both PS3 and XB360, but I still think that is awesome.
B) If you hated Far Cry 5 then you will probably not like this DLC or in general the Season Pass. The 3 DLC content releases in the Season Pass will provide you short Far Cry style stories. These stories have no real connection to the Far Cry 5 storyline; however, they add more content with a different story in a different setting. Hours of Darkness take you to the Vietnam War where you take on the role of a downed soldier making his way to an extraction point while performing side tasks along the journey.
On to the review. Too be honest, of the three slices of season pass content, Hours of Darkness was the one that I was looking forward to the least. All of the Vietnam War games I have played in the past have left me jaded that any developer could deliver an implementation of the Vietnam War that provided immersive gameplay. By no means is Far Cry’s version of Vietnam realistic or attempt to capture the feeling of an American Soldier sludging through a rice patty. What they do capture is the shear craziness and capitalize on it by placing you in an action hero shoes. Every encounter provided builds up to the next by adding size, complexity, objectives and best of all bigger and better weapons to full fill the inner Rambo. Playing co-op I felt the sense of one-upmanship constantly trying to out awesome my co-op buddy with better kills and bigger explosions. The constant barrage of propaganda in broken English from Hanoi Hannah put us over the top with laughter. All of this leads to the bottom line of if you are a fan of Far Cry, loved Far Cry 5, and want more content you will love Hours of Darkness. For those of you that are counting hours in lieu of laughs, a technical elitist that can only appreciate “new” revolutionary gameplay, or an English Literature major that requires emotional involvement in a storyline you should probably pass on this one. But then if you are one of those people, what were you thinking anyways. This is Far Cry. In addition to the new storyline, the weapons and vehicles that can be obtained in the Hours of Darkness storyline can be obtained in the Far Cry 5 world of Hope County. This adds NEW vehicles and weapons in the mix that many people will be able to appreciate.
Moving onto my complaints. Yea there are many but the most significant ones are the following:
A) Just like Far Cry 5, poor design implementation of the co-op mode forced me to play twice in order to obtain progress/achievements for me and my co-op buddy. I still loved every minute of Hours of Darkness and I probably would have played twice anyways but forcing me to do so because of poor co-op design just sucks.
B) Just like Far Cry 5, using the same button for looting a body and swapping weapons just left me pissed off every time I accidently swapped my good weapons for a crappy one unintentionally while trying to loot a body.
C) I would have loved to see more engaging NVC. I envision horde stages where NVC come pouring out of the mountain side tunnels. I envision more engaging tunnel rat side quest with booby traps and knife fights. I envision hunting down Hanoi Hannah and shutting her up for good. Lastly, I envision a final sequence that is multiplied by 3x in every way.… Expand
Far Cry 5: Hours of DarknessYour Score0 out of 10User Score
