I’m a sucker for Far Cry’s charismatic bad guys. Since Far Cry 3, Ubisoft has obviously been aiming to write villians that thrill and terrify in equal measure, but with the stone-age Far Cry Primal they weren’t as concerned about handsome, hypnotic lunatics, or superforeigners that were here to save the day via a never-ending stream of bullets.

To my eyes, at least, they wanted to stick Far Cry’s survival of the fittest hunting and gathering in a game where it made sense.

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Poor Ubisoft. They crafted this enormous open-world icon-riddled niche of their own, trod it into the ground while flogging it to death, and then other people came along, borrowed their ideas, and built superior games with them. In the last year, despite decent showings from Far Cry Primal, The Division, Watch Dogs 2, and Wildlands, players and critics were beginning to weary of yet another open map of odd jobs. None was particularly at fault, but we were experiencing perhaps the sense of diminishing returns, and certainly the weariness of fatigue. And then this year we got Zelda: Breath Of The Wild from Nintendo and Horizon Zero Dawn from Sony. Pow. Two platform-pushing monoliths that schooled Ubisoft at their own games.

In the wake of being so astoundingly outshone, what can Far Cry 5 [official site] do to reclaim the crown?

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My calendar tells me we’re now over halfway through April. The Met Office tells me astronomical spring in the northern hemisphere started on March 20. Yet the weatherman told me yesterday that I can expect highs of a whopping nine degrees centigrade here in Glasgow this weekend. I’d swear it was still winter had the annual Uplay Spring Sale not kicked off this week, with big discounts on the likes of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Rainbow Six Siege and Far Cry 4, among others. Which others, you say? Find out after the drop.

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Hot on the heels of Fallout 4’s Survival Mode, which brings exhaustion and dehydration back to the world of post-apocalyptic entertainment, Ubisoft have announced that Far Cry Primal [official site] will be getting the survivalist treatment.

The keystone of that survival mode is the change in the exploration, crafting, and difficulty of the game to make it even more realistic. After that, there are options the player can activate to go further.

Survival mode will arrive as part of a free patch on April 12th. We called this earlier in the month, of course, when we made Robert Zak play the game wearing nowt but a loincloth. More details below.

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When Far Cry Primal [official site] was unveiled, I shrugged with semi-feigned disinterest, aware that the series has hit milking point, but unable to dismiss the inner teenager tugging at my inner sleeve saying But – but it’s got cavemen and tribes and woolly mammoths and – and you can ride them, and throw spears and stuff! Yes, the prehistoric era taps into a primal fantasy in me, but when that’s overlaid with an advanced radar, an owl endowed with the abilities of a military drone, and heat-vision that conveniently colour-codes every object, footprint and smell, the fantasy kind of tapers off.

By shutting off as many aids and HUD elements as possible, I intended to reclaim the fantasy.

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Far Cry Primal [official site] has now unlocked on Steam and Uplay, but, as has been the case since prehistory, you’re going to spend a lot of time staring at developer and publisher logos when you play. I’ve been fiddling with graphics settings, which occasionally necessitates a swift reload of the game, and in doing so have seen the cave-painted Ubi logo so many times that I never want to see it again. Thankfully, I don’t have to. Pushing a button won’t skip those logos but disabling them is simple enough. Instructions below.

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