Far Cry 5 isn't just a hit - it's a monster hit - bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of sales.
Ubisoft said this week that the open-world shooter, which launched in March 2018, enjoyed first week sales of $310m, making it Ubisoft's second biggest release ever. (The Division remains Ubisoft's biggest launch in history with $330m in its first week.)
Obviously, Ubisoft won't see all of that money - retailers and platform holders such as Valve, Microsoft and Sony all take a cut before cash flows into Ubisoft's coffers. Still, Ubisoft will no doubt be delighted with the remarkable return. For context, Far Cry 5's launch more than doubled that of Far Cry 4, which launched in 2014.
The island from Lost, that TV show about polar bears and time travel, has been painstaking recreated in Far Cry 5's Arcade map maker mode.
As a huge fan of the show, I am genuinely in awe of YouTuber Un-Break-Able's work. Having played Ubisoft's dodgy official Lost game, it feels like he has done a better job of recreating the island than Ubisoft itself.
There's the beach camp with its tents and graveyard area. There's its kitchen, and Charlie and Claire's tent complete with a guitar and crib.
Hallo! John’s away so I’m taking over for our latest weekly rundown of the biggest-selling games on Steam over the previous seven days. Familiar faces are here, of course, but the charts also include more survival games than I’ve seen in yonks. The slightest peek of sun outside and you lot start acting as if it’s the end of the world, eh?
What Works And Why is a monthly column where Gunpoint and Heat Signature designer Tom Francis digs into the design of a game or mechanic and analyses what makes it good.>
Far Cry 5 is a mixed bag, but one of the bigger, shinier objects in that bag is its companions system. It’s a crossbreed of Far Cry Primal’s pets – you can summon them and direct their attacks at will; and Far Cry 2’s buddies – they can revive you if you get taken down. Nine of the companions available are starring characters: people or creatures you meet and recruit through main story missions with backstories and (when human) dialogue. But I don’t really care about eight of those, and I only care about the ninth because he is a dog, which gives him three key advantages:
1. He is, again, a dog.2. He never alerts enemies if I’m being stealthy.3. He never speaks, a big plus in a world where almost everything anyone says makes you like them less. (more…)
Hullo! John is preoccupied with wizards right now, so I’m taking over for the rundown of last week’s top ten on Steam. It was an interesting week, bringing back some welcome old games and slamming in some shiny new ones. Largely, it’s all about robots and survival.
It's been several years since anyone's had a reason to think about Lost, the hit ABC TV series about a bunch of people stuck on a weird island. Much like Far Cry 5, it was an extraordinarily long and compelling experience with a really crap ending. The two obviously belong together, and now, finally, they are together: someone has made the Lost island in the Far Cry 5 map editor.
The work of Un-Break-Able, the map isn't to scale (the map editor isn't powerful enough to allow that amount of space), but all of the key locations are there, and all sit pretty much where you'd expect them to. Another caveat: the map was created on PS4, so it's not available on PC unless Ubisoft adds some kind of cross-platform support for the user-generated maps. But it's still worth checking out just to see what the map maker is capable of.
"This is an accurate recreated map made in the Far Cry 5 Arcade Map Editor. Everything from as small as Sun's garden to all 9 Dharma Initiative Stations are included," reads the description. "The map cannot unfortunately be made to scale but was made as large as possible."
The map ignores the so-called "canon" locations featured in the rather poor Lost: Via Domus game which released in 2010. So what you get is a map that most closely resembles the one featured in the TV series.
Check out footage below. Cheers, Kotaku.