What’s the opinion on best in the genre then? (The genre being open world FPS.) The format is somewhat honed and doesn’t change much sure but personally I don’t think anything really rivals Far Cry for what it is, and I always like to play one every few years.

I'm with Blocks here. STALKER is the absolute ruthless daddy. I cleared two of those games and they absolutely sucked my soul dry.
I would champion Far Cry a little, however, in the classic Ubisoft manner there's a real nice difficulty slope, there's a great progression model, and they're not afraid to let you absolutely fuck stuff up as they're confident in the systems they built.
I don't think they ever bettered 4 (3 is more insane fun, but man I played it on 360 and it was JANKY, which coloured my opinion) and I've found some of the spinoffs cheap shite. The Blood Dragon one in particular was a massive grab at the cult popularity of Drive and Tron getting released and just feels really poorly dated now. Which I guess is apt as it's an 80s themed game.
Metro has been an up and down experience for me. I loved the first and again had a heavy dark experience on PC. Helped because where the PC was in the place we were renting was essentially a cupboard and I had to have headphones on. I really bounced off the new one. It looks the business but it's not my Metro which is obviously as fucking subjective as it comes, but it just feels too much pretty funnel stealth. Possibly that's exactly at odds with my Far Cry love, but the latter lets me still rek a joint with brute force when the alarms are pulled.

TL;Dr stalker for the leets, far cry between the sheets.

Bounced quite hard off 4; didn't reallly dig the setting and it was clear it was a PS3 port when I had it on PS4.  Liking what I've sampled of FC5 so far.  No more climbing towers, so you can just explore things organically, makes a big difference. Gunplay feels as solid as ever, if not more. And at this early stage, feels like I'm really having to earn my dollar to buy new weapons and stuff.

Of course playing on Hard without the enemy tagging makes it feel like new too.

is that even with the doggy?

And it’s co op isn’t it?

Haven’t touched Far Cry since 3, though I liked the sound of 5.  Next gen jungle foliage...might be back in.

Clearly the owner of the burger chain.

Far Cry 5 had the shittest story of anything ever.

GurtTractor wrote:

Far Cry 5 had the shittest story of anything ever.

It sure did but it also had some amazing combat rooms

GurtTractor wrote:

Raiziel wrote:

I don’t really play a Far Cry game for the story.

Yeah and this is why Far Cry 5 was so utterly shit, the story was forced on you, repeatedly and repetitively. I ended up muting the game audio and watching something else on a second screen while I played through the utter shite sections as fast as I could so I could get back to actual decent part of the game, the open world traipsing.

Basically a terrible game but fun could be had if you ignored the story as much as possible and just wandered around with some companions doing your own thing, disabling almost all HUD elements helped greatly too.

A low 4/10.

I'm not gonna argue massively above your 4, but I think there were some incredible shootouts and some (overly done,) sidequests that let you do some great mechanics - the plane flying ones were a standout.

It's not a "severely compromised" game. It's maybe a solid 6.

Raiziel wrote:

Far Cry 6 it is, then.

Seems apt

Raiziel wrote:

Clearly the owner of the burger chain.

Chicken chain.

Was Far Cry Primal any good?  I've got that in my games library for some reason but have never played.

Elmlea wrote:

Also, not sure that's another jungle area in 6, looks like it could be somewhere like Morocco, which would be cool.  Can't believe there's not more love for FC4, it was pretty stellar I thought.

I loved it

I loved 4 as well.

Haven't enjoyed 5 as much, not played it in months, I'll go back to it eventually. It's a bit like ghost recon breakpoint - I loved wildlands, couldn't wait for breakpoint, then was immensely disappointed in it.