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29 Dec 2015 - 29 Feb 2016
As in all of the games in this franchise, there's a mad dictator in charge, and you're here to take him out. Fortunately, you have the help of the local resistance movement, who are more than happy to point you at a target.
Every game in the series has added something new, and this time it's the wingsuit. Far more versatile than the parachute, it lets you maneuver across the landscape in new and terrible ways to wreak havoc on the enemy.
There's not a lot of depth in the plot here, and you really shouldn't expect any different; these games are largely about blowing stuff up, and that's where the game has focused all of the effort, and tries to direct you with the objectives. Taking over a town or an objective is largely a matter of blowing up a lot of things. Rico can carry an impressive number of weapons and explosives, and still maintain a decent running speed.
As always, you can steal cars to get around, but this game has the same problem as Saints Row 4: yes, you could do that, but why would you? For one, thematically, it doesn't make a lot of sense; the cars are largely driven by everyday citizens, and they are the victims of the dictator, even more so than you. Mechanically, there's not much call for it. Tanks are more effective, and likely to be one of your targets anyway. For distant objectives, planes and helicopters are better - and, again, likely to be a target. Cars are, ironically, just so pedestrian.
Ninety-nine percent of the game is great. The story missions are silly and over-the-top, and Rico just deadpans it because, well, what are you going to do? When you start the game riding a missile (a good callback to the end of the last game), there's really nowhere further to go. You do what the resistance tells you, you blow things up, you kill a lot of enemy soldiers, you move on to the next thing.
There's that one percent, though, that's not quite as good. The end of the game is just a half-assed boss battle that I almost ran out of ammunition for. If I hadn't managed to cheese my way through it by knocking out the shield and blowing up the special helicopter with C4, I'd still be there, months later, trying to figure out some way to knock it out of the sky.
And there are other times, when you're just overwhelmed, and there's nothing you can do but die. At least if it's part of a mission, you can start over - but you've somehow expended the ammo as your last attempt, so you might just have to give up to start all over so you can obtain more ammunition. Little things like that have me asking myself what they could possibly have been thinking, but, again, one percent of the game is this way. The rest of it is just a lot of blowing thing up and having fun.
One of the best action games of this year. Similar in a lot of ways to Mad Max, but somehow just better.