Carto and Far Cry 6 are vastly different video games. Carto is a fun, whimsical puzzle game with beautifully drawn characters. It’s a game that’s appropriate for a wide range of age groups, and can be enjoyed by adults and children alike. Far Cry 6 is an new installment in a classic series of first person shooters, filled with violent mercenaries and dark comedy. I finished up both of these games a few months ago, and found them both enjoyable and frustrating, for vastly different reasons.

Carto

Carto is a whimsical, independent puzzler. It has some adorable characters, lots of animals and clever puzzles. Cut sequences are composed of wonderfully drawn images, instead of dialog. Carto, the main character, is a girl of very little words. Everyone else seems to have plenty to say.

There isn’t a lot of conflict. If anything the characters are a little over friendly. I thought this would deter from the overall story, but I feel this was more than accounted for by the creative puzzle design. Some games have puzzles that are too easy, and others too hard. Like Goldilocks and the baby bear’s porridge, this game feels just right. At first I thought the puzzles would be overly simple, but they grow in complexity as the game progresses without becoming overwhelming or unsolvable. Many puzzles even add to the gameplay or story in the process of solving them, which really draws the player in.

There is a strong fairy tail aspect to Carto. The magical forests, welcoming characters and different landscapes really come together in a fun, yet casual story. It’s incredibly cute, and there is a lot interesting backstory hidden throughout the adventure. It doesn’t have the deep character depth and conflict of other independent story puzzlers such as Wandersong, but it’s still adorable, relatively short, and an enjoyable casual game to play.

Far Cry 6

Far Cry 6 starts off as a strong addition to the Ubisoft game series. You pick a gender for your character, and are immediately throw into the chaos that comes from a dictator turning his capitol city into a war zone. The graphics in this game are truly spectacular. The voice acting is okay, but the characters themselves are unmemorable. Unlike other Far Cry titles, the game lacks truly questionable moral decisions, and introduces some really annoying people. It feels less like a flushed out story about the hard decisions made by revolutionaries, and more like a badly put together action movie.

Far Cry has never been a serious series. In this adventure, your first virtual partner is an alligator. Most of these games have some animal helpers, but in FC6, all of your amigos are animals! Initially, you get your choice of alligator or dog. There are other animals, but I didn’t bother unlocking any of them.

Weapons are not bought or crafted, but found in various caches. Each weapon has its own set of upgrades that must be crafted, and those upgrades cannot be moved between guns. Although you can get a rough idea of a gun’s power by its rank (1 though 4), it’s difficult to tell if a weapon is truly better, before first crafting all the upgrades and then comparing them. Uranium and resolver material can be used to craft special backpacks and resolver weapons, most of which are entirely useless. The only backpack I found useful was the rocket launcher you start with.

Helicopters and planes are present in FC6, although anti-aircraft guns must be destroyed before unlocking airspace. Horses are also a means of travel, but they don’t have the feel or maneuverability of horses from Red Dead Redemption 2. Enemy tanks and helicopters are everywhere and heavy, even early on in the game. This made rocket launchers essential to completing many of the early missions. Decent sniper rifles don’t come around until later in the game, making bow and arrows essential for players who prefer long range silent kills.

Far Cry 6 is really big. It has a massive open world, pushing the edges of quantity over quality. The revolutionary group your character joins is called libertad, and the Canadian spook you encounter does make a joke about lib-tard; really the only based part of the entire game.

I found myself struggling to care about any of the characters. There was little nuance when it came to the struggles of the revolution. The gameplay is fun and the engine is solid. The graphics were stunning, but the missions easily get old and stale. Bicho’s entire story arc with DJs and propaganda is cringe. If a character died, I really didn’t give a shit.

Overall, Far Cry 6 can be fun, but it’s nothing new. It feels like an expansion to any other Far Cry game, with a lot of pointless missions that don’t add any real story. At nearly forty hours of gameplay, I was just glad the game was over with. There are no great reveals of a complex past for the protagonists like they were in Far Cry 4. The main villeins and bosses are mostly forgettable (except for the Canadian ironically). The dialog is weird mix of English with some Spanglish sprinkled in, and the story is less engaging than Far Cry New Dawn. It was a fun game, but entirely too long and lacked any of the deep moral ambiguity people have come to expect from Far Cry games.