The upcoming first-person survival game from Ubisoft, Far Cry: Primal, has been turning heads for its stone age era weaponry and gameplay. Well, the savagery of that era appears to shine through nice and bright, as the game will receive the typical 'M' for Mature rating due to all the gore, mutilation and caveman sex. Yes, there's caveman sex.
PC Gamer did a write up on the newly rated title by the ESRB, which depicts all sorts of violence, gore, animal abuse and – according to various reports – Mesolithic nudity.
The actual ESRB page describes what sort of mature content is featured in Far Cry: Primal, and it includes torturing people by holding them over fires to burn off their face, tapping holes into their skulls while they're still alive, stabbing them, impaling them, cutting them and killing them in a number of other gruesome ways. The ESRB page also notes that you can see male genitalia from underneath the little loin cloths that the characters wear, along with female breasts since some of the tribes have topless women, and there is even some clothed caveman sex.
It's interesting because the ESRB's rating for the game is Mature but the Australian Classification for the title is only MA15+. The Australian board only noted that the themes and violence had a “strong impact” but the nudity and sex were of “moderate impact”.
The game's prime focus will be on animal taming. Imagine a game based on the low-budget classic The Beastmaster and that's very similar to what you get in Far Cry: Primal. The game will see players taming beasts and using them as companions to completely wreak havoc on enemy tribes. This includes riding on Wooly Mammoths or sending Sabre-tooth Tigers into combat to rip enemies to shreds.
One of the more interesting mechanics is that players will be able to send in owls with bombs to disrupt enemy forces. And since this is in the stone age, there are no traditional grenades or guns, so players will have to make do with bee bombs and traps.
The lack of traditional weaponry hasn't really gone over too well with some gamers who miss their M16s and AK-47s from previous Far Cry titles. It's a hard sell, for sure, from Ubisoft's end, because stone age weapons aren't all that cool. Yes there are bows, spears and bone axes, but a large part of the appeal for most games is in their unique weapon cache, and so far most of the weapons depicted in Far Cry: Primal are the sort of thing you would make as a kid in your backyard with some rocks, sticks and mud.
However, Ubisoft is banking on the game's survival elements and animal taming being a large draw for the title. Incorporating other rival tribes as players attempt to survive in the harsh outdoors gives the game some measure of tension, but Ubisoft will have their work cut out for them to pull six to eight hours of gameplay out of this title, or at least make it highly replayable.
Far Cry: Primal in all its gory, caveman glory is due for release on February 23rd, 2016 for the Xbox One and PS4, and in March for PC.
