Title: Far Cry 5 -- Season Pass DLC
Platform: Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4
Cost: $29.99
Rating: Very mature, with blood, gore, intense violence and very crude humor and language
Score: 7/10
Editor's note: Some publishers sell a "season pass" that grants access to all of a game's downloadable content. Usually a pass includes content that was added after the game's release.
The main question to ask about a season pass is "Is it worth it?" Now that Ubisoft has released the third and final piece of downloadable content for Far Cry 5, hopefully there's an answer to that question.
The season pass is a hefty chunk of change at $30 -- half the retail cost of the base game. So what do you get?
The main perks are a playable, single-player-only copy of Far Cry 3, a special sniper rifle and three downloadable items, what players call DLC -- Hours of Darkness, Lost on Mars and Dead Living Zombies, released in June, July and August, respectively. Each is connected to residents of Far Cry 5's Hope County, Mont. While the first DLC takes itself fairly seriously, the other two have a goofy, humor-focused presentation.
Hours of Darkness is a heavily stealth-based scenario set during the Vietnam War. You play as Hope County's Wendell Redler, a war vet telling stories about how he was shot down behind enemy lines.
The DLC starts with the helicopter that you and your crew are in being shot down, and you're briefly taken prisoner before escaping barehanded into the jungle.
After retrieving your gear, weapons and a radio, your main goal is to head to the extraction point and escape the jungle. There are other optional challenges, though, which include rescuing your fellow POWs, taking out anti-aircraft guns and destroying propaganda speakers broadcasting some hilarious threats in broken English.
Rescuing your friends lets you add them to your crew, similar to the main game's Guns for Hire option. It allows them to assist you in combat. However, unlike in the main game, if your allies die, they die for good.
Hours of Darkness "changes it up" from the main game by adding a new perk system that grants enhanced abilities for making stealth kills.
After completing the DLC, two more modes will be unlocked: One is a harder mode with less health and stronger enemies, and the other is called Action Movie Mode so you can let out that inner Sly Stallone with bigger, more powerful 'splosions and more flying lead.
All told, Hours of Darkness will take just about three hours if you also tackle the side missions.
Lost on Mars drops the stealth and seriousness and goes for wacky, hillbilly space humor, starring two of the allied characters from the main game, pilot Nick Rye and good ol' boy Hurk. Somehow, Hurk has ended up as a disembodied head on Mars and needs Nick's help to save the world by transporting him to a space station on the Red Planet.
Aside from helping to save the world, one of the main challenges is to find all of Hurk's missing body parts, putting him back together like Humpty-Dumpty.
You can tell the creators had a bit of fun making this DLC, with homages here and there to movies such as Tremors, Starship Troopers and Mars Attacks, but while Hurk provides nonstop color commentary, the combat and missions themselves are pretty dull.
You'll craft some alien blaster weapons and acquire a gravity belt for midair maneuvering in Mars' reduced gravity, but the enemies don't have a lot of variety. Primarily, the aliens are an arachnid-type species that hides in the sand and launches surprise attacks.
Lost on Mars takes about five hours to complete, but it feels longer and you'll wish it was shorter.
It seems like almost all big-budget shooters eventually have a zombie mode these days, and Far Cry 5 is no exception with its Dead Living Zombies DLC. Instead of the main game's open world, you'll play through seven different over-the-top zombie scenarios presented as horror B-movie pitches to Hollywood directors.
The episodes are short, each one taking 10 to 15 minutes. After you complete each episode, a Score Attack mode will be unlocked.
Replaying through the scenario and getting a high score will unlock weapons and items to be used in the main game.
All of the scenarios can be played cooperatively with a friend, which is a great addition and makes any shooting game more fun, and weapons and equipment unlocked in the DLC -- such as alien blasters -- can be used in the main game as well.
And speaking of the base game, Far Cry 5 also got a major update in late August, adding a New Game+ mode that lets you keep all your weapons and unlocked items into a new play-through on a harder-than-Hard Mode difficulty called Infamous.
So is the DLC worth it? I guess it depends. Are you still playing Far Cry 5, months after its release? If so, I think it's worthwhile, but otherwise you might just watch a video of someone else playing through the extra content.
ActiveStyle on 09/03/2018