Far Cry 5 was a beautiful game when it launched back in 2018. The game portrayed a sprawling open-world set in the American countryside, with impressive foliage rendering, vast draw distances, and detailed texture work. It was a big step up from prior games, packing excellent support for the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. Five years on, Ubisoft has released an update that unlocks the full potential of the old code on current-gen consoles by unlocking the frame-rate and allowing the game to reach 60 frames per second – so is this a smooth experience? Or are gamers in for a bumpy ride?
As with all backwards-compatible patching efforts, it’s important to set expectations right off the bat. Far Cry 5 on current-gen machines isn’t a full port of the game to current-gen consoles – it’s just a patch, with limited impact on the game experience beyond the performance enhancement. This isn’t a bad thing necessarily, but this is more in line with prior Ubisoft game updates – like the Assassin’s Creed Origins 60fps patch – than it would be with a rebuilt current-gen version.
But that’s not really a bad thing, because Far Cry 5 is still a visually impressive title. Dense foliage blankets the game’s forested areas,with detailed greenery and excellent shading. Materials and texture work are both top-notch, and hold up perfectly well even at close range. Lighting in general remains attractive, especially outdoors, and interiors even hold up passably well, packing evocative, if slightly crude, GI coverage. Despite its five year old vintage – a detail Ubisoft is eager to emphasize – Far Cry 5 continues to stand strong from a graphical perspective. It’s not all perfect of course, and there are some inconsistencies that do betray its last-generation heritage, but it’s hardly an unattractive game.
