Just in case the Highwaymen farming dog meat and making children hold unpinned grenades didn’t spell it out enough. Aside from doing a deal with the devil later on in the game, you are left in no doubt that you are the righteous fighting the tyranny of the Highwaymen. But New Dawn lacks even that series’ basic exploration of the grey areas that separate groups in the most compelling post-apocalyptic fiction. Watchers of The Walking Dead will recognise the parallels between Prosperity and Alexandria the Highwaymen and the Saviours. The Highwaymen are a US-wide organisation, splintering into different regions to plunder the land and bring its survivors under their command. We’re the good guys, it says look at our vegetables.ĭisturbing the peace in Hope are the Highwaymen, a roaming gang of ne’er do wells lead by twin sisters Mickey and Lou. All ski lodge chalets, herb gardens and Mom and Pop idealism. You are ‘Cap’ head of security and killing folk for a burgeoning settlement called Prosperity. At least when you are not being shot at by bad guys. And there is plenty to be said for travelling its roads and scaling mountain ranges to get a peek of its oddly garish beauty. Colours leaping out of the screen in an appropriately disarming fever dream.
New Dawn certainly puts me in the mind of Primal, just with an arsenal of explosive artillery rather than rocks and spears, its post-nuclear land of Hope County overtaken by nature. I’ve found Far Cry’s more experimental jaunts -the 80s neon sci-fi of Blood Dragon or the prehistoric Primal- more intriguing than its decent but increasingly bloated mainline entries. Newbies, meanwhile, will find a rather curious clash of style. If you don’t move along, nothing to see here. Safe to say if you like Far Cry, Ubisoft’s sprawling open-world FPS, then this leaner, more colourful visit to the end of the world will tick all the boxes. It’s the kind of goofy, b-movie aside that form many of New Dawn’s highlights, an often rickety Far Cry spin-off that doesn’t always hold together or do enough to justify its own existence. Disco tunes punctuated with gunfire and explosions filled the night sky, while my companion Sharky and his babe-in-arms set off pressure traps while making references to Schwarzenegger’s Commando. Several hours into Far Cry: New Dawn, I found myself manning a turret to protect a sulphur mine as streams of the game’s baddies, the Highwaymen, came streaming down post-apocalyptic Montana hills.
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