Far Cry 6 hands-on preview: Enough issues to make us say, “Ay, Dios mío”

Roughly six weeks before Far Cry 6‘s upcoming launch on PC and consoles, Ubisoft elected to unlock the entirety of this first-person shooter’s opening beats for a press-only, hands-on demo. This kind of access differs from the carefully selected “slices” we sometimes play in preview events, as those are meant to show an unfinished game in its best light.

But after going hands-on with Far Cry 6 for nearly four hours, I was reminded why game studios are sometimes cagey about prerelease reveals.

The demo I played was equal parts massive and unwieldy. I couldn’t help but feel like hundreds of Ubisoft staffers’ efforts to create a beautiful and convincing pseudo-Cuban adventure wound up squeezed into a single, tiny clown car of a package. The issues didn’t end with game-breaking bugs and wonky AI, which may very well be resolved on, erm, October 7. At this point, I’m more concerned about uninspiring new loadout systems, a narrative tone that can’t make up its mind, and an absolute yawn of a return to the Ubisoft open-world bloat of old.