2012's Far Cry 3 provided a much-needed kick in the tuckus for a franchise that always had so much promise, fleshing out your role in the open world and birthing one of the most copied and infectiously addictive premises in modern game design - that idea of opening up the map itself by way of clearing outposts and checkpoints along the way. Ubisoft have taken to putting this in every game under the sun since, but it's with the Far Cry series that it feels most at home, especially when if you're bored with tackling the over-acted and 'we're serious about this, honest!' story missions, you can hop on an elephant and rub amuck down a local encampment. It's not just these replayable outposts that are easy to hop into though, as in the only game that actually came out and worked without melting right in front of you Ubi doubled down on the open-world aspect of the game, sparking off random 'Karma events' that you can help out in, as well as having convoys of vehicles appear that need hijacking or taking out. And those story missions? Well, when they feature something like backflipping out an enemy plane only to toss a grenade in the pilot seat and parachute to safety, they're worth seeing again too.
