Have you ever wondered what’s going on in someone’s head? Have you wanted to see why a villain has gone down the dark path they have? Well, wonder no more. Far Cry 6 fresh new DLC Vaas: Insanity drops on Nov 16th and boy is she a good’un. From the hardcore tribal music to the intense boss fights and all in-between, the story of Vaas had me gripped from the start and I couldn’t put it down.
Playing as Vaas himself, explore a portion of his tormented mind, from the rivers and raining blood, to the flying sharks and the waves of tribal enemies & evil wildlife, the image truly reflected ‘insanity’. Starting off in a compound with just a pistol, venture off into insanity to gain all of Vaas’ memories, the 3 pieces of the silver dragon blade, and ultimately, escape the insanity. The game is a roguelike, which is an interesting pathway to the FarCry franchise.
Upon dying, you lose everything, apart from the knowledge gained on the previous venture. All of the money and guns are gone, lost, and eaten by the void. Money is a fundamental part of the game. The more you have, the better the traits and weapons one can gain, and you get it by killing stuff, opening chests, and completing challenges. Buy useful traits with some aiding with keeping some of your hard-earned cash after death as if you shoved it in your prison wallet, others increase your health and carried syringe amount. There are 5 traits and they are all based on a trait from Vaas himself, like greed, rage, and so on. You can upgrade each main perk 5 times and the benefits get better and better.
The two main points of interest at the compound are the mirror and the armory. The mirror grants you the ability to upgrade and appoint traits to Vaas, and the armory is where Vaas gets loaded up to unleash mayhem. Through your journey, you will stumble across Citras trials and armory challenges. Citras trials give you powerful one-time-use powers, which are a game-changer, and the armory challenges allow you to unlock specific weapons to use.
If you fall to the horrors in Vaas’ mind, however, you must use your hard-earned cash to unlock them permanently before you perish. There are 5 levels of difficulty, called mind levels. Like a new game scenario, you must complete the previous level to unlock the next. Upon completion, not only do you get a more challenging playthrough, but you also unlock some special cosmetic items to use in the main FarCry 6 game. Complete all of the Mind levels to unlock them all.
Vaas: Insanity is co-op play where both players play as Vaas, which is only acceptable since your running around in his demented mind. The only problem is that it is only crossplay between consoles of the same family. So if your friends on PlayStation want to play and you’re on Xbox, unfortunately, this is a no-no, and it’s likewise with pc, which is a shame. I mean, it’s 2021 and almost every game is coming out with or the older games are getting some sort of crossplay functionality.
I fully understand if it’s a competitive multiplayer game, there are advantages and disadvantages to having a controller or mouse and keyboard, but this is a PVE title, so there’s no real point in not having a full crossplay network. In saying that, only one person is required to have the DLC, and both players will unlock the rewards for FarCry 6 upon completing each mind level. That’s pretty great if you have a mate like me that only really gets games on sale or if they release to Gamepass.
Now for 4K/60FPS the developers recommend a Ryzen 7 5800x/intel i7-10700k, AMD RX 6800X/RTX 3080, and 16GB of RAM. Minimum specs for 1080p/30FPS Ryzen 3 1200/Intel i5-4460, RX 460 4GB/GTX 960 4GB, and 8GB RAM (12GB with the HD texture pack). I run a Ryzen 7 5800x, an RTX 3070TI, and 32GB of RAM. I had no issues running the game on ultra settings at 1080p and 1440p. The world in Vaas’ mind is based on the Rook Islands, where FarCry 3 took place.
Right off the bat, the game was stunning, from the massive landscape with rivers of red stuff (I’m more than likely guessing it was blood), the random arms sticking out of the seafloor like cute little corals or the flying sharks that unfortunately you cannot kill, everything just fit and it felt as if I was in a psycho’s mind. Bearing in mind Borderlands 3 had a DLC where you ventured through Krieg’s mind, which was more fun and arcadey, this has more of an insanity feeling and opened up Vaas’ past with the nostalgic memories and all-new backstory. With vibrant colors and hard-hitting tribal music that got more and more intense with the more stuff that was going on, the game had my blood pumping at the craziest of times.
Right from the get-go, I was infatuated with the visuals and story. It took me a couple of loops to fully understand how to walk through the insanity and I was soon able to complete the first couple of mind levels, only to be faced with harder, more insane levels, and a lot more intense challenges. This DLC is super fun and worth its weight in gold. I would be super excited to play with friends but unfortunately, they are on consoles and I’m on PC, so I’ll have to give that a miss. The only real downside of the DLC was the crossplay functionality. If not for that, it would have been an easy perfect score. I am now looking forward to the releases announced on the road map, such as DLC portraying Joseph Seed’s mind, Pagan Min’s mind, a full version of Blood Dragon, and a constant injection of free content.
The Good
- Only one friend requires the DLC to play co-op
- Super smooth gameplay
- Perfect view into Vaas tormented mind
- Multiple insanity levels
The Bad
- Not crossplay except for the same family of consoles.