That’s Cheeseburger. He’s a bear. He helps fight the bad guys in Far Cry 5. Or at least he will once I am able to liberate him (I’m working my way up the map to his location).

I was so excited for Far Cry 5. I was the engineer on the proverbial hype train. The reality of the game fell far below what I was hoping and, after putting in around a dozen or so hours, I set it aside to see if some time away made my gaming heart grow fonder.

My gaming heart has yet to grow fonder.

When I jumped back in yesterday, I forced myself to do it. Sometimes I stall out on games and I wish I didn’t. Even though I’m not enjoying Far Cry 5 in general, I still want to see it through to the end credits because of how much I love the Far Cry series. And I’m incredibly excited and hopeful for the planned DLC (and the Far Cry 3 Classic Edition).

When going back to a game after a period away (even a relatively short period such as this), there is always that scramble to figure out the control scheme and where I was and what I was doing and why. I forgot which skills I was working towards (an easy thing to figure out), but once I had that in order, everything else fell into place. I was almost immediately roped in to taking down my first lieutenant and that was an underwhelming experience; the mission design was poor to a fault. I feel like big story missions are supposed to make you feel empowered to take down the big bad, yet here I was, stuck in cutscene after cutscene with someone in my face talking to my weirdly silent character.

MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD

One minute I was in a church in a shootout, the next I was on a vehicle trying to fight people off but I couldn’t access my consumables to help with all the damage I was taking, and I also couldn’t dodge at all so basically, I just had to get lucky (which I did; I finished that section on my first go).

THEN.

Then I was in an aerial dogfight (and can I just say flying planes in this game isn’t my strong suit), and no matter how much I tried to get the bad guy’s plane in sight, I just kept dying over and over and over. It wouldn’t have been quite so bad, but the loading screens in the game are ridiculously long, and any excitement I might have had left over what should be a huge moment in the game had seeped away. I finally looked up some tips online and saw that someone suggested just running into their plane with my plane which wound up being easier said than done. I tried it, but by the time I got my wings under me, my gun for hire, Nick, had done most of the work.

Seriously, thank you, Nick.

And THEN.

Then I was supposed to find the character I was fighting to get something from them. They were glitching out all over my screen and zinging many hundreds of meters at a time across the landscape like a squishy pinball. Once I found them and got the thing I needed, they had a death monologue that would have rivaled any Assassin’s Creed game, then, finally, gave up the ghost.

It was one of the most poorly designed story missions I’ve ever encountered. I feel terrible saying that, but it’s true. Between the design itself, the lack of functionality (e.g.: not being able to use consumables), the long loading screens, and the glitchiness of the whole affair, I was fairly off-put. Again, I want to see this game through, but I hope to heck the other main story missions don’t follow suit.

So between my semi-overwhelmed feeling at jumping back in to a large game after a bit of time away, to the sheer ridiculousness (not in a good way) of that major story mission, I feel more cautious than ever about the game. I’m glad I finally just dove back in, but it’s always funny doing that and dealing with the ensuing confusion of finding my place in a world I’ve stepped away from.

If you stop playing a game for some reason, how does it feel when you go back to it again? Do you take on the confusion and roll with it until things get familiar? Or do you start over fresh?

With that, I leave you with an image of Cheeseburger, which just may be the best name for a bear companion ever.