Title – Far Cry 6 Lost Between Worlds
Platforms – PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Release Date – December 6, 2022
Developer – Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher – Ubisoft
MSRP – $19.99
ESRB – M for mature
Disclaimer – This product is being reviewed on PS5. A review copy was provided by Ubisoft for the purpose of this review. Gaming Instincts is an Amazon Affiliate and does gain financial benefits if you choose to purchase this product on this page.
I love it when developers use DLC as an excuse to experiment with crazy ideas. Through the main campaign, they can tell a meaningful story filled with fitting gameplay, then stretch their imaginations in future DLCs. It’s more exciting for developers themselves to experiment and break their own rules. Additionally, it’s more interesting for players to explore concepts that extend the campaign’s boundaries. I could tell that the developers had fun making the Far Cry 6 Lost Between Worlds DLC. I’m thankful they had the opportunity to stretch their creativity, though the DLC suffers from some repetition toward the end.
Wait … This Isn’t Ratchet and Clank: Gameplay
Before starting Lost Between Worlds, you must complete the third operation, Du or Die, in the main campaign. The DLC has no connection to the Far Cry 6 story, and, instead, serves as a one-off adventure for fans. Even your upgrades and weapons don’t carry over.
Far Cry 6’s protagonist, Dani, is relaxing on the hood of her car, enjoying the sunset when a purple object plummets from the sky. Dani watches as a sphere emerges from the ground and shoots small blasts of energy in every direction. As any good Far Cry protagonist would do, she shoots the orb and causes an explosion that traps her in a strange dimension. She meets the pilot of the orb, a ball of light named Fai, who informs Dani she must travel through various rifts to find the orb’s five missing shards. Only then can she return to her dimension and continue her duties as a guerrilla fighter.
The gameplay loop then is traveling to one dimension, accomplishing the unique objective in said dimension, then choosing from two portals to travel to the next dimension. You continue dimension hopping until you reach the one with the shard. After grabbing the shard, you must return it to Fai, then begin dimension hopping again. The game’s Rift Map shows the alternating paths through a total of 10 rifts that lead to each of the five shards. Therefore, you will take journeys through rifts and repeat several of them, until you gather all five shards. Unless you have enough glints, death makes you restart your journey while keeping the previous shards collected. These are shiny objects found throughout the rifts. If you have enough, you can restart the rift you died in instead of restarting your current run.
It sounds complicated, but in practice, that’s not the case. The rift map is easy to read and the basic gameplay loop is easy to understand after finishing a few rifts. The best part of the DLC is the diverse visuals and mechanics of each rift. By distorting familiar structures, they create visually appealing environments. They have a common theme of a cracked sky and huge purple crystals that either emerge from the ground or float across the horizon. In one rift, there are fragments of a fortress floating in the air, mixing familiarity and otherworldliness. The different rifts have unique gameplay goals as well. In the fortress, you can choose from a set of puzzles to complete in order to get a particular weapon.
One puzzle came straight out of Uncharted. There was an array of blocks and you must walk across the stable ones and avoid the fragile ones as they will crumble beneath your feet. The puzzles in Lost Between Worlds are easy, but they excel at breathtaking visual creativity, such as pressing a button to move towers up and down. One rift is a huge maze while another tasks you with killing enemies to keep the sun up. I won’t go into all the different gameplay elements presented through rifts, because discovering them is the best part. I couldn’t wait to finish one rift so I could see what awaited me in the next.
The drawback of the DLC structure is repetition. You will be working your way through the same rifts constantly as you follow the path to each shard. Nothing really changes the second or third time you visit. Toward the end of the game, I found myself rushing through the rifts I had already explored just to move through them and find new content. As you progress, you do get abilities that grant shortcuts, such as the grappling hook, but these don’t introduce new areas or rewards. It’s simply designed to get through the rift faster.
The shooting is also disappointing, as it doesn’t add anything to the base game, but, instead, subtracts mechanics you’ve come to expect. There are a small number of guns to find that pale in comparison to the guns in the campaign, and there is no unique, resolver, weapons. The campaign had crazy guns like the discos locos, which shot CD-Rom discs. The DLC, on the other hand, didn’t offer anything besides shotguns, handguns, submachine guns, and assault rifles, severely underusing the sci-fi setting. There is a mechanic, much like switching ammo types in the campaign, where you must change the gun’s color to damage particular enemies. For instance, Lost Between Worlds will throw blue and red shard enemies at you and you must match the color of the enemy with your gun to cause damage. It plays like a tacked-on mechanic that requires no strategy.
Suffice it to say, Far Cry 6 Lost Between Worlds’ selling point is the diverse gameplay and visuals of the rifts, however, nothing is done to differentiate or add to the base shooter gameplay.
Humans are actually cool: Story
The story is simple and that’s to be expected. I wasn’t anticipating much from a DLC story that centers around experimental gameplay, so it’s not the biggest sin to underdevelop the storyline. The most depth comes from Fai’s evolving relationship with Dani, as she learns what humans are like. After collecting each shard, Fai turns into a different species on Earth, which alters her personality. The rabid dog makes Fai violent and predatory, but the most interesting transformation is the human form. The alien species learns about the fluctuating emotions of humans and understands the concept of learning from mistakes. It’s stupid and rudimentary storytelling, but it’s not actively annoying and doesn’t dampen the experience as a whole.
Final Verdict
Lost Between Worlds is a six-hour experience that, at its best, is a fun exploration of stunning locations, and, at its worst, a redundant game broken by its premise. If you are making a run-based game, then change the locations slightly or give the player significant upgrades so you are not repeating the same tasks consistently. Still, unlocking new rifts is a joy and the Far Cry 6 gameplay is decent enough to carry you through the rift-hopping adventure. Far Cry 6 Lost Between Worlds gets a 7.0 out of 10. It’s not a necessary pickup for Far Cry fans, but if you’re itching for more Far Cry 6 gameplay, then the sci-fi, run-inspired system may be worth the purchase.
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