Far Cry Primal

From one uncharted era in open-world games to the next, Far Cry Primal does away with the hang-gliders, grenade launchers and elephants of its predecessors, and replaces them with sabre-toothed cats, spears and wooly mammoths. Yes, Far Cry is going primeval on our asses and taking us back to the early days of humanity.

What we've seen so far of the mesolithic first-person shooter looks intriguing, and if there's one thing Ubisoft are doing right it's evoking a sense that life on earth was still belching into existence; the vegetation looks familiar yet ancient, the trees and mountains look taller, steeper and rougher than in today's world, and the whole game is suffused with a golden haze that you can imagine being caused by gases emitted from the simmering earth.

While Primal looks like it's going to focus more on survival, resource-gathering and crafting than previous games in the series, when I looked at the gameplay footage I couldn't help but feel that it felt over-familiar, yet minus the explosive crazy stuff that made its predecessors great. Still, cavemen, mammoth-riding and a daunting, ancient tundra to explore - you have to give it a chance, right?