Have you ever wanted to explore outer space with a banging soundtrack, a pile of crazy weapons, and a vicious alien host just waiting to rip you to pieces? Well Lost on Mars Far Cry 5’s second DLC drop is here, and it does just that, sending players on a fun romp to everyone’s favorite dusty red planet with resident rednecks Hurk and Nick Rye to kill a lot of aliens with a surprising arsenal of gadgets and gizmos that are hard to forget.

Combine that with the unique blend of sci-fi gameplay and the goofy commentary from the dynamic duo to fit the new space age aesthetic and Lost on Mars creates an engaging open world adventure that has us convinced that Far Cry’s destiny as a franchise is among the stars.

It might not be for everyone, primarily depending on your definition of humor, but as a bit of a light space adventure loosely connected to the Far Cry experience it manages to deliver a satisfying little adventure that’s easily worth your time.

Space cowboys

To be clear, Lost on Mars isn’t meant to be a serious narrative experience, and as a result plays well into the somewhat goofy open world mechanics that Far Cry is known for. You step into the shoes of Nick Rye, the pilot Gun-For-Hire from the main game as he’s abducted by aliens, except the aliens are Hurk, and he’s in over his head in a big way.

At face value your goals are straightforward: kill aliens, gather energy cores, fix the totally not suspicious robot AI, and save Hurk by collecting all his missing body parts. Yes, missing body parts, because Hurk managed to lose them all to the various forms of alien arachnid on mars, and you’ll need to help him out.

That said, aside from a short set of narrative missions to get you kitted out with a jetpack and introduce you to mars’ version of an in-game shop, things immediately settle into your standard open world affair. You’ll be able to choose a direction and an objective, rush to complete it and then rinse and repeat until the end of the game, at which point things get somewhat linear again.

Real talk

These objectives are where things really get interesting, and although most can be completed in less than ten to twenty minutes they exist as fun little blurbs and challenges that force you to adapt to the harsh Martian landscape quickly if you want to survive.

You’ll find yourself defending repair bots as they fix up broken bits of technology, scouting out derelict research centers, blasting arachnid hives, and duking it out with a number of powerful arachnid queens to get your hands on both energy cores and to harvest their guts to power a 3D printer that makes new pieces of gear.

Each objective is challenging enough to keep things interesting and the story unfolds naturally as the Martian AI, Hurk, and Nick Rye exchange various lines of dialogue while you fight your way through a never-ending onslaught of enemies.

Like we said, it’s not deep and it’s somewhat reminiscent of the radio call style narratives we saw from Pagan Min in Far Cry 4, but with the twist that instead of a dark, sophisticated villain it’s just Hurk and the AI talking about everything from bodily functions to their plans to “protect” humanity with an army of robots.

This dialogue is the make or break point for the rest of the DLC. If you think Hurk is funny in the main game, then this is a great chance to get a whole lot more Hurk in your life. He’ll talk about his deep psychological issues, his life philosophies, his love of all things rock and roll, and in general lightly develop himself as a more fleshed out character as you steadily work your way through the objectives.

The sense of humor is very Borderlands-esque and just a little slap-stick, and if that appeals to you then you’ll likely enjoy Lost on Mars no matter what. But if you’re not a fan of raunchy jokes, questioning moral values from Hurk’s unique point of view, and killing hordes of alien arachnids to the greatest hits from the last three decades then you’ll probably get a little bored or annoyed in the four to six hours it takes to do a full run of the content.

Personally, we enjoyed it, because Lost on Mars is ultimately a charming, if straightforward open world RPGFPS. If you’re the kind of gamer that just likes to explore an interesting environment full of challenging enemies and fun mechanics, you’ll find a home on Ubisoft’s mars. If you need a reason to climb a massive alien tower that’s breaking down under the weight of Martian winds other than “I have a jetpack” then you should consider giving Lost on Mars a pass.

Playing with the formula

That said, the best part of the Lost on Mars DLC has nothing to do with the story or even the basic objectives. It’s all about the way Ubisoft adapted the game to fit it’s new sci-fi setting to make traversing the rocky landscape more enjoyable and blasting a never-ending horde of alien enemies manageable.

You move through most of the game first through low gravity jumping, then via a small modular jetpack, and finally you add Far Cry’s patented wingsuit to the mix, all of which combine to make an incredibly satisfying method to traverse both the environment and the battlefield.

At any given point you can trigger your jetpack to pop into the air and then throttle or engage a hover mode to zip around vertical obstacles or to rain fire down on the various enemies trying to rip Nick Rye’s face off. You can also supplement this with the wingsuit, either to travel long distances, or to quickly sprint across the battlefield with the help of the jetpack to gain altitude at the beginning or end of the flight.

Because the jetpack removes fall damage from the game you don’t have to worry about instantly killing yourself by slamming into a wall or when you hit the ground, which means that the wingsuit suddenly becomes a valuable method to escape or enter combat situations, rather than just a quick way to cover ground from a high point.

This new freedom of movement combined with how deadly the arachnid aliens are if they catch you on open ground means that you’ll likely spend more time flying than walking, which is okay, because this movement system is fun and intuitive, and gives you a reason to explore all kinds of unique areas and ways to combat the alien threat at large.

What’s more, Ubisoft really had some fun designing appropriately futuristic alien weapons for you to play with in Lost on Mars. You won’t find an assault rifle or revolver in this DLC, but you will find beam weapons that turn enemies into cows or chickens, shotguns that ricochet their rounds off walls and obstacles, and plasma throwers that lock on to targets and send hot purple death curving around corners into their craggy alien faces.

These weapons are a fun change of pace for the Far Cry series as a whole and give you both something to look forward to as you progress through the story and a host of options to adapt how you approach enemies on the battlefield.

Far Cry in space?

What’s more, between the Lost on Mars DLC and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon we’re starting to wonder if Far Cry is at its best when it abandons realism in favor of gameplay. Far Cry 5 as a whole was a fun and interesting experience, but gameplay-wise we haven’t seen a whole lot of innovation from the series in a while.

There’s no doubt that Far Cry 5 was riding the line between fun and realism hard. Ubisoft was doing their best to deliver a dark and meaningful narrative while also creating a world where the player can eat bullets like candy and run over bulls with combines. It’s a weird line, but it’s one that Ubisoft was undeniably struggling with.

Lost on Mars is an example of Ubisoft taking risks, doing something different, and having fun experimenting with the core gameplay we’ve come to know and love from the main series, without some kind of strange struggle against its own nature. It’s a journey into the weird, it’s an experiment in things that don’t make sense, and it can be a lot of fun if you relax into the experience.

As it stands right now, the Far Cry franchise is hanging at a tipping point, the unique ending we saw in Far Cry 5 left things as an undeniably blank canvas, and maybe it’s time Ubisoft started taking bigger risks, went against the grain, and did something wildly different with the core franchise.

We’re not saying taking Far Cry the interstellar option is the answer, but the Far Cry series would undeniably benefit from sprinting in a bold new direction, and the stars are as good a direction as any.