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Of course I didn’t come to my genius elephant idea right away. I actually rode the elephant twice into the middle of the fortress and was shot to pieces by enemies. Unfortunately due to time constants I wasn’t able to try out the covert or helicopter attack approach, although I did watch another journalist repeatedly fail to land the gyrocopter like device properly causing them to die in amusing fashion.

In terms of other changes, player health seems to be lower than it was in Far Cry 4 and just a few bullets can take you down. I spent much of my time hiding behind objects and repeatedly healing.

Towards the end of the demo a helicopter came to intercept me but luckily I found a grenade launcher, a weapon new to Far Cry 4. With one carefully armed shot I brought the helicopter down at the edge of the fortress, smashing into a metal shack and destroying it in the process. In general, Far Cry 4’s environment seems more destructible than it was in Far Cry 3.

Visually there are significant improvements over Far Cry 4, particularly when it comes to trees and foliage as well as enemy character models, although the game doesn’t have the same level of graphic fidelity as other title’s shown off at E3. This is probably because Far Cry 4 is cross-generational and is set to be released for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. This means Far Cry 4 hasn’t been built from the ground up for the PS4 and Xbox One.

Unfortunately the demo didn’t give players the chance to see Far Cry’s 4 controversial and maniacal villain, Pagan Min, although he was a big part of Ubisoft trailer of the game shown during the company’s E3 press conference (we learned he isn’t fond of blood on his shoes).

What I played of Far Cry 4 is promising, especially since Ubisoft seems to be furthering the open-ended nature that worked so well with Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 3. Hopefully the mountainous Himalayan region of Kyatt adds more variety to the game as well.

Far Cry 4 is set to be released on Nov. 18, 2014. The E3 demo I played was running on the PlayStation 4.