Adventures in random Far Cry 4 maps

Done with Far Cry 4? Liberated every outpost, unearthed every treasure, skinned every animal, did whatever it is you're supposed to be doing by finding all those weird, chanting masks? No worries: there's still more to do thanks to the game's flexible map editor.

Finding the best custom maps to play is easy due to the user ranking system, so we're not going to bother with a best custom map round-up. Instead, we just clicked "random map" and played the first ten that were served up. Here's what we got.

This map sounded promising because death battles are, like, my favorite kind of battles. I spawned in the spirit-world with a bunch of spirit-enemies (or whatever it's called and whoever they are: I don't pay a whole lot of attention to cut-scenes). My Golden Path allies and I started chewing them up with machine-gun fire, but then a bunch of regular enemies showed up with cars and guns and Pagan Min and I sort of lost interest and I sort of died.

I thought I detected a bit of sarcasm in the title and I was not wrong. At the top of this map are a million ammo crates and at the bottom are over four hundred enemies standing around in a circle. Trees? Buildings? Textures? Nah. Just a giant, shiny pink staircase.

I was excited to download this one because it takes place in 2015: the future! What space-age wonders will it reveal? Laser rifles? Teleportation? Hover-yaks? In truth, it just contains a flat though very nicely made hunting safari map with 45 animals to kill. There are lakes, trees, a few vehicles to help you get around, and a couple Hunter enemies hiding in the trees. There's even a picnic area filled with weapons, so bring the family and make a day of it.

This cozy little town is mostly notable for its collection of two-dozen Hunters and its towering reverse-gravity blood waterfalls that surround it on all sides.

I quickly forgive the misspelling of "rhinos" in the map title because this map contains a bridge that is covered with rhinos and you have to get across that bridge and through those rhinos. There are also human enemies on the bridge, but they're quickly killed by the rhinos, who then quickly kill you. You have unlimited ammo, which sounds like it should help but sort of doesn't. If you get past the first pack of rhinos, there are one million honey badgers, which seems unfair when only rhinos were advertised. If you get past the honey badgers there are a bunch more rhinos, which cleverly ties back into the theme.

I guess it's fun but I would hesitate to call it a map. It's just a number of enemies (81) sort of standing around on the sand next to their cars. You, meanwhile, have a buzzer and unlimited ammo and no fire damage and no fall damage and total invincibility. I think you're going to win.

This island features a sprawling four-alarm nighttime outpost secluded in the trees, promising a good deal of slippery spine-stabbing stealth. Thing is, two steps from the spawn point is one of those awesome mortar cannons, so I just bombed the entire place into charred debris from a safe distance. By the time I walked into the outpost, there was only one guy left and I somehow still took him by surprise.

This is a pretty cool one. You have twelve minutes to escape from a remote mountaintop with no wingsuit, which means a lot of grapple-swinging like a hesitant Spider-Man through precarious icy canyons. I made it about halfway, having a great time, but I have a personal issue with grappling: when a prompt appears on my screen—any prompt whatsoever—I take it as a strong suggestion. So inevitably, when the prompt "Detach" appears, I often reflexively detach, even if I'm hundreds of yards above the canyon floor. If you're a fan of swinging around the game, and you're not as suggestible as I am, check this one out.

Okay, Name Of This Map, you've certainly piqued my interest. While the island itself unfortunately doesn't explode, everything else on it does, because everything on the island is an exploding barrel, lined up in a spiral leading down to the pit in the center. Touch off one barrel and create a chain reaction of explodination. Hey, there are worse ways to spend forty-five seconds. There's some other objective on the island but once I exploded all the explosions I didn't see the point in staying.

A small patch of land and trees on an otherwise untextured map. A long trail of weapons, presumably to test. A single human NPC standing nearby glumly informs me he's tired of eating beets and roots. There's also a monkey running around. I kill it in a successful test of one of the weapons. The game crash-zooms in to show me what I've done.

I'm sorry, monkey! It was just a test!