Far Cry 4 merges visceral action with a vast open world and returns players to hostile terrain and the odd dream trip

The Far Cry 4 demo at this year's E3 expo in Los Angeles presents us with a trio of options: "Stealth / Ride / Fly" reads the fortress conquest screen. It's no contest, really, as "Ride" means we get to mount an elephant, smash down a fortress door and cause havoc among enemies and objects.

Action games often struggle to reconcile storytelling with killing. A narrative of ordinary heroism, for instance, can't easily accommodate a game's average mortality rate. The everyman with the machete is hard to relate to after he's slain several thousand people, even if thrust into a...