The Far Cry 6 Vaas: Insanity DLC has arrived, bringing the first of three paid DLC’s to Ubisoft’s latest instalment of the popular franchise. Each DLC puts you in control of the antagonists from Far Cry 3, Far Cry 4 and Far Cry 5 and tells their story from a different perspective. Far Cry 6 Vaas: Insanity places you in the mind of Vaas Montenegro as he battles with the events of Far Cry 3 and repeats them over and over again expecting things to change. Ubisoft were kind enough to give us early access to the DLC and we’ve spent the past few days doing things over and over again. By the way, did we ever tell you what the definition of insane DLC is?

Read Rocket Chainsaw’s Full Review of the base Far Cry 6 game on Xbox Series X

First thing’s first, fans that want to jump straight into this DLC which is essentially a Far Cry 3 expansion should know that they must complete the Far Cry 6 story mission Du or Die which unlocks the game’s co-operative mode and is fortunately one of the first missions in the base game. If you haven’t yet played the base game then you may want to invest the hour or so it takes to get that far into it before Far Cry 6 Vaas: Insanity launches tomorrow.

Far Cry 6 Vaas: Insanity begins by showing you five ‘mind levels’ which are basically levels of difficulty, though they unlock one after another. Mind Level 1 is a story-based introduction to the hell that is Vaas Montenegro’s mind, and quickly drops you into The Compound in the middle of the map in Vaas’ head. From the compound, you’re free to explore in any direction with the objective being to gather the three pieces of Citra’s Silver Dragon Blade and then escaping from your own torment. Vaas starts with just a pistol firearm and limited bullets, but at Mind Level 1 it doesn’t take too long to explore the map and unlock new weapons and perks.

If the whales in the sky don’t catch your attention, then the chests scattered across the map will. While most chests reward you with cash, some include perks which are displayed as a floating heart, and no, it’s not the kind of heart you’d expect in a video game – it’s a human heart. Perks include things like holding your breath for longer, switching weapons faster, gaining more cash from kills or takedowns, and much more. There’s also the option to sell perks for 100 cash a pop which can then be used to buy other perks or talents and upgrade your weapons in the safe houses found in random spots around the map.

While the map in Far Cry 6 Vaas: Insanity isn’t huge, there’s a decent amount of story content to be found in it, and certainly enough to satisfy your Vaas Montenegro cravings. Although the map is a classic Far Cry forest with rivers, beaches and an active volcano to explore, there are parts of the map that transport you to Vaas’ memories, such as one where you’ll spend time exploring a hotel where every room is a different moment from Vaas’ history, allowing him (or you) to watch it again and provide a different perspective on it. Vaas even jokes around and comments on his memories, getting awkwardly embarrased by some while saying he enjoyed others.

The main objective of this DLC is to reforge Sitra’s Silver Dragon Blade, and to do this you must complete three memory missions that are arguably the most challenging parts of the DLC. Without going into too much detail, they once again provide more reflections and memories of the Far Cry 3 campaign, and add a satisfying amount of lore to the franchise. Although the premise of this DLC is quite small, it is deliberately designed to be repetitive as your weapons, perks and skills gradually increase along with the enemies’ health & buffs and other parameters which means only the best players will complete Mind Level 5.

The other main thing you’ll come across in Vaas’ mind is armory challenges which allow you to unlock more than just a pistol. Opening an armory chest will spawn waves of enemies which then need to be defeated to unlock the weapon at the safe house. As mentioned, you can then use cash to upgrade each weapon to better models which actually ended up being more in-depth than we thought it would be. Cash can be earnt in lots of different ways, but having a constant cashflow from the scattered chests and looting enemies definitely helps with upgrades and progressing through the Mind Levels.

We all have fond memories of Vaas Montenegro, but his character model has of course received a makeover in the Dunia 2 engine which provides ray tracing support on the Windows PC version and support FidelityFX on AMD cards. Sitra and Far Cry 3’s protagonist Jason Brody also play recurring rolls throughout the deliberately repetitive DLC, and they too look great and are voiced well. Although it’s great to own a RTX 3090 and play games in 8K, we had no framerate issues playing this DLC (or the base game) in 1440p at 60FPS with ultra settings using a GTX 1080 which tells us that the game’s graphics have been built to work well on a variety of computer builds.

Vaas Montenegro wouldn’t be Vaas without Michael Mando, and fortunately his acting career has only blossomed further since Far Cry 3, mostly thanks to a couple of TV shows by the name of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Often DLC ideas like this simmer out, but Michael Mando’s brilliant work voicing Vaas means the Insanity DLC is in our opinion one of the best DLC of the franchise, and will probably be the best out of the three planned for Far Cry 6, with Pagan Min’s ‘Control’ and Joseph Seed’s ‘Collapse’ coming in early 2022.

There are six unique rewards to earn which can be carried back into the base Far Cry 6 game, five of which form Vaas’ attire while the sixth is a dashboard prop of Vaas for your vehicles. While some of the objectives to unlock the rewards are challenging, you’re not forced to complete the DLC on the hardest difficulty of Mind Level 5. In fact, you technically only have to complete it on Mind Level 1 to get all the rewards and technically you could do it in a single playthrough, so maybe, just maybe, Vaas is not actually as insane as he thinks he is.

Rocket Chainsaw reviewed the Far Cry 6 Vaas: Insanity DLC on Windows PC with review code provided by the publisher. Far Cry 6 is also available on PlayStation 5, Windows PC and previous generation platforms. For more information, head to the official website.