Far Cry 4 is the rumble in the jungle I never knew I wanted. Now, I had never played a Far Cry game before this one, so a lot of this applies to the previous games in the series too. But wow. Stomping around the jungle, mountains, and river of Kyrat has been a genuine pleasure, a true excitement, and an exercise in brutality. But then I saw Apocalypse Now for the first time last night (Okay, I guess I’m a little late on a lot of things). And I realized what Far Cry really is.

Far Cry 4: Apocalypse Now, The Game

I’m not here to convince you that Apocalypse Now is really freaking amazing. That’s not my job, but you can trust me. But I can tell you this: Far Cry 4 is based on it, pretty directly. I’m told that Far Cry 3 is to an even greater degree. I mean, Pagan Min is nothing but a video game-ified, less crazy version of Kurtz. And Ajay Ghale is an even purer version of Willard. Sure, the game is less surreal, but that’s what movies are for (or, you know, Spec Ops: The Line).

Far Cry 4, on the other hand, is about the action side of it. It’s the first two thirds of Apocalypse Now. It’s the crazy, horrifying, absurd action that happened along the river, in that patrol boat. Everything in the game, from raiding the City of Pain to killing tigers to mundane shootouts, evokes Apocalypse. And Apocalypse evokes Far Cry. Think of all those scenes of, well, first-person shooting.

The influence of Apocalypse Now on Far Cry 4 is probably most obvious in the Durgesh Prison sequence, which perfectly captures that strange blend of realism and surrealism that makes the last third of Apocalypse Now so interesting. Yuma is no Kurtz, but that prison escape feels just like Apocalypse.

Of course, Far Cry 4 is an open-world game, so it loses the narrative thrust that sustains Apocalypse. It’s hard, probably impossible, to maintain that urgency when you can wander off killing tigers whenever you damn well please (which is often). That’s why sequences like the prison escape and the attack on King’s Bridge are so effective; set-pieces are better for telling stories and keeping the game focused. That’s when the game feels most like its jungle-bound predecessor.

But hell, neither is a substitute for the other. Far Cry 4 at its best will make you feel like a character in Apocalypse, but the film—generally called one of the best ever made—is still a much more intense and emotional experience. Regardless, Far Cry—and first-person shooters generally—owe a lot to Francis Ford Coppola. Hell, it’s a much better legacy than the Godfather game, isn’t it?