Excellent engine, excellent game. The map editor is the best I've ever seen on a console before.

Learning Curve: Instant!

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PROS:

Interactive, beautiful environment that allows you to explore and find an inconspicuous path.

Wide variety of weapons, some with secondary grenade launcher function. The sniper rifle is a godsend in some cases.

The ability to commandeer boats and vehicles, sometimes using them to wipe out a camp of enemies from afar.

Wonderful ambient, weapon and explosion sound effects. (Although the fact that all the CD players were playing the same dull drumbeat with no real music was unrealistic)

CONS:

Vehicle steering/control is horrible. There is no parking brake or transmission to hold the wheels in place, which is very fake in my opinion. So if you exit the vehicle on a hill, expect your transportation to drift away. Also the speedboats steer more like shopping carts than a vehicle with rudder controls.

The AI in your enemies is getting a mixed review from me. On one hand, it is refreshing to see opponents who actually take cover and utilize teamwork and resources (air support, etc.) It becomes stupid when you can lay down in the bushes a half- mile away and enemies still spot you after using the sniper rifle. Plus you can drop a mercenary and his buddies will remain in the open view without taking cover. The voiceovers used in this game are too cheesy and lame to be realistic. I know that in the heat of battle you would hear a lot of f&s bombs. Let's face it, if a live grenade lands at your feet unexpectedly, what would you say? With a Mature rating and the fact that you are dealing with mercs, the language in this game could have been more adult and more down to earth with a combat zone.

Finally, the game saving system can be frustrating. It utilizes checkpoints instead of being able to save your game anytime. This means after fighting the same people 200 times just to get to a new checkpoint, you may give up.

CONCLUSION:

Overall, this is a great game and it has high immersion value if you can overlook some of the flaws. The scenery and wide open environment make it worth a try. I would try to buy a cheap copy (bought it myself for $20 a year ago) just in case you don't like it or at least play it at a friend's house first. Good luck and happy gaming.

Learning Curve: Takes a second

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Basic plot rundown, you are a retired CIA agent who now takes rich tourists on boat tours through the pacific. You are taking this chic called Valerie to some random pacific island when you are attacked and your boat destroyed. You are separated from Valerie, and find yourself face down in a sewer hours later. Then you get into communication with this guy called Doyle, who pretty much explains that Valerie works for the CIA, and that she is on a secret mission to stop some guy named Krieger, who does scientific testing on this remote unchartered island. Doyle works for Krieger, but is really another CIA agent undercover. You must find and rescue Valerie, and after that, help her achieve her mission. After finding a gun and some ammo you are on your way. The point is, the story isn’t that flash, but it’s a decent vehicle for the action to follow.

The game consists of a lot of modern weaponry, some of it extremely familiar, some of it extremely fictitious. You begin the game with a simple desert eagle, although this is almost instantly redundant as literally two minutes later you have found an M4 rifle with plenty of ammo. There is a huge assortment of rifles and sub-machine guns, many of the using the same sort of ammunition, meaning you are severely limited in the four weapons you can hold. Infact, there are only seven types of ammunition in the game: rifle ammunition, pistol ammunition, sub-machine gun ammunition, rocket ammunition, sniper ammunition, shotgun ammunition and grenade shells. There is the usual assortment of standard grenades too, from fragmentation grenades to flashbangs and smokes. Unfortunately the gameplay does not leave much use for any of these grenades, and if there is a use for them, they are so extremely underpowered that they do not get the job done.

There are also many vehicles at your disposal including huge pickup trucks, forklifts, sand buggies, hang gliders, armed motor boats, 4WD assault vehicles and inflatable rafts. At many stages of the game, you are given choices about whether to use say a 4WD to just storm the outpost up ahead, use an armed motor boat to pummel the base with rockets or just assault the base on foot.

General gameplay is quite neat. You really have a choice of stealth or just running out and shooting. Note the latter option takes strategic skill, if you repeatedly in a checkpoint, the only way you can really eventually get past that point is by actually devising a plan on how to get from point A to B without dying. This adds a lot of depth into the game. Even the most experienced FPS players will realise that its not a mindless shooter, and actually requires a degree of low-level thinking. Unfortunately though, the stealth aspect of the game is severely flawed. If you are seen by an enemy, all other hostiles in the area are instantly on high alert and will begin shooting into your area. It can be extremely strange at times to be spotted by someone five hundred metres away even if you are lying prone in thick grass. In many ways the AI have incredibly simple routines, if you run into a building while being chased by a hostile, they will actually fire accurately through the walls of the building (it has to be a tent or aluminium building for bullets to penetrate). In other ways though, the AI is incredibly complex, and will work together to take you out, sneaking up from behind cover and whatnot. They even seem to take roles, as one enemy might crouch and provide covering fire while the others move ahead and attempt to get into a closer position to take you out.

However, once you get to the stage of the game with the mutant humans and monkeys, the AI for them is incredibly simple. As soon as a mutant monkey sees you, it will simply chase you, then leap and attack you. The mutant human rocket guys also seem to just lumber after you, firing rockets repeatedly at the last place they saw you.

Many FPS games have huge shootouts with AI, such as FEAR, but with Far Cry, having shootouts in the jungle is quite different. Instead of simply hiding behind cover and popping up for a shot or two, you have to move around to avoid being flanked. Normally semi-realistic shooters would require you to stay in one spot, instead Far Cry forces you to keep moving. The game manages to surprise you all the time as well. Just as you think you’ve successfully cleared an area of enemy soldiers, you will find yourself pinned down under fire again. Tracking enemies in the jungle is downright impossible, and as soon as an enemy runs behind some large foliage, you have pretty much lost them until they come out from behind you. This creates great tension, as you nervously trek through enemy territory while being extremely cautious of hiding enemy soldiers. Even the indoor areas follow similar design principals, making sure that once you get into a frenetic firefight, you won’t know where the hell you are. Unfortunately, this sort of gameplay, while at first quite novel, gets boring after a while.

Visually the game is amazing (for a game made in 2004 anyway). Not really optimized for today’s generation of cards though (I was running it maxed out on my 7800GT and experienced less than 15FPS in many parts of the game). The lush jungle environments look great, as most of the foliage are actually 3D models compared to the sprite based foliage in other games. The water though is probably the most striking thing about Far Cry, its just so damn beautiful! The character models are extremely detailed, and textures are reasonably high resolution. One of the most striking things is character animation. Its just so realistic and smooth. The shadow system in Far Cry is exceptional as well, for example, if you are hiding under a tree, you will see the shadow of the tree on your hud-gun model. There are also great full screen effects, so that, for example, you have blurred vision and odd colours come on screen when you are shot or near an explosion.

The engine itself (the CryTek engine) can be quite buggy at times. Even with the latest 1.4 patch, at many stages of the game characters would just freeze in mid-air after being shot. Thankfully none of the bugs were bad enough to prevent levels from being finished.

The game also features fantastic audio, gunshots wizz over your head, explosions make you jump out of your seat, sniper shots have you running for dear life, and of course, some of the stuff the NPCs say is just hilarious, although as the game progresses and gets more serious, you’ll begin to hear less and less of the quirky dialogue. The NPCs dialogue is affected by what goes on around them. If one of their friends is shot, they will run over and say ‘are you ok?’, if they are stalking you through the shrubs, they will yell out at their allies ahead ‘where is he?!’ , and, of course, they can call for backup and they say some of the funniest things while shooting you.

The music in Far Cry is top notch too, and changes depending on what is happening. If you have been spotted and are on the run, then the music changes to fast frenetic music, whereas if you are slowly crawling through the undergrowth, then the music will be slow and subdued.

While its single player is great, Far Cry’s multiplayer component really lets it down. It uses the generic Ubisoft online login system which is extremely annoying to set up. The multiplayer maps are incredibly boring and poorly designed, most requiring more than 16 players, then one or two maps needing four players or less. There is no real variety in the game modes, with standard Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, although there are some more interesting modes somewhat similar to Team Fortress Classic, allowing you to choose a class and do specific things, like an engineer can build bunkers and sniper towers. Far Cry has an incredibly small multiplayer community as well, so don’t expect to find a populated server with a nice ping easily.

Overall Far Cry is a great FPS game with all the good elements taken from some of the best FPS games of all time. It incorporates plenty of its own original ideas as well and the finished concoction is quite enjoyable. The gameplay however does get boring after a while, and the game becomes rather lacklustre in the middle, and even the last few levels feel like a bit of an anticlimax. Its multiplayer component also leaves a lot to be desired. The sumptuous visuals and great AI though makes up for a lot of lost ground, and overall, the game is worth playing and a must have for any FPS fan.

Learning Curve: Takes a second

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