Far Cry

The Good
Far Cry reminds me of a lot of games, ranging from antediluvian classics such as Midwinter and Hunter, to relatively recent titles such as Delta Force, Trespasser, and Operation Flashpoint. Like all of those games it takes place mostly in the open air, and gives you considerable freedom of movement and action. You can hide in the bushes, steal buggies, climb up mountains, and sneak around. And you can also blow things up with a small arsenal of explosive and projectile weapons. The basic plot is that you are a beefcake man and you are trapped on an island and you have to follow a voice on the radio and you have a sidekick who is a thin bulletproof woman with hotpants and you have to kill a scientist who is old but muscled (like an old wrestler) and there is a twist and then you kill a second scientist THE END.

Far Cry is a game of two halves. It is rather like Half-Life in this respect. The first half is excellent. Far Cry starts off as an arcade-style variation of the "soldier sim". You are in the jungle and you have to kill mercenary soldiers and blow things up. With a nip and a tuck and more work this could have been an excellent Vietnam War / Malaya Emergency game, although it does boil down to a series of little encampments that you assault one at a time. You cannot run very fast, you cannot run or swim indefinitely, you can only take a few hits to your uncovered body, and you cannot fall great distances. Your weapons resemble real-life weapons rather than science fiction laser guns. The mixture of stealth and fighting is well-balanced, and best of all the baddies are clever. They duck behind cover and wait; they try to run around you, and they move realistically, rather than the aerial flea-hopping of other games. If you alert the enemy, they will come after you, whereas in other games alerted baddies tend to flap about for twenty seconds before returning to their patrol, even if their buddy has just been shot dead right next to them. You can steal buggies and speedboats, and also a surprisingly addictive rubber dinghy that feels fast, because your viewpoint is six inches about the rushing, undulating water.

The graphics are famously attractive and also famously hard on your computer. No matter what you have under the hood, Far Cry wants more; a faster processor, faster and more memory, and a better graphics card. Thankfully the game will run on relatively modest equipment, and although the water effects are simplified, it still looks mighty fine, like a woman. Some of the game's vistas are breathtaking; on several occasions the levels are designed so that you exit a cramped tunnel directly onto a sweeping mountain view. Far Cry's terrain is undulating and the foliage is detailed. The game prompted me to cry a tear for the notoriously unfinished Trespasser. Like that game, Far Cry has lots of plants and trees and a physics engine, and it takes place on an island, but it all hangs together whereas Trespasser fell apart. Far Cry's physics engine is of the standard bouncy-moon-gravity variety, and plays no real part in the gameplay, although there are a few instances when you can push barrels onto the heads of the baddies. It is noticeable that your bullets are not affected by gravity, and consequently long-range shooting is trivially easy.

The Bad
The second half of Far Cry is less impressive. The game can model indoors and outdoors environments at the same time, but generally there is a level load between the two. The indoors segments are relatively uninteresting, because they are like a lot of other, similar games. The maps have lots of detail - not as much as Doom 3, although there is more variety - but they are just standard techbase maps. There are fewer opportunities for stealth whilst indoors, and the immersion is broken when grenades and gunfire do not alert enemies in the next area.

For a game that looks so good, the cutscenes and dramatic sections are very poor. The pre-rendered cutscenes are unattractive and add nothing to the drama. The in-game cutscenes are reminiscent of Resident Evil, from as far back as 1996, in that the actors gesticulate wildly and continuously as they talk. Every phrase is accompanied with hyperactive shrugs and points. I suspect that the programmers wanted to show off their ability to capture realistic motion, and therefore decided to have as much motion as possible, any motion, all the time. The voice acting of the main characters is decent. Our hero Jack Carver seems to be modelled on Bruce Campbell. The soldiers that you fight have a set of stock phrases that they use over and over again. It made me appreciate, yet again, the brilliance of Half-Life, in which the stock voice phrases were sparingly used, or distorted so as to become sinister. In Far Cry, you are attacked by mercenary soldiers who sound like beach bums, and shout "How'd you like them apples!" over and over again, as they attack you. There isn't even a good end-game sequence.

The third strike is fatal, and kills the game for me. As with Half-Life, Far Cry has a stock of inhuman monsters to compliment the human ones. Whereas the monsters of Half-Life were imaginative and well-executed, the monsters of Far Cry move like men in ape suits and look like shambling blobs. They are apparently mutated monkey-men. Most of them can kill you with a single swipe of their claws - from what looks like beyond their arms' length - and they take a great deal of damage before expiring. This kind of instant death gameplay does not appeal to me. The big ones generally stand still, and fire missiles that travel slower than you can run, which looks ridiculous. Some of the monsters can leap like Spiderman, but without Spiderman's commitment to justice and fair play. Some are invisible. They are uninteresting and bore me. And when they are involved, the difficulty level goes off the rails. It is as if a second team of programmers had been brought in for a few weeks, to finish the game off, and these people were angry at the world. The difficulty level goes through spikes, in that there are a small number of extraordinarily hard sequences dotted throughout the game. It is hard, in an unfair way. The big monsters simply absorb too much ammunition before they die, and there usually isn't a "clever" way to get around them.

The game has a day-night-day-night cycle. During the night-time you can only see with your torch, which is ineffective in the open air, and with your night vision goggles, which run out of power after a few minutes. Thankfully they recharge, but this is a slow process. The game therefore often becomes a cycle of advancing with night vision, waiting for a few minutes, and then advancing again, as you cannot afford to blunder around in the dark.

During the final quarter of the game you have a sidekick. She is not as stupid as most other computer game sidekicks, but she is nonetheless not the brightest star in the firmament. A lot of the time she waits for you to clear out the next area, which is fine by me, but the concept of sidekicks reminds me too much of those old levels from "X-Wing", whereby you had to protect a damaged Rebel Alliance cruiser / hospital ship against wave after wave of TIE Fighters and - oh dear - after half an hour it would be destroyed by a sneak attack and you would fail the mission.

The Bottom Line
This game is part of an evolutionary chain. At the beginning of this review I mentioned Midwinter, a British computer game from 1990. Midwinter was set on a frozen island, which was rendered in solid 3D with attractive, undulating terrain. You were a resistance leader, and there were several ways you could retake the island, most of which shooting at or capturing people and vehicles. Far Cry is much the same, but less grandiose, with a level-based structure, and modern technology. There will be others like it. I wonder what will come next?

The Good
I've played Far Cry solidly for several months. Finishing the game on multiple difficulty levels and also playing quite a bit of multi-player. With Half-life 2's release a few days ago (a game that I have just finished) and Doom 3 a couple of months ago, I can say that Far Cry is definitely the most innovative of these three games. Far Cry pushes the FPS genre much like the original Half-life did years ago. And here's why...

Far Cry (for the uninitiated) takes place on an island somewhere out to sea. You play Jack Carver who has been stranded on the island with a bunch of terrorists. You must escape using a combination of stealth and firepower and while doing so uncover a rapidly thickening plot!

Far Cry is powered by the Cry-Engine, Crytek's new graphics engine which is capable of rendering huge outdoor environments in great detail, but also adept and rendering closed interior environments. It's fully integrated with a great physics engine and all in all the world that you inhabit is completely believable. The graphics speak for themselves, and basically, if you can see it, you can go there. This game (like the GTA series) is all about freedom. Every mission is non-linear, and each scenario generally has two or more ways of approaching it.

The story while being linear is not linear within each mission (and missions are very long). While certain objectives must be achieved, the way to complete them is not set and I can guarantee that your second trip through Far Cry will be completely different to your first. This is a sharp contrast to a game like "Half-life 2" where every section is clearly mapped out from A to B to C. In Half-life you are asking yourself "what does the game want me to do next?", in Far Cry you are asking yourself "how can I approach this objective the best?".

For example you might opt for stealth, you might create a diversion, you might find a secret path or tunnel, you might find a boat or car, or just run in with guns blazing. The possibilities are pretty much the same as you'd have in real life - and that's the hook.

The game engine also incorporates some pretty special AI. Playing on the easiest difficulty doesn't allow you to truly appreciate how good the AI is. On harder difficulties the enemies operate in teams much like a real group of terrorists, yelling out to each other - "FLANK LEFT!" or "I'LL GO GET HELP!". They really make an effort to surround and distract you. A pair of them might divert your attention from one direction, while another pair might circle around from two directions to come at you from behind. Or if outnumbered they might jump into an available jeep to drive to get reinforcements. It's great because they don't communicate telepathically - it's REAL.

A final thing worth a mention, and a feature I wish could be implemented in more games, is Far Cry's music system. This system picks up on events in the game and dynamically mixes a custom musical score. The effect is seamless and you only notice it if you focus on it, which is exactly the effect that music should have. Far Cry isn't the first game to have a feature like this, but it's without any doubt the best implementation I've ever heard. It really is that good!

The Bad
There are a number of problems with the game however, that do it a dis-service. I've already mentioned how great the AI is, however it is a little buggy. At some points you may find a bad guy that is basically "asleep", i.e. he should be able to see you, but just stands there. Clearly this isn't meant to happen, but when it does, it ruins the whole illusion.

Also, this is a very difficult game by comparison to other shooters. As a rough benchmark, I finished Half-life 2 on medium difficulty only one day after its release. It took me a week to finish Far Cry on it's easiest setting. Far Cry's savepoint system is very good and doesn't frustrate, however it's difficulty problems come from a somewhat bumpy difficulty ramp, with some very hard parts in early parts of the game. I'm sure this has choked off many players, who would simply give up. The final missions are EXTREMELY hard, and can get very frustrating for players that rely on tactics over reflexes. I can't help but feel that Crytek dropped the ball at the end there. It's not terrible, but not strong either.

The only other thing is that the dialog and voice acting, while being tongue in cheek does feel a bit forced and corny even given it's tone in many places. The story development and direction in general is quite amateur compared with other games. It seems like the game isn't sure whether it wants to be Duke Nukem or System Shock, and finds an uncomfortable middle ground.

The Bottom Line
Not to be missed, worth the effort... this is the way forward.

The Good
Well its finals week for college kids living it up in pollution-bathed North Jersey, and like all good college kids I find myself wanting to procrastinate from studying. FarCry gave me good enough reason to do this, as I assumed it would be a quick play and it would be something fun and mindless to do with all of my free time now that classes were over. I turned out being wrong on both parts, and having had enough of a drawn out experience with FarCry, I feel that it warrants some kind of review as a follow-through ordeal.

I really had no idea what to expect going into FarCry except that it was an FPS in the jungle and there was something special about the open environments. About 10 minutes into the game I knew just about the same amount. The opening intro is a collage of explosions and a dude swimming somewhere. What I got is that you and your wife/girlfriend/next rape victim were sailing in the Pacific Ocean for no reason at all, the girl drives off on a jet ski for no reason at all, people come and destroy your boat for no reason at all, you find your way onto an island, and ultimately having nothing else available to have sex with, grab a gun and go looking for the girl for no reason at all. About five minutes in a random black scientist appears on a PDA type thing and decides to help you, and despite the fact that you have no idea who he is or why he wants to help, you decide to follow all of his advice to the letter, most of which is "Go here, kill people, and blow this thing up."

Even then it became apparent that FarCry's plot was going to be as ridiculous as a James Bond movie. Add on top of this an evil corporation trying to take over the world, a mad scientist genetically mutating an army, and a completely obvious plot twist about a third of the way through and you've got one hell of a thin plot line.

Despite this, I was pretty giddy over FarCry at first because it was fun and challenging. The general appeal of the game is the open environments the game provides. Now, don’t be stupid, the game is not GTA. There is obviously a linear progression from village to village and point to point. But each village is always assailable from every angle, and there are always multiple ways through the jungle. This makes it kind of fun planning out your route and your attack method. I remember sitting in a little rubber boat off shore for the first time and using my binoculars to spy out each guard on shore, planning out which guards I kill first before alerting the others.

Thanks to the abrupt introduction and the generally unpolished impression the game gave me, I was actually surprised but the stunning graphics the game has to offer, or rather, the stunning settings in the game. The jungle levels are lush with vegetation; and you can see every faraway building as it stretches onto the horizon. Even as you zoom in on faraway locations through the scope, you can still see (and shoot) guards, people having conversations, etc. over a kilometer away. Indoor levels are equally as nice, with fairly detailed environments and crisp graphics. What's truly nice about playing an old game later is that I was able to turn the graphics up to very high without a single hit to my FPS rate. Not even a single stutter.

Even more so, this game has some amazing AI. Enemies genuinely react to how you act, forming up in teams and moving depending on how you move. You can hear them shouting things like "You take care of him while I go get help," and unless you kill the guy running for help he will call out to his buddies to join him. Another thing I was shocked about is that they also shoot up flares to signal helicopters and boat patrols. Helicopters also interact with ground troops as they pick them up and drop the down behind your position to flank you.

Because of this, FarCry is different every time you play it. There's so many ways to go and new places to explore that you, and the game adapts to how you play so that it always feel like a new experience. For some this is where the strength of FarCry lies. You can always go back and do something different, and even dying sometimes gives you a new chance to try a situation from a different angle.

FarCry cashes in on its fun factor. It's got a stupid plotline, so here's a gun and shoot some people. It's always a blast trying to decide whether to assail a camp and steal their jeep, or to trek to the top of a mountain and use a hang-glider to float overtop of the level. Had they stuck with this, FarCry would have been a fun game for me all the way through

The Bad
Unfortunately, FarCry suffers from something I call "Half-Life Syndrome," which is when a genuinely good FPS becomes long, frustrating, repetitive and tedious about half-way through due to stupid, arbitrary tasks popping up along the way. You see, it's natural in any FPS to continually up the difficulty as the game goes on until it plateaus somewhere between "Impossible" and "Anal rape." Despite its razor thin and ridiculous plot, I was having an absolute blast frolicking in the jungle until the appearance of these skinless ape things that looked eerily similar to those monsters from Doom 3.

Whoever thought up these things clearly thought the game was not hard enough because these "trigen" as they call them will seriously FUCK YOU UP. On the second easiest mode they will kill you in one hit. That's right, ONE HIT. The only time that mechanic has worked in a video game is when the monster is a one-time-boss, and you're actually meant to run away than actually fight it. But no, once these guys appear they never go away. And what's more is that they're never alone. It's always two or three at a time. The most I've ever fought is seven at a time, after which I needed a fresh application of deodorant. But the true kick in the balls is their twenty foot rape reach of death. So even when you've got your gun trained on them, they can still bridge the distance in under a half a second. I quickly figured out that if they'd already locked eyes with yours then it was already too late and you should just wait for death.

In order to survive the rest of the game I realized needed to bind my left mouse button to quick save and my right mouse button to quick load. That is, of course, if there was saving. It's shocking to see no save feature in a modern computer game. Rather, the game has a checkpoint system which will save for you after it's arbitrarily decided you've done enough tedious shit. This honestly isn't too bad after a while because it gives you a chance to rethink certain situations and how you tackled them and you honestly don’t die enough for it to become an annoyance. Unfortunately, after previously said arrival of trigens, just killing a room full of them becomes a heroic accomplishment in itself, yet you won’t be able to save the game until you blast through the next three rooms full of them. This turns the game into a mad rush to the next checkpoint and makes the game an utter chore. Imagine doing ten minutes worth of frustrating tedious work only to be sent back by a pissant little ape thing with a bad attitude.

After about half way through the game you start to have problems with the crap Doyle gives you. As soon as you're done the three hour monstrous task of getting from point A to point B to take care of arbitrary task C, Val and Doyle arrive to whisk you away for your next ten mile trek of death. I originally assumed Jack must have had balls the size of oranges due the sheer audacity of wearing a bright red Hawaiian shirt during jungle combat. However, after ten hours of taking orders from two people sitting in a quiet bunker shoveling snacks from the nearby vending machine into their mouths, one does begin to wonder who the man in Jack and Val's relationship is.

After the trigen, the game lost its charm. It became more about surviving until the next checkpoint rather than finding fun ways to sneak up on people and lobotomizing them with a rifle. It became less about freedom and more about getting from point A to point B. All in all the game became a total chore. I found myself wanting to have the game be over with so I could uninstall it to free up some space on my hard drive for a new game.

The Bottom Line
However, for a game that came out in 2004, FarCry is rather spectacular for its adaptive AI and open environments. If you can get past the frustration of dying a lot (and there are tons of people out there that can do this much better than I can), then FarCry is game you shouldn't miss. All around, it’s an FPS gem, one which I'm glad I decided to finally try out. FarCry will certainly keep you entertained and is worth shelling out $20 for.