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
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.

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
Far Cry is one of the most revolutionary shooters in a long time. It's difficult to classify a game like that, a game that allows you to experience a complete freedom in your actions. We're talking about a FPS game, but you can play it as a perfect tactical shooter.

What makes the game different isn't the diversity of the environments in the game. What makes the game different of another FPS game is its own essence. We're used to play games (not just FPS games) where everything is planned. When the programmers set the enemies on the stages of a game, they set them thinking about the best way to get rid of them, like if everything was planned. Far Cry is the opposite. This game has huge stages with many enemies but we can feel that the programmer didn't mind about how we take care of them. He had no plans about how to kill them when he set the enemies there, they're only there and nothing more. How to take care of the enemies is something that depends just on your decision.

Talking about that, you can kill the enemies in many ways. You can sneak and kill them with your knife (well, some of them...) or just going berserk and killing everything that you see on your screen from a stationary place with a rocket launcher.

Graphics are good, with a high quality physics for everything. We have many stages including heavenly places where to spend your holidays. There are also some inside structures stages, ruins, factories and many more (even a volcano!) that will increase the game's length, which will be increased by game's difficult too (specially in the harder difficulty levels, we will die a lot of times 'till we pass through).

There are many weapons but you can carry just 4. Choose those weapons that you like more because none of them is specially better than the others, it will depend on how do you want to play the game. For example, if you want to be noiseless you'll need the knife, but if you want to kill everything fast you won't need it. There are different vehicles too, from the classic jeep to a hang glider.

Storyline is a bit typical and it reminds me the 80's movies. The main character is something like a superman who may kill a whole camp without messing his hair up (even if we needed 10 attempts...)

The Bad
Checkpoints are a good save system for a game that needs it. To use a manual save system could have ruined many games because it'd be easy to save your game in an inappropriate moment. However, the game is really difficult and that's why you'll hat the checkpoint system many times. Every time that you see the "Saving game" you'll think "well, that's a relief!"

The sound should have been better, specially the radio communications because the default volume is really low. It's the same problem that we have in other games like Bioshock. Even if you're in silence it's difficult to hear what they say (there's no need to say what happens if you're in a middle of a fight). No subs available.

When you start the game you don't know exactly what you're playing. You don't know if you're playing a classic shooter or something more tactical (anyway, you don't know in any moment of the game), that's why in the beginning you'll feel like you're not playing the game as "it should" be played. For example, you take cover on a determined place, hidden in the grass or behind a rock, and you kill a mercenary, the rest of the mercenaries of that area will go there to see what happens and then you start killing them one by one (well, it's not as easy as it sounds, but it could be done), taking care of a whole camp with that strategy. That sensation is something that only happens at the beginning when you don't know what you're playing, but once you've understand how the game works you won't feel it anymore.

Sometimes you want to move stealthily, and of course you go on crawling, but he's too slow. When you try to kill some bad guys that way, you could fail on your attempt, and it's possible that you've spent like 20 minutes to go there with that strategy. If you die, the next time you try, you won't do that again because it needs a lot of time and you'll go there killing everybody as fast as possible (it doesn't mean that you'll survive if you do that way, of course...).

There are many weapons, that's true, but most of them look the same. There are many different machine guns and just one shotgun and one rocket launcher.

The Bottom Line
A really different FPS from other games of this genre. It has many elements of the tactical FPS games but it's not a tactical game at all (but it could be if you want, that's the magic of this game). It's a good choice if you're looking a different game with an almost perfect AI of the enemies and many different ways to progress. If you have no patience don't try unless you want to lose your temper.

The Good
Way back in 2001, nVIDIA was shown a technology demo called X-Isle: Dinosaur Island by a small development company known as CryTek, to showcase the capabilities of nVIDIA's new third-generation GPU. nVIDIA was impressed and realized that it had potential, that CryTek was happy to turn it into a complete game, just without the dinosaurs.

Players control Jack Carver, a former special-forces soldier now in the boat charter business, is hired by a woman named Valerie Constantine to take her to an uncharted island in Micronesia. Val knows that something is about to happen so she takes off in a jet ski. Jack's boat is blown up by mercenaries for some reason we don't know. Perhaps the mercs have a bad history dealing with people in Hawaiian shirts. He is left stranded on one of the islands where he uncovers a more sinister plot.

Early on in the game, players pick up a communications device in which Carver uses to make contact with Doyle, who helps him accomplish missions such as stealing a vehicle from a camp and cutting off communication between the islands. Preventing him from doing this will be mercs and creatures that were developed in a lab you eventually infiltrate at the end of the game. You can deal with these situations through stealth or going out with guns blazing.

The artificial intelligence of the mercs is brilliant. They are able to detect noise and go investigate where that noise is coming from – as indicated on Carver's radar - so it is important to get down on the ground and crawl like a snake. When they do spot Carver, they will open fire and move about in a specific pattern, making it difficult to get a clear shot. One thing I find amusing is the way they hide behind trees or rocks and demand where you are.

You can take down enemies with a variety of weapons such as handguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and rocket launchers, with each weapon more effective in certain situations. The rocket launchers, for example, is ideal for blowing up enemies from a long distance. You can only carry four weapons at a time, but can drop one of yours for something a bit better.

Another thing that Carver carries around with him is a pair of binoculars. Not only can these be used to locate any enemies in a distance, but its built-in sound enhancer allows him to eavesdrop on conversations. I found that most of these conversations interesting, since they usually give you a hint on what you need to do later.

As I just mentioned, you have to steal a vehicle from one of the camps, but you also have a chance to commandeer trucks and patrol boats and jeeps. It may be fun to drive around and mow down enemies that get in your way, but these transport is prone to damage, possibly by mercs aiming their rockets at it. My personal favorite are the hang gliders that give you a bird's-eye views of the island, and it is easy to control them once you get used to it.

I normally avoided going out too far into the horizon, for fear it would send unwanted choppers to my location. I also liked driving the jeeps as it allows you to mow down any merc that happens to get in your way. The highlight of this game is using the binoculars that you pick up earlier to not only look at distant areas close-up but to eavesdrop on the enemy's conversations. The conversations are interesting, with some talking about Carver. You can also haul a grenade in their direction, and they become alerted, actually trying to hone in on your location.

Far Cry was the first game that utilized the CryEngine, which was quite new at the time. The engine provided humongous indoor and outdoor areas, as well as the ability to see long distances. There were times that I really wanted to wander off the main island and go exploring an island that is completely isolated, but I risked summoning an attack helicopter that cannot be shot down, even if you hurl a few rockets at it. Also, I like the shadows that get reflected on whatever weapon you are carrying as you pass by palm trees. By the way, I like how they just sprout out from the ground as you approach the island.

Far Cry uses a checkpoint system, in which the game is automatically saved when you cover a certain distance. I quite like this system, because you are not limited to a certain amount of save slots and it allows you to go back and play each chapter again if you like the missions that occur in that chapter.

The game comes with its own sandbox editor that allow players to create their own levels, and there are plenty of mods out there for other players to have a go at. In my opinion, the best mod out there is “First Contact”, a mission that has you exploring the planet Hestia evaluating its possible risk/benefit to humanity. It features a beautiful alien world and contains a story well worth diving into. There are even total conversions that upgrade the game to today's standards.

The Bad
The action turns to dark red when the mercs are shooting at you from all directions. This, combined with the flashes their bullets produce, is enough to hurt your eyes. Also, when you attempt to take out an enemy using the sniper rifle, the crosshair jumps around even if you don't move the mouse, making it difficult to get a clear shot.

I talked about how the artificial intelligence of the mercs is brilliant: the way they move and shoot, making it difficult for you to get a clear shot. But some of their actions are questionable. I've seen one merc stand behind another while opening fire, resulting in the merc in front go down. Then, there's the situation where you throw a grenade at a merc just standing in the same spot. In this case, he will stand there waiting to be blown up.

I didn't like how Val kept Carver company near the end of the game. The annoying thing about her is the way that she gets ahead of you and risk being shot at. She can get killed, and when she does, you get killed as well and you have to go back to the last checkpoint, even if you are not low on health.

Also, I found the ending to be rather weak.

The Bottom Line
In conclusion, Far Cry is so much better than any first-person shooters before its time. It basically has you walking through breathtaking locations, shooting down mercs that get in your way and completing a set of mission objectives given to you. You can use binoculars to spy on enemies and overhear their conversation, and throw grenades at them occasionally and watch them hunt you down. You can use any weapon you like to take them out, with the basic weapons ideal for taking out enemies earlier in the game. (Too bad about the sniper rifle.) The more heavier weapons are effective against enemy vehicles.

As I mentioned before, users can create their own maps and distribute them freely on the Internet. To be fair, Far Cry isn't the first game to be shipped with a sandbox editor of its kind. Half-Life came out a lot earlier and shipped with the WorldCraft editor.

For their first game, Crytek did an excellent job on making Far Cry reflect real-life situations and introducing features that were unusual for a first-person shooter before its time. The graphics and sound are great, and any FPS gamer should purchase this.

The Good
A while back, maybe six months or so, I was cruising gametrailers.com and saw a trailer for the game "Far Cry." The trailer was titled "AI" or something. This, my friends, was the worst trailer I've ever seen. The entire three-or-so minute video focused on this "advanced" AI which featured enemies taking cover behind rocks, walking around doing nothing, scratching their butts, and yelling to each other during combat. It was wholly unimpressive. I couldn't help but think Far Cry was going to be the dumbest waste of time I've ever played. I mean, "idle animation"? Come on. Idle enemy animations have been the norm since Goldeneye 64 and probably before that, even. "Advanced AI"? I saw a guy take cover behind a rock. What the heck is so incredible about that? Quake 2 was doing that quite well all those years ago.

Yeah, Far Cry looked like just another mediocre half-assed first-person shooter.

Having spent the last twenty-or-so hours playing through this remarkable game, I must confess I couldn't have been more wrong. To say this game is anything less than great is near blasphemy. This game absolutely blew away all my expectations, and it has raised the bar significantly in the first-person shooter genre. This game has made a great leap, much as Doom had before it, and Wolfenstein 3D before that.

But where to begin? Well, let's start with what is probably the most obvious orgasmic element: the graphics. Any reasonably detailed screenshot will give you a good idea of how amazing the graphics in this game are. The tropical jungle-covered islands, surrounded by beautifully rendered water. The highly detailed character models, the guns, the buildings, the...the everything. Yeah. Everything in this game just looks beautiful. I don't think I've played a game yet that has just looked...so very beautiful.

My favorite part of the game, however, is not the graphics. No, graphics, beautiful as they are in this game, usually take a back seat in my judgement of games. And this was another element I was skeptical about. Sure, it looks good, but that doesn't make a good game. Oh, but was I ever surprised, for what this game should be hailed for is the sheer size of the levels and the nonlinearity of it all. Well, to call it nonlinear is perhaps misleading. After all, all your objectives are straightforward: get to point B without getting killed along the way, and pick up a key card while you're at it. But there are ALWAYS more than one way to accomplish any given task. There are almost always a different route you can take, a different object you can utilize, a different method of attack. Every time you replay an area, chances are you'll be doing it different than the way you did it before. Imagine: a group of soldiers are guarding something in a small shack alongside a beach. You could A) Sneak through the jungle foliage and silently pick them off one by one, B) See that explosive barrel over there by where those guys are? C) Find an alternate route and attack them from the flank, D) Just rush in and kill'em all like a maniac, E) You wander the beach, considering your options, when suddenly a patrol boat spots you. They open fire on you and you take cover behind a rock. They call the soldiers from the dock that were guarding that object to come assist. This, my friend, only opens you up to even more options. Do you shoot the soldiers in the boat, commandeer the vessel, go around to the docks, shoot whomever's left guarding the object, grab it, hop back in your boat and drive away while all the soldiers are on their way to where the distress was called from...or what? What do you do? You have but moments to think, but your options are nearly endless.

Did I mention the size of the levels themselves? Granted, these levels require a pretty long loading time, but oh it is so worth it. In almost all cases, whatever you see in front of you, all around the island, from top to bottom, underneither perhaps, around the other side, up the mountainside or into caves, it is all part of the level. You can pretty much go anywhere in the level at any time, although typically you'll be heading to your main objective.

The vehicles are awesome as well, if a bit funky to control. Various jeeps with a gun turret, a patrol boat with a gun turret, a hang glider, a motor boat, large trucks, fork lifts...take your pick and take'im for a spin. Some levels are set up for great stunts, too. One of the first levels will probably send you soaring over a cliff in a jeep. It's magnificient the first (and fiftieth!) time you do it.

Not only are the levels gigantic, but they're varied as well. There is also a continuity to the game. The course of the game takes place over two days, I believe, and you're awake through pretty much all of it. You start out in the day, and as you progress you enter the night, then morning again, and watch again as it gets darker as you go on. Some levels take place on giant ships, small campsites, enemy bunkers and bases, caves, rivers, swamps, and of course the jungles, cliffsides, mountain peaks, even a volcano. And what's really great is that none of it seems out of place. This game boasts its ability to render a massive enviornment, but unlike some games that have boasted such things in the past, the indoor environments look just as good. The game transitions from indoor to outdoor absolutely flawlessly.

The physics! In Max Payne 2, when enemies died, they sort of just fell apart like sacks of flour. In Far Cry...well, it just looks so much better. More lifelike. And corpses have wounds on their body, so you can see just where and how much damage you inflicted upon them.

The greatest thing, perhaps, about this game is the immersion. A lot of people will scoff at the lack of a quicksave feature, but I, for one, have never appreciated the lack of it as much as I do having played this game. I'm a sucker for the quicksave. I probably quicksave three or four times a minute in most games. I just can't help it. But Far Cry doesn't let you do that, and that is just...oh, how can I explain it? The checkpoints occur often enough that you won't get frustrated with the levels, and while you're PLAYING the levels...oh, man, it is just plain intense. Knowing there is no quicksave, knowing that if you die you'll have to revert back to your old save...well, that's one thing. But picture this. You find yourself in a shootout just outside some installation. You take cover behind some barrels while the enemy soldiers continue to shoot at you, knocking the barrels around and attempting to get you to come out. You're low on ammo, but you think you can take them, if you're good. You reload and get ready to pop out and shoot when you hear a massive growling sound. From above, mutant apes suddenly pounce on the soldiers and one comes after you. You waste an entire clip on the quick moving opponent and watch in delight as the apes chew up the soldiers. You realize now that perhaps you don't have the ammo to take your opponents. Your fear is confirmed when you see a jeep pull up and more soldiers pour out. And you are even more certain of your demise when from the bushes come a behemoth creature with a rocket for an arm. Screams and gunfire fill the air in chaos and you are most certainly dead...except for the jeep. You sprint right through the middle of the battle, taking a moment to shotgun a soldier in the face to keep him out of your way. You leap into the jeep and peel off just as a crazed mutant ape jumps at you -- and misses, barely. Just down the road you see a pack of monsters coming your way. You slam on the breaks, spin a '180 and floor it. You run over that damn monkey that tried to get at you, you drive, and drive, and you drive the hell away from there, the sounds of chaos slowly fading behind you. You see the "saving game..." message, and you realize you're safe.

Imagine that sort of thing happening a lot.

This game is not just run 'n gun. It has a lot of scary-as-hell elements at times, too. When the power goes out and the lights turn off and all you hear is the drip-drip-drip of water...and then "grrrroOOWWWLL!!".

The AI is also exceptional. While it does make mistakes (I think at this point in time it's still impossible to make truly lifelike AI) it feels more like an actual...well, human mistake. But in either case, the AI is great. Enemies will flank you, even going for that extra detail by physically issuing each other orders. They'll take cover behind trees and rocks, they'll crouch and sneak toward you in the foliage. They'll go for the high ground and snipe you from there. They are devious, and for the most part, really, really good. They're not omnipitent, either. They won't always see you, just as you won't always see them.

And on top of all that, the game has some twenty levels. Considering the size of any given level, this will keep you busy for hours and hours.

Far Cry...what a beautiful game you are.

The Bad
Of course, like any game, this game too has its flaws.

First of all, the story. The story is great, I think, but what the HELL is the back-story? Who the hell ARE you, and WHY are you here? I'm sure if I read the manual or looked it up on the 'net I might know, but the game really introduces you into the story in an awkward way. The very first thing you see is a cinematic of your boat getting hit by a rocket and you finding yourself hunted by mercenaries and you yourself hunting them, following the orders of some scientist and for what reason you don't really know.

One particular level is the stealth mission from Hell. I usually prefer stealth missions, but this one...it's just rediculous. I don't know many games that have had a more difficulty stealth mission than this one. Well, I guess it makes it all that much better when you beat it :)

Occasionally the ragdolls die in funny ways. I've seen a few enemies die in a sort of Elvis-like stance, and even seen one die looking as though he were doing a back-bend. Every once in a while a guy will die in a way in which part of his body is stuck in the wall, and he'll flip around like a chicken without a head.

The game requires quite a bit of power to run it, and unfortunately that means a great deal of people won't be able to see it. As far as I know, it's also only being released on DVD, so that probably shuts a few more people out. Installation is also 3.5 gigs or more, which may shy away even more people.

The Bottom Line
Far Cry has set a new standard for first-person shooters and games of all genres. The graphics and gameplay is unequalled. The options available to you at any time make this game worth replaying over and over again.

The Good
Clearly Far Cry has one thing going for it. The large, sun-drenched environments. While id was putting the finishing touches on their dark, claustrophobic masterwork of DOOM3, and Valve was in the last half-year of polishing Half-Life 2 to a dystopic gleam, the German firm Crytek released this unheralded gem. At least, it starts as a gem...

The Bad
Toward the end of the storyline, the game gets more and more far-fetched. I can't even remember what was going on exactly -- something about mutating humans into an unholy werewolf army. To be hired out to evil regimes, presumably meaning North Korea. Things get out of hand, people are injected with green mutoid plasma, become monsters, that sort of stuff. It all came apart at the seams for me during the last few levels, where I simply wasn't having fun anymore. Not only did the plot get crappy, but so did the level design. It was quite a let-down, considering how strong the opening levels were.

Multiplayer was resoundingly disappointing. Perhaps because by the time I got around to trying it, the only people still playing were experts, and would camp from some indiscernible mountaintop with the sniper rifle. Sniped again and again and again as I vainly look for some cover or a better weapon -- how terribly fun. Leave server.

I'd have given it more time, but Counter-Strike: Source was simply a better option in 2004.

The Bottom Line
Bright, sunny, and expansive tropical environments play host to innovative, long-distance gunplay. But it all degenerates into a half-baked mad scientist plot that left me a little frustrated that Crytek's story department couldn't come up with something more compelling.

The Good
Taking a shapely photojournalist to an archipelago in the Pacific sounds like easy money to charter boat captain Jack Carver, but as Val’s Jet Ski disappears behind an island, Jack spots a rocket homing in on him. Thrown clear from the explosion, Jack finds himself floating amongst the wreckage of his boat. Alone and unarmed, Jack swims toward the nearest island. How can he find Val and get the hell out of here?

Since Far Cry is a first-person shooter, Jack isn’t unarmed for long. A tutorial level puts a gun in Jack’s hand, as well as a handheld communication device and a pair of binoculars. The communication device connects him to a man named Doyle. Doyle can help Jack find Val and get away, but he needs Jack to do something for him first. The device also has a compass which points Jack towards his objectives. The binoculars include a microphone set up, so Jack can spot enemies from a distance and overhear their conversations. Once Jack has spotted an enemy with the binoculars, they show up on the handheld device as a blip.

Jack’s first objective is to steal a jeep from a mercenary camp and drive it to a dock on the other side of the island. Here’s where Far Cry shines. Jack can use stealth to sneak around the back of the camp or he can go in guns blazing. He can blow-up gas canisters to thin the ranks or he can climb a sniper tower and take the mercs down that way. He can stay concealed and make it to the jeep unnoticed or he can announce his presence with a few well placed grenades.

Far Cry places very few constraints on the player. While Jack isn’t going to be able to talk his way out of any situation, usually there are multiple ways to do what needs to be done. Far Cry encourages exploration. A path might be the fastest way to your objective, but flanking around an area helps avoid patrols and shows how lush and detailed Far Cry’s levels are.

When it comes to beautiful islands, Far Cry outdoes Myst. The islands are rich with detail. The jungles hide crashed Japanese Zeroes and vine-strewn ruins. Wild boars run through the trees and parrots fly overhead. Even at the minimum specs, Far Cry looks great, but kick the graphics up and the sense of realism explodes. The archipelago would be a great vacation getaway if it weren’t for vicious bands of mercenaries and the secrets they protect.

You know a game is challenging when the medium difficulty setting is the second option out of five. Far Cry has smart, tough opponents. Mercs follow intelligent patrol paths. They are quick to spot you and are able to hear you. They work in packs, drawing your fire while flanking you. They are quick to use grenades and aren’t afraid to call in for reinforcements or helicopter support. Luckily Jack has some tricks up his sleeve.

Calling on his military background, Jack is capable of using any weapon he gets his hands on: from lowly machete to the sophisticated OICW Advanced Assault Rifle. Jack can carry four weapons and a few grenades at a time. He can replenish his armor (which conceals his orange shirt making him harder to spot) and his health, but he can’t carry power ups. He also takes full advantage of the turrets scattered around and the variety of vehicles available. Far Cry lets you off-road in Hummers, cruise in patrol boats, hang-glide and more.

The Bad
Out of the box, Far Cry has a check point save system which can be player unfriendly. Patching the game adds a quick save function, but this is handled awkwardly through the console and isn’t something you’d want to attempt during combat. Frankly, the lack of a save anywhere function is usually a game killer for me, but here I wasn’t as bothered. It almost hearkened back to Fallout for me, in that if one battle plan fell to pieces, I was eager to try a different approach.

The thing that bothered me more was the rocket launcher. First up, I’m never sure why villains are given rocket launchers. Invariably, they blow themselves up or cause massive collateral damage. Rocket launchers versus vehicles, okay, against people, that’s different. Anyway, Far Cry has its share of henchmen who use rocket launchers more against themselves than Jack, but conversely, Far Cry also has the slowest rockets I’ve ever seen. Of course this is purely the result of a balancing issue: if the rockets traveled at a respectable clip Jack wouldn’t stand a chance, but you shouldn’t be able to mosey away from a rocket.


The Bottom Line
In terms of gameplay, Far Cry isn’t wildly different from other first-person shooters, but it comes across as more polished. There’s much more attention to level design and much more attention to story. . Reluctant hero Jack Carver tackles a storyline that feels pulled from a Bond flick (to a point). Almost half the game passes before Far Cry reveals its secrets, but until then game play is so enjoyable you almost don’t expect more. Far Cry doesn’t define what a first-person shooter is, but it does illustrate what a first-person shooter can be. I eagerly await the next entry.

That Uwe Boll has his hands on this franchise kills me.

The Good
+Graphic +Physics +Story +AI +Fun conversation between mercenaries

The Bad
-Very difficult even on the lowest difficulty -Low amount of weapon arsenal

The Bottom Line
If you dont play this awesome game, you definitely must.

The Good
This game makes for one long adventurous episode that takes persistence and good shooting to get through. It's nice that you improvise your own path and route to the objective and use the scenery for cover as you try to outflank your opponents.You also have the option to avoid enemies altogether. The binoculars and night vision goggles are particularly useful for stealth and dealing with hidden enemies. Even Valerie does her fair share of combat by your side.

Weapon variety is well-balanced, you'll want the scoped weapons for sure but its only worth having one weapon with the same ammo. Don't bother with the machete, as it doesn't get the job done good. When you're low on one type of ammo, just switch another type of gun. You can also sort your guns to correspond from 1 to 4, though it would have been nice to do it without having to drop the guns, then pick them up again.

The Bad
The controls can be problematic at times because there are so many buttons to press that you end up pressing the wrong one by accident in the middle of a fierce fight, costing armour or even health. If your moves could have tighter controls like crouch and prone using the same button dependent on tapping and pressing, then it would have worked better.

Gameplay mechanics also have a few issues. Traversing on steep ground leaves you no room to jump or run to safety, especially when the stamina runs out. Jack Carver is so sensitive to fall damage that you lose more health than you ought to. In some missions you'll have trouble knowing where to go to reach the objective and have a long walk unless you happen to commandeer a vehicle. Also checkpoints are sometime spread far or autosave when you prefer not to. Manual saving is preferable. If you familiarise yourself with the levels, items and enemies, the issues won't crop up at inconvenient moments.

The Bottom Line
This game sports a few reminders and similarities to the first Red Faction game albeit taking place in the modern times on Earth. The lush graphics, solid sounds and music, packed missions, great gameplay and intriguing storyline make for a fabulous FPS game. You can let the problem with the controls and mechanics slide. This game got a remake and a film and it is this title we have to thank for the equally appealing sequels that follow. If you've never played the Far Cry series before, try this one first. If you're accustomed to the later titles, take a nostalgic trip on this one.

The Good
Of course, the graphics, It's nothing but really really beautiful. The view distance is nice, you can see the bad guys helicopter take off and come towards you from miles away, and when he's close enough you blast him with the rocket launcher and all bad guys fall out screaming into the water way below. It is for moments like that I'm a gamer....

I also like the simple gameplay in the first missions. Enemies are stupid and easy to kill, you just reload your sniper rifle and move on to the next pretty little island.

With the binoculars you can listen to the enemies conversations. This is a neat thing imo, and they're pretty fun to listen to.

One more thing : the ragdolls. When you kill someone, he sometimes ends up in hilarious positions (like sitting up, or standing against a door). I had many laughs from this.

The Bad
The story is bad. I don't even know why they bother, it would be ok with me if the story was just "this guy wanted to kill people and blow things up on a tropical island".

The game also becomes insanely difficult towards the end. The enemies become better at aiming and wear more armor. I guess this could be good for some, but I just want to kill and move on, not reload the autosave 37 times.

The Bottom Line
Buy this game, it's worth it. Everyone will be talking about it, you don't want to be left behind do you?

No doubt, this is the 2004 game of the year.

The Good
The graphics are stunning. There is an extremely long draw distance for every exterior environment, yet the coding (i'm assuming) is tight enough that the incredible graphics that characterize this game don't require a godly rig to enjoy. I play on a middling-range athlon XP with a 7200/8meg HD (this upgrade seemed to make a huge difference) yet I am able to enjoy it on 1024 with high graphic detail. Character models are cutting edge as are the shading and light effects. Explosions are decent. The physics engine is also top of the line and is far more realistic than other attempts at such an engine. The sound in the game is overall quite good, though not as good as the graphics are. The gun sounds are particularly fitting. I'd argue they're the best gun sound effects I've heard. The music fits well both in the low-paced and "alert" modes. I had some minor technical issues with voice vs overall sound levels, as you can't control this in game, but it works well enough. The voice acting is good if at times the main character seems a bit canned. It's good enough. The conversations held by enemies are humorous and frequent. The gameplay is superb. I know a great many people enjoyed the single player in Halo, but I feel that far cry is much more well implemented. The prone and crouch positions have expected effects on accuracy. You can also right-click to bring up the iron-sights of each weapon. Stealth is somewhat lacking in this game, but it's not that type of game. That said, it is very easy to disappear into the jungle and take people out somewhat surreptitously. There is a "stealth meter" on your HUD, and if you use the binoculars (most useful game binoculars in any game, ever) you actualy get little spots on your "radar" that indicate whether an enemy is on to you, looking for you, etc. Regardless of the lack of focus on stealth, the gameplay is still incredible. It's a 3-d shooter, so you get what you'd expect, but it never feels dull. The environments you find your character in are dynamic and interesting throughout. The AI is great. Perhaps not as relentless as in Halo, but it's clear that the enemies are working together. They throw grenades and converge on your position in an intelligent manner as well. Overall, it's far above par and the comparison to halo is not accidental. The story is reminiscent of Half-life. It's one of those stories that starts simple and gets more complex as you run through it. this is common in action games, but there are very few (half-life and the original deux ex are my reference group) games that take you on a ride as you play through. The story is compelling enough to keep one interested, but not so omnipresent to distract from the task at hand.

The Bad
My only complaints about this game are minor. the lack of detail on items found in the game. Ammo boxes, weapons, etc, are uniformly undecorated. Another minor complaint is the, at times, flat voice acting. Truly, the weakness are entirely eclipsed by the strengths.

The Bottom Line
For those who enjoy 3-d shooters, this is a must-play. I prefer it over any strictly-action 3-d shooter I've ever played, including Halo or the WW2 ilk.

The Good
I marveled on the graphics when i first saw them and I still do now, even though I don't have the best computer they still look damn good. The game was also very fun, I loved how you could be stealthy, or (for most of the game) just go in guns a blazing. The story, characters and voice acting were also good.

The Bad
I thought this game was overly hard in some places and I had to keep trying in the same place over and over again.

The Bottom Line
This game is worth the purchase because it has great gameplay, great graphics, and lots of big explosions. If you haven't got it, get it now!!!