Great gameplay but fell short for the top.
The story does refer to the previous game a bit but you will understand it perfectly fine without any knowledge of the previous games and it does include a quick tutorial to get you in the game. The story itself is fairly good and does a good job at keeping you going.
The gameplay is what I really liked about Far Cry. It’s fast paced (a lot more than the original for the PC) especially with your powers. The powers surprisingly work well and are easy to use. The extra speed and jumping power add to the intensity of fights and the powerful melee attack really gives in some kick to the bad guys.
The shooting is well done and all the weapons have a good feel to them. The only real problem with the actual gameplay formula is the vehicle mechanics. It’s not terrible once you get used to it but it could have been improved. Especially getting used to actual racing/driving games, this took a while to get to the physics but once I got it, it wasn’t bad.
The problems are some of the levels with the game and the missions. The game is more open-ended which may seem like a good thing but you’ll end up getting lost at some parts. Other sequences in the game, you just won’t know what to do exactly. However it’s not open ended to the point where it leaves you a lot of options to do a mission. It simply has a bit more space on the landscape but it’s still linear but doesn’t always give you a clear point where to go.
Then there are just a few annoying parts in the gameplay; such as the spawning. It’s not bad in the beginning but later on, enemies will just spawn right beside you at a few points. But what’s more annoying are the stretches in the game where the enemies never stop spawning, forcing you to just flee away from the scene.
And there will be other sections where you will have to simply run. Such as parts where there are snipers or a few parts where there’s just a mass of enemies and it’s a lot easier to just kick in the speed and jump to fly past everyone. Other sections are dark and force you to use your “prey eyesight” but once your power diminishes, your forced recharge. Or another example would be a boss fight in the middle of the story, where in the end, I just ended up being cheap and standing over him. He was clueless to where I was as I unloaded rocket after clip of ammunition (since he took and dealt too much damage).
It’s just these small things that drag it down. The first half or third is good but once you start getting halfway, these small things take away from the experience (with the exception of the last stretch in the game). It keeps you frustrated at a few points. The voice acting is improved from the original but the main actor still sounds pretty bad (in the original Far Cry, it was even worse, terrible). The graphics are still amazing on the xbox and the map editor evens out the value from the somewhat short singeplayer. It’s pretty much more of the same great game but the original xbox Far Cry had a longer and better campaign and if you haven’t, I would give that a shot first. Still, it’s got a good multiplayer, the map editor is a cool extra bonus and the singleplayer is not too shabby.