Fun, detailed enviroments with good controls, able AI, and notable events.
User Rating: 7.8 | Far Cry Instincts Predator X360
One of Instincts' most striking qualities is the sense of being The Thing In The Bushes. One side of that is the game's range of attacking options - you can crawl around undetected, stalking up to people and knifing them in the back; you can set traps like swinging branches and mines; you can click the right-thumb-stick to zoom and pop people in the head at distance; you can toss grenades; you can watch people moving about uncertainly and then pounce on them like a cat. Later on, you can move like an alien and see like a predator - and stalking people actually fuels these abilities. The other side of it is the bush itself. Instincts isn't like its PC cousin, which was very open about how you could approach your very-clever enemies; here your vectors are fewer, and your enemies dimmer. But the density of jungle built up at its edges is convincing. You can't see the lack of a forest... for the trees! And not only are you the thing that's going to go bump, but you're not just hiding in a convenient shadow, you're lurking on ground where it's unsafe for the mercs to venture. They're the ones peering into the unknown and you're the threat.
Sometimes, anyway. Instincts can be a very conventional and straightforward FPS game. Say you approach an area with some buildings. There are enemies milling about, as you can see on your ever-present radar. If you're in view, they react to you and a gunfight ensues. You toss grenades and unload your machineguns into them, or sit back and try and pick them off with a silenced pistols or a sniper rifle.
Instincts is a game of seeming novelties surprisingly well bound together. Cars, boats, guns, stealth, traps, super-strength, scent-vision...its all well done, in a beautiful world that showcases above-average graphics.
While it may not play as strategically or controllably as something like Halo, or as evocatively and inventively as something like Half-Life 2, it's still atmospheric, involving, and empowering. There's plenty you could criticise, but that's not your first instinct. 
