Far Cry excels in all the essential aspects that make a great shooter....despite its made by french people
And it certainly is well worth your precious, precious time.
Far Cry pits you as Jack Carver, an ex-Navy sailor who now charters people out to visit the south asian island chains. Soon however, all hell breaks loose. Mercenaries destroy your boat and attempt (but fail) to kill you.
The game begins as sort of like a Halo meets Splinter Cell mutant combination. But its one beautiful mutant. The game only gives you a simple pocket knife to begin with, as you must stalk and hunt your killers and take their firearms. This creates a shooter that can be played two different ways.
One can simply spray-and-pray their way through, shooting like a wild man at anything that moves. Or you can take a page out of Sam Fisher's book and silently hunt your enemies and conserve those oh so precious bullets of yours.
Both plans seem to work, the former being more for those with little patience and who want to get their hands dirty; the latter for those who very cautious and like to assess the situation before taking the life of an animated program.
Soon, the game takes a big U-turn. Your captured by the mercenaries' leader, a man who goes by Colonel Crowe, and injected with an experimental serum that ''evolves'' the patient, allowing borderline super-human feats.
These powers are gained slowly as the game progresses, advancing from the ability to heal your wounds and see in the dark, to being able to run at cheetah speeds and leap like spider-man.
The game seems to make a shift towards the latter half of the game. Focusing less on stealth and more on sheer firepower. I found this change to be somewhat distracting, as I was becoming accustomed to the stealthiness the game implemented in the first half.
Despite this sudden shift, the campaign is still spot-on, taking the average player 10-12 hours the first run-through.
Mulitplayer is definitely exciting. Besides the standard Free-for-all and team FFA (Called 'Chaos' and 'Team Chaos', respectively), Far Cry offers a twist on the old 'Captur the Flag' variant and offers what they call 'Steal the Sample'. Players can through the sample to teammates, creating an exciting spin during play and making Ties less common.
Probably the most intriging multiplayer game would have to be 'Predator'. Basically a small number of people who have evolved powers similar to Jack Carver's in the campaign must stop the rest of the other players from activating a sonic emitter which kills said evolvees. This can either make the game tense and thrilling, or unbalanced and unfair, depending on the number of people and the skill of the players.
But the icing on the cake has got to be the map editor. Far Cry allows you to create your own levels and publish them, so you and your friends can enjoy some user-created carnage. This leads to people either making very interesting and well thought-out maps, or gimicking maps made solely to mess around in.
All things considered, Far Cry: Instincts is a magnificent game that any xbox owner should at least warrant a visit. Shooter fans cannot miss this masterpiece.