More of a tech demo than a single/multiplayer experience.
Graphics: 10
Sounds: 6
Value: 9
Tilt: 5
Since the day when Half Life 2 was announced, every FPS gaming company wanting to challenge this behemoth and consistently tagging their game as the ‘Half Life Killer’. The big gunners like Unreal 2 (released 2003) couldn’t manage it, Doom 3 continually getting delayed, FEAR and its teaser screenshots all making any FPS salivate yet one game produced screenshots that even the mighty Unreal couldn’t challenge in the ways of visuals and physics and this game was called ‘Far Cry’. Far Cry certainly smashed all boundaries when it comes to eye candy however the storyline can only be summarised as an ‘Uwe Boll’ masterpiece (and that’s not saying much isn’t it).
To those who would really like to know how the story goes, well it goes like this: man sails on boat with lovely chick; boat being struck by a bazooka; man now stuck in cave; woman disappears; man needs to get off island...and yeah, yeah all is not what it seems. To be honest, Far Cry’s storyline is so overused with predictable ‘twists’ to keep the player ‘on their toes’…who am I kidding? This is obviously the weakest part of the game.
So how is Jack going to attempt all of this turmoil one might ask? Well Far Cry introduced some cool tools that encourage the player to act more cautious than the run-of-the-mill shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach. This is because the AI ability to be brutal and actually conduct tactical planning like no-one has ever seen. If you are not careful enough, they will track you down like foxes chasing a hare and that’s no lie.
All is not lost as apparently the human intelligence is still far superior than any AI therefore you can only carry up to four weapons, equipt with a pair of binoculars to track enemy movements which also has thermal vision and an unlimited supply of throwing rocks which do no damage. In addition to these fine armaments, you’ll get the opportunity to drive vehicles (ranging from trucks to buggies) and even hang glide across chasms or steer a lifeboat. Not only that we humans are superior in every form, the game uses a checkpoint save system where it gives no indication where the checkpoint is (other than the quick flash when the PC is saving) but encourages you to roam free like the wind. Taking that in mind that every AI will only use one weapon and never, ever have some sort of visual aid so this gotta be a walk-in-the-park, right? Right…
Moving on, there’s no denial that Far Cry graphics is the best to what the PC can offer as Crytek evidently placed many, many moons making this game a true masterpiece as no other gaming engine can topple this behemoth. Yet I’m no graphics whore however when exited the cave and examine the vistas for the first time with swinging palm trees, soft sounding waves lapping the pristine white shores, stunning mountains on the horizon and occasionally seeing some form of cockatoos flying about, I can honestly say ‘I’m in paradise’. I immediately head towards the shoreline and just parked myself close to the first hut just to soak in the surrounds then suddenly the crackling voice of my ‘guide’ informs me that I have a job to do. Damn guides; they are just too pushy at times but the good news is that these panoramas will continue throughout your ‘stay’ on the island.
Shooting straight back into reality, the moment my ‘guide’ spoke I groaned for two reasons; the first is that I certainly enjoyed this timeout and secondly the sound quality is poor. Everything seems to sound ‘soft’ (for the better word). The guns produced little oomph, explosions seems to just rumble slightly and the voice acting…well let’s put it in this way: if you seen the movie ‘Far Cry’, don’t complain about Uwe hiring the German playing Jack – he was only moulding the character close to this game. Ok, ok Jack did sound American however it was too cheesy for me – stick to the eye candy. Here the patch is necessary if you want to take advantage of the different types of sound systems as it seems that Crytek forgot about this in its first release.
Bouncing back and forth like an uncontrollable ball, another great feature to this game is the length but also a nuisance. As far as a ‘typical’ FPS shooter goes, Far Cry surpasses this with a massive twenty levels of island beauties (with a couple of indoor activities) which easy equates to about twenty hours plus gaming time. On top of this there are five levels of difficulty from ‘brutal’ to ‘I hope you like looking at the same level again and again’ and there’s multiplayer action where there’s three modes of game play being death match, team death match and my favourite assault. With the assault mode, it’s basically one team on defence whilst the other on attack but Crytek added further with this as you can actually play one of three character classes being the grunt (all-out combat dude), sniper and support (engineer/medic). Like with all multiplayer maps, it pays to know thy map otherwise prepare to be sniped a million times.
For me, the single player campaign clocked according to X-Fire thirty three hours and consumed about four hours online getting sniped (I was playing the grunt). Not bad for your hard-earned cash I’ll say however the ‘nuisance’ was that considering this ‘check point’ save system is nothing more than a pain (as mentioned above) and the AI having super human targeting system (i.e. who needs binoculars – they are soo overrated) you spend more time reloading the mission than actually having fun. So because of my exploration nature, I used the ‘quick save cheat’ as being a typical human being, I only have approximately seventy living, breathing years.
It’s apparent that Crytek produced this amazing engine that surpasses anything anyone has ever seen; superb visuals, physics, lighting and drawing distance that will guarantee to salivate any graphics whore person (if your PC is strong enough to run it) and somewhere among this masterpiece is a meshed up storyline – another words: Far Cry shouldn’t be a single player affair but more of a showcase model, like what Red Faction was when advertised about their ‘destructible’ environs. If you really enjoy looking at the ‘wow’ factor with googly eyes pointing at the screen blaring ‘look, even the fish bobs up when it’s dead’ then knock your socks off and enjoy Far Cry. For me and as amazing as it seems, I can easily trade game play for graphics any day as the ‘pretty graphics’ got monotonous quite fast and becoming more like the main character Jack and really wanting to get off the island. I guess Crytek succeeded making the player immerse with the character…all in the wrong way.