Far Cry

"Optimal performance! Perfection is finally real."

FarCry. The first game to put to test the "CryEngine", developed by the rather unknown company CryTek. The game is entering a market flooded with games with the World War 2 theme. I bet you can name at least ten WWII FPSes on the top of your head. You are guaranteed to find in FarCry a merry breeze of refreshment from a stagnant market flooded with too much of the same. That's because FarCry isn't the same. It has a good share of differences from the rest.

STORY : 7/10

Face it, the FPS genre was never known for any in-depth stories. Plot freaks had to go look elsewhere. Here, we can find a rather good plot, which is really believable until about mid-game, where it borders the sillyness of Dr. Moreau-like movies. You are Jack Carver, some bad-ass dude with a shady past, who just want to open a taxi-boat company. You are hired by a mysterious woman named Valerie Constantine, who claims to be a journalist. She wants you to ferry her to an unexplored isle in the archipelago of Micronesia. You are on your merry way, then BOOM! Your boat gets destroyed and Valerie is nowhere to be found. Your primary goal was originally to go find her, but you will discover some important things are going on in the middle of nowhere...like some crazy professor genetically modifying humans and monkeys. You have to fight mercenaries(mercs), paid by the professor to keep his discoveries secret.

GRAPHICS : 10/10

A word : wow. The graphics are top-notch, even on everything on low, and it still runs pretty smoothly. You can see the environment from far away, like a mountain covered in tropical trees. The models used are very good, the guns look real, etc. You really have to see it to believe it.

GAMEPLAY : 10/10

Look at the AI of Call of Duty, then spit on it out of disgust. This thing has the best AI ever. They can actually aim, and they can use individual or squad-based tactics perfectly. They will run from cover to cover, shooting you in between. They will flush you out of your position, call reinforcements from another part of the island(more on that later), flank you from different directions, and use the resources available, such as boats.

*spoilers on the first level ahead*

The game is very open-ended. I just love the first level. After you get the binoculars, you have to steal a buggy from a merc base. The place where you get the binoculars is a tent on a cliff, on an island. The base is on another island, separated by a large pool of water. The first rifle you get is an awesome sniper. You stay in the tent, then you use the binoculars to pick the guy in the tower, then you get the guys on the shore. After that, you just go on the little isle on the middle of the water and you pick off the rest. Or you could just storm the island, guns blazing, but that's a good way of getting killed. Or then again, you could swim to the island, and use rocks as a diversion and pick the mercs when they are looking away, using foliage as a cloak. There is literally a way to finish a level for every day of the year.

The custom in FPS games is to shoot everything that moves. In FarCry, you have to shoot everything that moves intelligently. There is a "stealth-o-metre", which shows if you've been spotted or not. Nothing in it, good, you can pick more guys, they didn't see you. Halfway, stop shooting and hide. Full, they are after you. You can use rocks as a diversion, so they investigate the sound. They are vulnerable when you do this and you can pick them off. A thing that is fun is that you literally have to check everywhere for mercs. If you get spotted, they can call reinforcements from another part of the island to flank you. This is why it's important to clean up everything.

SOUND : 9.5/10

Birds chipping, insects buzzing, guns shooting, nuff said. Good sounds.

There is a thing worth mentioning. The mercs are corny as hell. For example, when they throw you a grenade, they say "a present for ya!" They also say things like "I'll kill you like a pig"(direct translation of "Je vais te saigner comme un porc", I have the French version ^^), among other things.

FINAL WORDS : Buy it, now.

OVERALL : 10/10, perfect.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 02/28/05