Far Cry

"A great game that came out of nowhere"

Amidst all the hype around Doom 3, Half Life 2, Halo 2, and a ton of other big budget sequels, there stands this little game known as Far Cry. This is a FPS game made by a company called Cryteck, which has heretofore been unknown. Not only is this game original, but it also proves you that original games as better than sequels.

Graphics
Just looking at the screen shots of this game will hook you on the graphics. The whole game takes place on a Pacific Archipelago with each island containing lush forests and beautiful rivers. The water rendering and effects are amazing. This engine is called the Cry engine, developed by Cryteck for this game. What is really amazing about the engine is how far you can actually see. There are plenty of times during that game that I just kept hitting the screen shot key. There is one major flaw however. You spend a lot of time sneaking around in the bushes. The foliage looks great from a distance, but up-close and personal it can get a little pixilated. Also, one minor detail that is missed, when you walk past a plant or tree branch, it does not move. Other than those two small issues, this is one hell of a graphics engine, and I would love to see what the mod community does with it.

Sound
Very realistic sounds throughout the entire game. Helicopters, jeeps, boats, guns, and even the people, all sound terrific. The mutants in the game, known as Tri-gens, are hard to judge, but seeing as how they are based on primates, they sound like what they look like. Plus the grunts and yells that you make when getting shot are a nice detailed touch.

Controls
The controls are what you would expect from any FPS, with some extra buttons involved. You use G for throwing grenades, however, you use H to change grenade types. The H button is sometimes hard to reach, but usually you don't change your grenade type in the heat of battle. You have both crouch and prone stances. Some guns have a multiple rates of fire, or a secondary fire, which is accessed by hitting Z. The right mouse button is always a zoom, if it is available on that weapon. Most controls are very responsive except for the F key, which is the “use” key. Sometimes it's slow to grab or let-go of a mounted gun.

Game play
The game play is what really makes this game unique. To start, this is the only game I've ever played where you can freely grab just about any vehicle in the game and drive it. The battlefield games have this, however they do this in a multi-player environment. This game does it in single-player. One level I sneaked through an enemy camp, and then ran and jumped into their Hummer and drove off. This brings up another point, the fact that you can sneak around, or go in Rambo Style. The problem with sneaking is that you kill one person and everyone on the whole level will know that you there. I understand people in the immediate vicinity will hear the gunshots. However, on one level, as soon as I killed a guard, a helicopter immediately began proceeding to my area. How is this possible? Do they have motion sensors that detect when one of their men goes down?

Having said that, the playing the game in general is very realistic. The levels that take place indoors don't hold anything too special. They are just Doom with different graphics. However, the outdoors levels are a blast to play, and some of the level design is just superb. One level has you island hop through 4 islands, with an objective to destroy on each. This level is great as you usually get into a boat, go to an island, grab a truck or buggy, and then drive around the island looking for your objective. There is even one island that you can hang glide to the next one! I also spent a lot of time exploring the islands, especially with a vehicle of some kind.

One major flaw in the game is the damn checkpoint save system. The developers got lazy when it came to saving your game, as this one was built from the ground-up for the pc. This is the only major hindrance of the game. Something else worth mentioning is that once you encounter the Tri-gens, the game becomes a whole lot harder. If you can figure out which guns work best on each enemy, you will have a much easier time, as that is half the battle.

Oh yes, and did I mention the AI? Well, the humans are pretty darn smart. One will station themselves on a tower with either a sniper rifle or a rocket launcher and fire away at you. Meanwhile, about 5 others will try to flank you. Not to mention, if there is a vehicle near by, or a mounted gun, they will go for it. The Tri-gens are not much dumber. The “large” ones fall under the big-and-stupid category, but all the others will attempt to swarm you. Very well done.

Story
You are an ex-special agent who now gives tours of the pacific islands. One day while showing a reporter a group of islands, you end up getting shot at and stranded on the islands. You then get help from an unknown source, and later find out that bad experiments are going on, and the CIA is involved. You basically have no choice but to go through and kill all these mercenaries and, shall we say, bad experiments. The story gets more and more deep as you progress. There is great build-up to the end, but the ending is a little anti-climatic. It's left so that a sequel could be easily made, or just left with not many lose ends. The story isn't the strong point of the game, but its solid enough to keep you interested.

Overall, this game was a huge surprise, and most PC gamers love surprises. This game had almost no hype at all, or it was shadowed by Doom and Half-life. This game has some great levels, smart AI, and overall classic game-play. Its only setback is the stupid checkpoint save system, which the developers will hopefully remedy in their future games, at least for the pc.

If you are an FPS fan, you should not even hesitate to get this game. The system requirements are not that high, and medium texture detail looks just as dazzling. Just pick it up, its well worth it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/11/05