Far Cry Instincts

"FCI - The best FPS I've played for XBox"

I've played a lot of Xbox FPSs, and mildly enjoyed some (the Halo series was a nice semi-reminder of the Golden Age of Bungie and Marathon, Chronicles of Riddick, although woefully short, was nice) and despised others (the basic gunning on rails of Doom 3) while still others defy niche categorization (such as Brothers in Arms), which brings me to Far Cry Instincts, a game I enjoy more than all the aforementioned titles.

Singleplayer Gameplay - 9/10

The offline campaign mode is great. One must understand, first of all, that this is not a direct port of the original Far Cry for the PC, but rather a retelling of the original. Some things -- and I mean that literally -- are pleasantly lacking (those who played the PC game will know what I'm speaking of) while new additions (spoiler warning not necessary here as they're blatantly touted by the game) include an intuitive feral mode which fits the game quite well. While the concept itself is cliche, the execution feels quite nice, and the feral powers work well within the game. As one of the trailers included with the game says, feral doesn't have to mean low-tech -- unlike other games wherein one is either a high-tech gunner or a low-tech beast, FCI allows players to be both, carrying a full array of weapons (including, as demonstrated in that same trailer, the ability to literally rip turrets off their mounts and cart them around as portable weaponry) while making simultaneous use of their feral abilities.

Furthermore, the game itself is rather open as to how you approach situations, rarely forcing you to use certain tactics exclusively. In a very early scenario in the game (before acquiring feral powers), the player must infiltrate a mercenary base camp and do a hit-and-run strike on their armoury. I experimented with this and found I could sneak into the armoury completely undetected, hiding in the jungle, under huts, or behind rocks and other landscape features, sneaking past guards, or I could eliminate guards stealthily if I so wished (including rolling on my back and shooting through the hut's floorboards when they didn't expect it) or simply walk in and kill everything that moved. Further scenarios present in the game allow you much the same options in silently stalking, or violently killing, or completely avoiding your enemies. While the path is rather linear, it is expansive enough that one doesn't feel forced to do anything one particular way, and the ability to mix up tactics give the player a very good sense of being in an action flick at their mindless, violent best.

Multiplayer Gameplay - 10/10

This is where the game truly shines. A real Halo-killer in my opinion (and that of several of my friends as well), the multiplayer combines the dual gun capabilities and vehicles of the aforementioned title, removes the "bigger gun always trumps" feel of it (each weapon is well-suited to different tasks and creates a nice balance -- for example, the pistol selection -- the Beretta 92 sports a suppressor and a moderate magazine size, though its rounds are weaker, making it suitable for quiet fire and able to sustain itself on one magazine long enough to down an opponent, the IMI Desert Eagle has incredible stopping power, but a shallow magazine, and is quite loud, making it inconvenient for anything but direct confrontation, while the GLOCK 18 supports fully automatic fire and an extended magazine, making it, in effect, a weaker submachine gun).

The maps are nothing short of breathtaking, offering the same ability to use vehicles, environmental cover, sneak kills, and traps as in the single player game. The maps can range dynamically in their feeling. A large map with many players can turn into a frenetic, all out battle, while the same map with two people can turn into a patient game of stalking that can quietly continue or quickly erupt into sudden and abrupt violence. Couple it with an intuitive map editor (that I, the most incompetent mapper in the world, have used to cook up passable maps in under a couple of hours and that auteurs have used to make gameplay masterpieces) allows limitless fun.

The modes themselves are nothing short of great, either. The standard fare of deathmatch, team deathmatch (with up to four teams), and capture the flag are all present. Capture the flag is slightly different in that here it's "steal the sample" -- with the ability to pass off the sample to a teammate by simply throwing it at them. The most impressive and intense mode, however, is predator. In this mode the predators have the feral abilities from single player, while the mercenaries have an advantage in numbers (the predator team can have a maximum of 1 predator for every 3 mercenaries). The merc's mission is to power a generator to get the sonic alarm working, which in effect neutralizes the predators (also seen in the single-player experience), while the predator's mission is to simply kill all the mercenaries (the predators may respawn, while the mercenaries cannot). Additionally, the mercenary team's radars are deactivated, the situational awareness being a predator-only trait. The mercenaries instead get a heartbeat that grows ever-stronger as the predator draws near, which is actually a kind of creepy experience. All in all, this game mode works extremely well.

Graphics - 9/10

Lush is the only way to describe the graphics. They are toned down from the original PC version and several effects are noticeably missing or nerfed, but they're still absolutely gorgeous, and it shows the game engine's roots as a benchmarking tech demo. The dynamic shadows generated by hundreds of trees, the play of light on your gun and arms, the rich, vibrant foliage, the misty swamps, and the golden sunset, colourful noon, or moody midnight all put you very much on Jacutan, the island setting of Far Cry Instincts. The firearms all bear a remarkably detailed resemblance to their real-world counterparts, which is, barring a few errors, notable for a non-Clancy game.

The only major complaints about the otherwise fantastic graphics is the relative lack of detail on the generic enemies' faces, as well as the sometimes oddball physics of the enemies' deaths, which are the complete opposite of a game such as Hitman's, where the enemy remains a limp noodle and has no stiffness. As soon as an enemy hits the ground, rigor mortis seems to set in and they occasionally appear as if somebody posed a Ken doll in combat gear and dropped them face-first.

Sound - 8/10

In terms of sound effects, everything sounds as it should. The music is appropriately ambient, though it can become intrusive and distracting at times. The major downside to the sound is that it is often times (especially because of the intrusive music, sometimes because of gun battles) to hear radio conversation or even face-to-face character speech (seemingly odd because the in-game radio's ear piece is, well, directly in your ear) -- not that the game can't inform you of objectives with a simple tap of the back button, but if I'm to sit through a conversation anyway, I'd rather not do it simply for the sake of hearing occasional mumbles followed by hitting the controller's back button.

An occasional sound glitch, which I've never encountered but which seems common enough on the message boards, forces a person to delete their entire saved game files and start fresh from the campaign mode.

Overall - 9/10

Far Cry Instincts is a major success with a few minor (emphasis on minor) downfalls that could be fixed in the next bundle to go to press or a downloadable patch for those with Xbox live, or a patch CD from Ubisoft. The largest single contributing factor to the fact that the game is not a 10/10 FPS is the number of bizarre, occasionally crippling glitches that should have never gotten past Ubisoft Montreal's QA. The aforementioned sound glitch from a corrupted save that forces a person to start the game over, the dirty disc errors that crop up from time to time that can be sometimes fixed with a simple cleaning of the disc or, otherwise, by simply reloading the level itself rather than the last checkpoint, and other minor nuisances (such as the opening demo movie often replaying itself to the point of major annoyance as FCI caches information on the Xbox's hard-drive, which has been fixed now in a patch, and can be otherwise avoided with a few simple workarounds) can drive you nuts.

The bugs work out into the overall game like this. Imagine being able to eat whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, with up to 16 friends that could tag along, for a one-time fifty dollar price tag. The only caveat is that you have to swallow the pill. Most of the time, the pill is actually a delicious Pez candy. On rare occasions, however, it is a potent emetic, the result being violent, painfully acidic projectile vomiting that can cause you to lose some or all of what you ate and be left with an extremely bitter taste, until you wash it down with your next delicious meal... to me, it's worth that price.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/17/05