"More than just pretty graphics"

Far Cry Instincts takes place on a tropical island where Jack Carver (you) takes people from island to island on your boat. One day, Jack takes a woman named Val to one of the various islands that surround this place. She rents out his jet ski for a few hours, so Jack takes a nap on his boat. Later, he wakes up to a helicopter hovering by his boat. Suddenly, they blow up his boat and you're supposed survive on this island filled with mercenaries.

Game Play:
In the start of the game, there's a lot of sneaking going on since you have only a pistol and a knife. And they barely give you any ammo or health items at all, so it's pretty difficult in the beginning. But, not much past the start, they make the game way too easy. As I'm sure you know, because if you've heard anything about this game, you'd have heard at some point you get primal abilities. I won't spoil how it happens, but once you have them it takes away any challenge the game had. Because you slowly regenerate your health ( and oddly enough, once you have the ability to do that, they start giving out health packs like crazy even though you no longer need them 0_o) and then it gives you an extremely powerful melee attack which can take out pretty much any enemy in one hit.

But using these primal abilities cost you adrenaline which you, of course, also regenerate...but it takes awhile unlike regenerating your health which takes mere seconds. Then you can see in the dark and have super speed, etc. So the game starts you off with barely anything (a few clips of ammo and a small health pack scattered here and there) , and then once you're passed the start, it gives you health, armor, everything. All in all though, it is a pretty fun game, although it is missing some much needed challenge. I mean, I was on the final boss and I killed him on the first try. I didn't even use one of the many health packs they had scattered around for it, either.

I should mention the vehicles in this game, there's a lot of 'em. But... sadly, they're not exactly fun to drive since it's in a first person perspective which makes it really difficult to tell what's around you and you'll find yourself constantly driving into things. So it's gets a little frustrating.

There's also Multiplayer on Xbox Live, quite a few people like it, but I didn't really. It just seemed to be kind of thrown in there as an after thought, even though there are quite a few game modes. Like on one, there's a predator and you and some other people have to activate an alarm to kill the predator, and you can kill him with guns, but he'll just keep coming back until you kill him with the alarm or until he kills all of the non-predators (which only have one life). There's also a Capture the Flag type thing, but it isn't really fun. I didn't really find the multiplayer fun at all, though. I had a lot of fun on the single player, however. But that's just me.

Also, there's a cool map maker that you use to make your own custom maps to play on Xbox Live. You can easily spend hours on a single map designing it. So it's pretty cool. I never actually play my maps, though because as stated above, I'm not a huge fan of the multiplayer.

Graphics:
Very, very beautiful. I was seriously just stopping like 60% of the time just to stare at my surroundings. It's an extremely beautiful and lush tropical island setting. Even the character models look pretty good, but they pale in comparison to the island itself.

Sound:
The voice acting is really good. Nothing over the top or lack of emotion or anything. It's just right on. There's also some nice background music which sounds... I guess for lack of a better word, island-y and it fits the game nice. The sound effects also sound really great. The guns firing sound really loud and realistic as well as the explosions that will occasionally go off.

Should you buy this game?
You really should. It's single player is really fun and when you're done with that, there's always the map maker. And who knows, you might actually enjoy the Multiplayer on Live, unlike me.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/23/05