"A potentially great game, that's only pretty good."

Far Cry, was a huge PC hit when it was released for the PC, but when Ubisoft said that they were bringing it to the Xbox, we wondered how. For starters, they completely built Instincts from the ground up, for the Xbox and made sure it took advantage of everything it had to offer. This was a rare thing, for a game to not only to be ported, but made to function using the console's hardware.

Story: You play as a man named Jack Carver, who is a retired Navy commando. Well, now that his Navy days are over, Jack takes wealthy people on his boat to look at many different islands, and to go sightseeing. One particular time, one of his passengers wants to go explore the island, and Jack agrees for a little more money. As he's waiting for her to come back, he hears a noise and all of a sudden there are helicopters all around his boat, and they destroy it by blowing it up. He runs for cover, and wonders who they were and why they were trying to kill him. There are several twists, as Jack tries to find out what's going on, and what's nice is it's not the same old same old, well for the most part. The entire game (cutscenes included) take place from Jack's perspective, taking a page from the Half-Life games.

While for the most part, the story is interesting and does have some nice plot twists later on, there are still some cliches that have been present in other games before, so the story isn't completely original and isn't the main reason to play this game. You'll meet different people as you go along, and thankfully they all have very different personalities and have good voice actors to back them up.

Audio: One of the things that Instincts does a very good job of, is the sound and music in the game. When you start out, there isn't much music, but the sounds you hear in the jungle make it seem that you're actually in a jungle. You'll hear the chirp of birds in the distance, the sounds of trees swaying in the wind, and hear your footsteps, as you splash around in rivers and streams. Sometimes you won't hear anything at all, and you get a sense that something's wrong. All of the sound effects used, are very realistic, like the snapping of a branch or the cry your enemies make when they're killed or wounded. When you're underwater, it sounds exactly like you're really swimming, and sounds are harder to hear, just like in real life. The sound makes you really feel immersed, and adds a level of enjoyment to the game, that some lack.

The voice acting, as I mentioned before is very good and each person, even enemies sound different from one another. You'll hear your foes talking to eachother, about life, or other things, and you'll hear them call for backup or for help when they see you. One thing you're sure to notice in just the first few minutes, is that Jack and everyone else on the island love to say the "f" word. In every cutscene there's heavy use of "motherf****", or some other obscenity, of course since this is a game with soldiers, it is to be expected. Besides the over use of swearing, the voice acting is very well put to use. While only the main characters voices you'll remember, it's still a good job done. Overall, the sounds, effects, and voice acting all come together very nicely, and really sound good.

Graphics: Another thing that Instincts does very well, is the graphics, which will have you wondering how they got them on the Xbox. Games like Conker, Half-Life 2, Halo 2, and DOA: U all have amazing graphics, and Far Cry joins this bunch with very impressive results. The detail in just about anything is amazing, the water may be the prettiest on the Xbox so far, and the vehicles and weapons look amazing. Forests come alive, as well as buildings, mine shafts, and other things. Weapons are probably one of the most detailed things in the game, each weapon has amazing detail and look like they do in real life, it's almost like looking at a picture. The rivers and streams, are probably the best looking on the Xbox, and look photo realistic. Lush forests are very well done, the bushes, grass, and plants too good, of course trees still don't look very good, but no game has ever done that well, so it's no big deal.

For all of the amazing details in environment, weapons, and buildings, the explosions and character models, don't look that great. When you blow something up, you expect it to look good, but not in this game. For some reason admist all these beautiful graphics the explosions look pretty bad, and really should look much better than they do. They look kind of fake, and don't seem to have any level of detail at all. One other problem, is the character models, they look average, the models in HL2 and Halo 2 look much much better, and that's disappointing considering pretty much everything else looks great. The only other thing that's a negative with the graphics, is the death animations. They are some of the worst I've seen in recent years, they are over exaggerated and look awful. They fling back and look like they're doing a dance, which makes you want to laugh it looks so ridiculous.

Gameplay: Well, basically this is another FPS with a few twists, that it's borrowed from other games. When you first start out, you have a knife and a simple pistol, with very few ammo. At the start, you're supposed to be stealthy and kill the enemy without ever having to fight them face to face. You have several different ways to take them out, you can either crouch and walk slowly behind them, and then knife them in the back which is an instant kill, you can use a silencer and shoot them in the head once for a kill, and you can set different traps for them, which doesn't use any ammo. Because the jungle is so big, being stealthy is usually pretty easy, it's killing the enemy that get's to be interesting. The traps are useful and make short work of your foes. The only trap that you'll have to start out with, is by putting a spiky tree branch on a tree, and then pulling it back, so that if someone(even yourself)gets in front of the tree, it will kill them. What you have to do, is throw a small rock at the tree, and wait for your enemy to check it out then it's lights out.

This won't always work, because sometimes the enemy will only go so far, or go on the wrong side of the tree and miss it. You have a radar, on the bottom of your screen, that shows your position and your enemies. Your enemies will be in different colors, depending on their level of alertness. Green means, that they are unaware of you, and you can lure them to the trap, yellow means that they're aware that someones there and won't fall for the traps and they'll start hunting for you, orange means that they've seen you and will fire and hunt you down, and red means they're going to attack you and follow you, with everything that they've got. So, traps can only work on enemies with an alertness of green. You will also get land mines later, that you can set, but by that time you probably won't be hiding anymore.

Instincts, switches from being stealthy and trying to not be seen, to full on fire fights, and shooting everything, to anything in between. At the start, you don't have much of a choice but to be stealthy, but later on you can choose either to have big gun fights or not. Later on, you'll even get horror elements thrown in, and they're actually done quite well and make an interesting change to the way you play the game. Of course, since this is a FPS there really aren't any puzzles, and all you have to do is stay alive and keep shooting. One thing that is interesting, but has been done before, is that later on you'll get these abilities called "predator abilities." You'll get one to start off with, but keep slowly gaining more and more as you go along. When you're a predator, you regenerate health, can kill an enemy in one hit with your fists, see in the dark, run very fast, and so much more.

They're pretty cool, and are fun to see and use on your foes. Amazingly for the most part, these abilities don't make the game too easy, even though you're really powerful it's pretty easy to die even with them. Plus, you'll start fighting harder enemies that make you glad you have the abilities you do. Aside from the abilities, you'll have a pretty good selection of different weapons to choose from, and they range from, pistols and machine guns, to rocket launchers and everything else you'd want. Of course, you can only have three different weapons at a time, so you'll have to choose wisely which weapons to use, since certain weapons don't get much ammo. Your enemies will be pretty consistent, so when you start getting more powerful your enemies become harder to kill. The variety isn't great, but it makes sense for this game and the plot. You'll be fighting humans mostly, but there are other things you'll fight as well. The game does balance the difficulty very well, and shifts into the right difficulty at the right time, so you're never bored.

Now an FPS isn't complete, unless there's vehicles to drive, but in Far Cry, you'll wish they never had them. You control the vehicles from a first-person view, and that would be fine, since you do the same in HL2, but the vehicles are a pain to use. You can use a pistol or machine gun on most vehicles, but you don't want to drive them in battle. All the vehicles are very touchy, and can be turned over way too easily. Like if you hit a small rock, it could send you and your vehicle flying in the air. The controls aren't tight enough and the vehicles don't handle well. They really are a very bad part of the game, and they range from motor boats, to hovercrafts. The physics really needed tweaking, and make these times when you use vehicles awful. Now while the fights can be fun and hard sometimes, the biggest flaw with Far Cry is the AI. This game has some of the worst AI in an FPS. The enemies will shoot, but they stand out in the open and always give you enough time to kill them, while they're running up to you. When you throw a grenade into a ton of them, they just stand there and do nothing at all.

Sometimes in the middle of a fight they'll just start running away, giving you plenty of time to shoot them in the back without a problem. You'll also find that enemies will just randomly generate behind you sometimes, so you'll know that they weren't there before but now are. AI is the key element in any game, and for some reason Far Cry's is just plain stupid, and really make what could've been a great game, annoying sometimes and not a lot of fun. They rarely take cover, and they're aim isn't very good, it's just awful to see a good game have such bad AI. Not only does it take away from the immersion, fun, and difficulty, it takes away from the experience. There are some AI that are very good, btu they're usually boss type monsters and they aren't the best either. The immersiveness of Instincts, is really good, it's not quite as good as HL2, but it's still very well done and adds a level of fun to the game.

You will probably get sucked into the game, because it picks up the pace pretty fast and is actually a nice length. Another thing that is a negative, is the checkpoints. In most FPS games, like Halo you'll get a pretty good amount of checkpoints, to save at, not enough to make it easy, but just right. Well, in Instincts the checkpoints are very few and far between, meaning that you'll have to try an annoying part of the game more times than is good. Mostly you'll get killed because you didn't see a guy because the jungle is so thick, or because the vehicle doesn't handle well, but there's other times too. Like there's a time when you have to escort a character to a helicopter, and instead of it being fun, the guy will get in the way and make things harder for you. This does make it more interesting, but when the character hides behind something and even after you've killed everyone, refuses to budge because of bad AI, it just makes it annoying.

Even though you'll have fun, doing different types of gameplay all in one game, the AI will ruin it some, and the vehicles will get to you. Most of the good points, have been done before in other games, and Far Cry just does a good job with them. The game is long, and killing people with branches is pretty neat, but the gameplay isn't everything it could've been.

Features: Well, one of the strongest points of Far Cry is the multiplayer, and the map editor. Most games have tried to put map editors on consoles, but have usually failed. Well, Instincts does an amazing job of making it easy and fun. Maps can be as simple or as complicated as you want, and there's tons of different things that you can do. You can choose what kinds of weapons, buildings, and vehicles you want, then choose the area you want, like forest, island, ect. Then once you've gotten all that you can start making your own map to play on multiplayer. You can make hills, moats, traps, buildings, and all kinds of stuff, to make the map yours. You can rotate any items and place them where you want on the map. The maps have huge areas you can use, and they can be very big like for 8 players, or something smaller for less. You can put trees, bushes, and weapons on the map, put health and ammo in areas, and even trim the grass.

You have tons of possibilities and options, making the editor a lot of fun to use. It's easy to make several islands or one big forest, and it's up to you. You have almost everything that was in the singleplayer, and more. It's a lot of fun to make them, and when you're done you can upload them on XBL and share them with anyone who wants to download it. It's easy to use, almost exactly like a PC editor, but it will take you a few minutes to get the controls down. Overall the map editor isn't almost as good as a PC one, and should be a future reference for developers who want to put them on a console. The multiplayer is really fun, and has a good amount of options. Besides being able to use your maps, you get about 12 maps that are already made, and are a lot of fun. You have the basic death match, and team matches, but you also have a mode where one player is the predator, and has all the abilities and strength, and everyone else tries to kill him, and a steal the sample mode, that's a lot like CTF.

Replay: Once you've played the entire singleplayer, you can go back and choose any level to play over again, but it's kind of pointless considering there's no difficulty levels to choose, and the enemies are always in the same place. You probably won't ever play all of the singleplayer again, but maybe a few of the really interesting levels. Because of the AI and vehicles, the replay isn't very good, but at least there's multiplayer to keep you playing.

Overall: The Xbox has tons of FPS games, and since there are so many a game needs to have a good reason to be played, it needs to stick out from the rest of them. Far Cry, has amazing graphics, they are just great and almost everything looks just beautiful. The difficulty level is pretty good, and keeps pace with the game, the weapons are fun to use and feel powerful, and look good. The characters, are good for the story, but Jack is probably the only one you'll remember. The music, effects, and voice acting are very well done, and you couldn't ask more of them, the sounds change with the time of day and place, the guns sound loud and real, the voices sound great and clear, and the music speeds up just at the right time, and can make you feel anxious and sometimes scared.

The immersion is awesome, almost on the same level as HL2, and other games. The story isn't the main reason you'll play this game, but it has twists, and doesn't suck. The predator abilities are a lot of fun, and make for some interesting fights that some games don't offer. It's a pretty lengthy game, and will last a pretty decent amount of time. The levels are huge, and look good, and there's rarely any load times in the whole game. Map editors will use this game for reference on how to make them, it's fun, simple, and easy to use, almost as good as PC editors. Physics for the vehicles, are awful and make using vehicles anything but fun, they're too touchy and are just no fun at all. The way the enemies die is awful, they look stupid and make you want to laugh, they aren't done very well. AI is pretty bad, it takes the fun, challenge, and immersion out of the game, and bring a great game down to an average one. There are already tons of other good FPS games out there, so you don't really need to play this.

Score: 7.9/10. GNR's "Rent It" Award.

While the graphics, sound, and map editor are all amazing, and are done well, the bad AI, average story, bad explosions, bad character models, and awful just awful vehicle physics, bring this game down. The good things, are done well, but some of them aren't very original and have been done by games before it. The game isn't a buy, because you won't play it that much, except for multiplayer and unless you have friends coming over all the time and XBL, you won't get a lot out of that either. In the end, a potentially great game, had too many flaws that will hopefully be corrected by future installments.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/20/06