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Far Cry
Upon purchasing this at my local game shop, I was informed by the two
people at the counter that I was in for a really good game with this
one. They even said that it is almost as good as Half-Life 2. This
almost made me run back to my house cursing my computer that takes a
whole minute to boot up.
So you play Jack Carver, who in the intro is happily sailing his yacht
with an attractive woman in the bright sunshine in clear, tropical
water when a rocket hits the boat and sends Jack flying. When you
come to you realise that the island that you're on is populated with a
lot of mercenaries, clearly intent on finding you. Later on you also
realise why they want to stop you, a mad old scientist (yeah, another
one!) is performing genetic experiments, the fruits of his labour
creating Trigens, which are, well monsters really. Unfortunately for
you, they start escaping during your stay on the island.
The thing that struck me that sets FarCry apart from your average FPS
is that, rather than being set in dark and dingy claustrophobic
corridors, as is the usual FPS setting, FarCry instead decides to
place you on a tropical island in the bright sun. Nothing could be
more refreshing to the FPS genre than a clear deviation on the level
setting as this, it's almost literally a breath of fresh air. There
is the odd bit when you do find yourself in an enclosed and dark
environment indoors, but still. The method that you play this game is
also clearly different to most first person shooters, because with the
added expansive environment, it allows the player an added element of
freedom allowing the player to decide exactly how to complete the
current objective. Some of the outdoor levels really are huge, some
of which with no noticeable level boundaries at all, allowing the
player complete freedom about where they want to go and how they want
to get to a certain place. With one of the examples, I needed to get
on to an adjacent island and get up on one of the large hills to blow
up a radio tower. Sounds simple enough, though I found out that this
was very difficult, stealth was not an option because there were
watchtowers everywhere and every time i managed to pick a guard off
stealthily, someone always noticed and hell broke loose. As for just
running up, well believe me, I tried multiple times. That's when I
realised, before travelling on to the island, I could drive a buggy on
to a carrying crate that was attached to a patrol boat, drive that
patrol boat over and be able to drive the buggy up the hill to the
radio tower, thus evading all of the incoming fire. Oh! Did I mention
there were vehicles?! From humvees with mounted machine guns, patrol
boats with machine guns and rocket launchers, trucks, to hang gliders
can all assist you to get from A to B in a rather dauntingly sized
level.
I have to also commend the AI, it is perhaps the best I have ever seen
in a game. If you like being stealthy, then you have to be aware of
the methods that you could possibly be detected. You've got your
normal sight detection, so you can hide in the local flora or in dark
corners and avoid being noticed, but what really impressed me was the
hearing detection. I'm not just talking about jumping and running
about and people will hear you, but I noticed that by using different
weapons that sound louder and quieter respectively I could be stealthy
depending on what I fire with. So for example, using my binoculars I
spied a load of mercenary goons on a nearby beach. No problem, I
thought as I didn't need to go that way, so I just crept by without
alerting them. I then came up to a base which I needed to infiltrate,
being guarded. So I aim carefully and pick some of them off with
single shots with my trusty M4. Just as I was reloading, safely
hidden in the bush with the remaining guards running about like
headless chickens working out where I was, I realised to my horror
that the guards from the beach had heard my shots from my loud weapon,
knew where I was and were creeping up behind me. Being that I was now
pinned in from both sides, I didn't stand a chance, but it didn't stop
my from appreciating the decent AI to achieve this. Different weapons
have different noise values and you can see how far the noise travels
on your radar. You can also exploit this noise effect by throwing
rocks about, so that guards think that there's something going on over
a different way and you can creep past them.
The physics system is quite good, yeah it's no Half-Life 2, but
because it came out before, FarCry deserves some credit. You can push
barrels downstairs and it will run into unsuspecting goons at the
bottom, you can shoot lights and they will swing, dynamically moving
all of the shadows in the room creating an eerie effect and so on.
The difficulty too remained challenging throughout the whole game,
something which doesn't usually happen to me as I leave it on normal
difficulty and usually breeze through a game first time. I'm guessing
that didn't happen for me with FarCry because of the AI auto balance,
which I'm reliably informed that it makes things slightly harder when
you're breezing through it, and loosens up when you're finding things
difficult. I'm not quite sure how it does this, but I'd say it works
as I certainly found it the right amount of challenging the first time
I played through it.
Almost everything about this game has a certain element of something
special or uniqueness to it. It is truly an enjoyable game to play.
For me, it stands out as a needle in the haystack that is FPS games.
3.9 / 4.0
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