Customer Reviews

Far Cry Instincts Predator

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Far Cry Instincts Predator is the XBox 360 update of two games - Far Cry Instincts and Far Cry Instincts Evolution. Neither of those XBox games will play on the 360, so it's well worth getting this new version!

You are Jack Carver, a marine who was a quiet boat captain, but ended up under attack on a remote tropical island. You're luckily very good with knives, guns and anything else you get your hands on. You're in this alone, so there's a lot of sneaking around, taking out enemies and lurking in the shadows.

On the Predator version you have to play through the first game (Far Cry Instincts) before you unlock the sequel (Far Cry Instincts Evolution) which makes sense to me, although it could prove frustrating for people who have already played Instincts and want to get right to Part 2.

The graphics are really nice on the 360 - they've definitely been updated from the original XBox version. Still, they aren't quite as stellar as some other XBox 360 releases. I suppose it's always hard porting a game up, to use the same code but make it look "nicer" without spending years doing it. Still, it looks more like XBox + instead of XBox 360. Still, it's nice to see the grasses swaying in the wind and the dappled shadows playing across the sand.

The sound is rather well done. You get the chirping of jungle birds, the hollow footsteps on planks, the crackle of radio transmission. There isn't a pounding rock soundtrack, which I really appreciate. If I'm a covert soldier creeping through vegetation, I want to be listening as hard as I can for odd noises - not having to screen out the fake music.

The game does give you objectives as you go along, but how you achieve those objectives is pretty much up to you. You can race in with guns blazing, sneak in quietly through the woods, march up the main path, or any other option you can think up. While the game is relatively short (a few days to finish) this also means that you can replay quite a bit, trying out other options and seeing what happens.

Of course, single player mode is just the beginning - it's only a training ground. Check out the incredible map editor, and go online to play your own custom maps LIVE against other skilled players 24 hours a day. It's this aspect that makes the game truly stellar, and one you could play for months without getting bored.

Highly recommended!

Far Cry Instincts Predator is a repackaging of the Xbox game Far Cry Instincts and its stand alone expansion Far Cry Instincts: Evolution. There are some minor differences between the two, such as improved graphics, but this is more or less the same game that came out months earlier on the original Xbox. It is important to make that clear right away so there is no confusion over what exactly you are getting.

For the main campaign, Far Cry Instincts Predator puts you into the shoes of Jack Carver, a retired Navy commando who now pays the bills by taking tourists out on his boat. After being hired by a woman to take her to a mysterious tropical island, Jack finds himself on the receiving end of a helicopter gunship. With his boat destroyed, Jack must find a way to rescue the woman and get off of the island. Of course that sounds a lot easier then it actually is. You will discover that there are some odd things going on deep inside the jungle, something that an army of mercenaries don't want you to discover.

The game's setting is probably the most important part of the game. The entire main campaign takes place on one huge lush tropical island. This setting opens the game up to some interesting gameplay. For most of the game you must rely on Guerrilla warfare since you are almost always outgunned. Hiding in the jungle and sneaking around is a big part of the game. It is possible to sneak up on enemies and perform stealth kills by stabbing them in the back. You can also set branch traps on trees, and then throw rocks to lure unsuspecting enemies to their death. There isn't much that is more satisfying then taking out whole groups of enemies without any of them ever seeing you. While stealth is more of a suggestion rather then a strict requirement, you will have a much easier time covertly taking out as many mercenaries as you can then if you run in guns blazing.

That's not to say that there isn't a ton of gunplay to be found in the game. The firefights can be pretty intense at times. There is a pretty good selection of weapons, though they are pretty much what you would expect to see. You have your assault rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles, shotguns and more. Jack can carry three weapons at once: a pistol, a medium weapon like an assault rifle, and a heavy weapon like a rocket launcher. This doesn't include grenades or claymores that you can use as well. You can also dual-wield many of the games smaller weapons.

Your most effective weapon in the game though is definitely your own two hands. Not too far into the game, Jack becomes a victim of one of the strange experiments going on (this is written on the box, so it's not really a spoiler). The experiment gives you "feral abilities" like super human strength and speed. Early on you can essentially rip enemies apart with your own bare hands. As you progress through the game, you are constantly getting new tricks. For example, you will gain the ability to pick of sent trails from your enemies, or run extremely fast and jump incredible distances.

You can also take control of a few vehicles in the game. These range from ground vehicles like ATVs to water craft like jet skis. There are even a few hang gliders in the game which you can use to fly around the huge environments. While you can shoot while in the vehicles, driving and shooting is pretty difficult. The awkward vehicle physics can make a lot of the vehicles frustrating to control. You will mostly use the vehicles simply as a way to travel across the big levels.

There is also a pretty good variety in the environments. While most of the levels take place in large outdoor jungles, there are a few underground levels as well as a volcano fortress to mix things up a bit. This keeps the levels feeling pretty fresh throughout since looking at a bunch of trees the entire time could get a bit boring. On the PC, Far Cry featured very open ended levels, where you could pretty much pick your own path through the island and tackle objectives in a variety of ways. This seems to have been scaled back for the console game. The underground levels, which last for a good amount of time, are completely linear. The outdoor levels do offer you more freedom then most first person shooter, but they feel pretty linear compared to the original Far Cry game. Perhaps this was due to technical limitations of the first Xbox, but it is unfortunate that one of the best features of the original game has been watered down.

Once you have finished the Instincts campaign, which should take you around 12 hours or so to complete, there is the Evolution campaign for you to tackle. It is no big surprise that it is actually pretty similar to the main campaign. It is an expansion after all. This time around however Jack Carver is hired by a woman (again) to help her with some illegal gun-running. As you would expect, things don't go as planned. Shortly after delivering the weapons, rebels attack, stranding Jack on another tropical island. While the expansion is still a good amount of fun, it doesn't manage to meet the same level of excitement as the first campaign. This is mostly because it doesn't manage to feel as fresh.

Since this game is set in a tropical island very similar to the last one, the game plays almost exactly the same. There are, however, a few changes in the level design that are worth mentioning. On the good side, some of the levels feel a lot more open ended this time around. For example, early on you will have multiple objectives across a few smaller islands that you can tackle in any order you want by using boats to travel between them. On the bad side, the game has some very annoying jumping puzzles later on that seem to simply be there to extend the length of the game. Also, sometimes there are infinite amounts of enemies that spawn in. It may take a while to realize what is going on and that you are supposed to just move on.

There is one bug that shows up pretty often during both campaigns that deserves mentioning. The bug involves locking onto enemies to use your claw attack. Similar to the sword attack in Halo 2, when you target an enemy to attack them with your claws, the game automatically has you fly in a straight line towards your target until you hit them. The problem is that it is extremely easy to get stuck on objects while flying towards your victim. When you do, you will be unable to move until the game gives you back control. The problem is that it takes way too long for the game to realize that you are stuck and give you back control. There will be many times when you will die because of this, and it can be extremely frustrating at times.

There is not much else to say about the expansion campaign. It's pretty much just more of the Instincts gameplay with a new storyline. But that is not necessarily a bad thing since Instincts was pretty fun. The Evolution campaign should take most players around 6 to 8 hours to finish. After finishing both campaigns, there is still the multiplayer left to check out.

Far Cry Instincts Predator has great Xbox Live support. It is one of the few games to feature an easy to use map editor. It's surprisingly easy to create your own levels. Most of the map editing is point and click, so you can very quickly develop and test your own ideas. When connecting to a game running a custom map, it is automatically downloaded. The custom map editor combined with a good number of retail maps and game types makes the multiplayer experience pretty solid. You could easily spend a good amount of time playing this game online.

Overall, Far Cry Instincts Predator is a pretty good game. It is a complete package that features a ton of content and is definitely the best version of Far Cry to date. That being said, if you already own Far Cry Instincts on the Xbox, there is not enough here to warrant buying the game again. You would be better off just buying the expansion separately. But if you have yet to play Instincts, this is the best version to play.

CONS: graphically not that impressive. achievements that aren't really that easy. half-life style vehicle driving, but worse. repetitive gameplay. shoot a helicopter a million times and it won't die unless the game agrees it's the helicopter's time to go. far too easy to get killed a million times by someone/something you can't even see. 2 steps to the left, the screen fills with red and you're dead instantly - why? what killed me? oh it was a sniper i can't even see in the dark, again, for the 29th time. better checkpoints could have helped that, but no luck, so you'll be repeating the same stupid thing over and over and over and over and over again. really no different than any other average shooter out there.

PROS: the disc spins in the tray. the game loads and works.

This is an older 360 game & I have to admit, a bit dated now. It was a combo of two original Xbox FC games, based off the PC version. Graphically & game play wise it was very solid & is still satisfactory today. I've been a huge fan of this series since I played the original on the PC, I was hooked & when I saw that they had a console version; "I jump in it." This is one of my favorite games OF ALL TIME, AND my FAVORITE FPS.

Solo, you get TWO campaigns which are both very fun. You of course get a multiplayer which is even more fun AND the providence that is the map editor. Unlimited replay value! I myself have about 25 original creations & 5 remakes from other games. Stretch your creative legs for hours & hours. Make ridiculous glitch & obstacle coarse maps or get down & dig in & make a series fps map. Play test them with your friends and just LOOK AT THAT WATER! I haven't seen better computer generated water yet! Haha.

Fans of the series that may have missed it, newcomers, fps fans & map creationists; PLAY THIS GAME. It's not Call Of Duty, it's not Halo and it is about 5 years old now, but it still hold its own. I love the fps genre & the heavy hitters above, but Far Cry Instincts Predator has a special place in my gaming heart! Don't miss out, you have ONE MINUTE REMAINING!

There is much to like about this game, but it's all smashed to giblets by the things it does wrong.

The good things include a fun storyline, attractive (if sub par for next-gen) graphics, and cool animalistic powers.

Now, the bad.

I got my X360 about a year ago. This game was the first I bought. I have yet to finish it, because each time I've tried to play through, I've been utterly frustrated in short order and inspired to pick up something else.

Since I began Far Cry, I have completed Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3 (all several times, on normal and hard difficulties), Dark Watch, Gun, BioShock, Red Dead Revolver, Viva Pinata, Overlord, God of War, God of War 2, The Simpsons Game, Crackdown, Prey, Dead or Alive 2, 3, and 4, Guild Wars, Half Life 2 (my second time, on hard), Conan, Kameo, James Bond Nightfire, Tomb Raider Legend, and a fair amount of World of Warcraft.

My latest attempt at Far Cry just ended, and is likely my last.

I'm playing at normal difficulty (Hunter), but the game is too hard for several reasons:

First, there is no quick save feature and the game relies on automatic save points. That in itself isn't bad (the Halos use auto-saves to good effect, for example), but in Far Cry the saves are too far apart, and there's no way of predicting where the next one will be. So if you play a while, but need to stop soon, odds are you'll need to quit before hitting the next save, and may well lose all you've accomplished in that session. Also, all too frequently, I've spent a good deal of time getting through a treacherous area, only to have a moment of bad luck which kills me and puts me right back where I started, at the last save. I've lost up to a couple hours progress to this nonsense at times.

Next, the clunky controls all by themselves can create those moments of bad luck. Maybe you accidentally throw a grenade when trying to hold your breath for a tricky sniper shot. Maybe you inadvertently leap to your feet from a stealthy crawl, in plain site of the enemy, simply because you brushed up against a weird angle in the ground. Maybe you tried to use one of the various vehicles in the game, which have the sloppiest freaking controls I've ever used for vehicles in a game, and which are usually a sure ride to your death.

As noted by many reviews, the AI is unpredictable, often stupid and not very aware, but sometimes eagle-eyed and more aware of their surroundings than is humanly possible. You're left with no true sense of what you can and can't do in approaching and dealing with the enemies, or what tactics will be effective.

Worst of all, the game CHEATS. You're presented with an illusion of choice in where you go and how you approach challenges, but in fact you're very obviously herded along on rails, straight into forced confrontations in which you are funneled by the landscape into inescapable fights with the enemy. Sure, we're all used to that, and even the best of games often play that way. But in this game, you're in a jungle, on a large island, and to be stealing along through the leafy wood only to suddenly find that there's a wall of leaves to one side that looks no different than the growth you've been moving through, mirrored by a similar leafy wall a short distance to the other side, is really destructive to immersion, becoming bluntly frustrating as both invisible walls grow closer and closer, funneling you directly into your enemies.

And don't bother scouting out where the enemies are with the binoculars and sniper scope the game gives you, or making cool tactical plans on how to approach these dangerous situations, because you'll just get annoyed when the time and effort turns out to be pointless. This is the kind of game in which you can locate all the mercs in an encampment, kill them all, and then be attacked as you move through the camp by a fresh horde of them springing from absolutely nowhere. It's like looking in a closet as you search a room, finding it empty, then suddenly being attacked by five bad guys who leap out of the closet. It's ridiculous, and it makes your strategies and tactics completely moot and a waste of time.

I wish I could play through this game. I'm intrigued by the story, and I want to play more with the feral powers. But, alas, no; life is way too short.

Far Cry Instincts Predator could have been great, as I understand its PC predecessor to be. But the developers designed it to constantly kill any sense of fun the game might manage to create. Go to a game store and throw a rock in any direction and you'll probably hit a better game.

Far Cry is a completely different experience that what I expected and that misunderstanding if probably a large part of the reason for some of the mixed reviews.

This isn't a "Run and Gun" shooter, if you want to be successful you need to approach most areas with extreme caution and plan out your attack (or excape) otherwise you're likely to constantly die and be eternally frusterated by this game. Normal difficulty is pretty damn tough at times. There were a couple instances even before gaining my characters special powers that I had to replay an area between 2 save points as many as a dozen times, i consider myself pretty good at shooters, (and even then barely squeeking by with a couple points of health left). However unlike the comment by another reviewer save points are not unfrequent, once you figure out an area they can be reached fairly quickly.

In short if you like a challenge and enjoy shooters that require more then just button smashing I would highly recommend Farcry. However if you're easily frusterated look elsewhere.

I must say that when i downloaded the demo for this game i was HIGHLY dissapointed, where are the beautiful water effects, the awesome folige, awesome sunny skys, and even realistic looking weapons. None of these things are to be found here, i could not believe this came out for something with one of the best ATI chipsets in the world runninng it, this looked more like a 800X600 resolution game for a PC with some old Nvidia X4000 card in it. My advice stay away from this one and get the original PC version and if your PC can handle it crank it up and see paradise.

On the fun side it was on par with the first but the AI was still pretty crappy. I think Far Cry Instincts on regular Xbox was much much better than this.

..okay this is my review of Far cry instincts pred., first of all this game contains "Far cry instincts and Far cry evouloution" two games that were released seperatley for xbox but this one contains both on one disc with enhanced graphics for Xbox 360, now that I got that out of the way let me countin ue.

Pros

Wide open eviorments to play in.
Graphics upgraded [espicially the water]
map editor has benn upgraded
excellent live support [no lag]
contains two games in one
Can choose between predator or survivor diffuculties

Cons

some character models are slightly undetailed
some lagging during single player campaign
two feral ablities are mapped to the same button [controler diffuculties]



All in all a execllent game, one that should be added to any 360 owners collection.

First of all, I played through and beat the original Far Cry for the first X-Box and loved it. The game was very fun and had some new cool new ideas for the very-populated FPS crowd. This new version just doesn't have the same effect. In this new era of console gaming, games must go the extra step to survive and the 2nd Far Cry just doesn't.

From the minute I plugged the disc into my machine, things turned ugly. Someone at Ubisoft had the genius idea to block the Far Cry: Evolutions story-line (the sequel game) until you beat the Far Cry: Instincts story-line (the original). That is horrible news to any and all of us that have already beaten the original and want to know what happens next in the life of Jack Carver. Fortunately, this problem can be corrected by going on-line and finding the appropriate cheat code. But still, a cheat code shouldn't be needed to unlock the game you just bought.

The next disappointment I noticed were the graphics. They are, for the 360 console, bland and subpar. Although improved, they don't standout. Compared to the X-Box version, the graphics are greatly improved and shine but once they are compared with other 360 games, they obviously fall short of the mark. I was greatly sadened by this, especially after hearing and reading all the hype surrounding the game and it's "awesome graphics."

The last pit-fall I found in the game is actual gameplay. The story-lines are both very short and can be beaten in only a day or two. And beyond this, the actual handling of the charcter feels somewhat sloppy, almost sluggish. Jack doesn't handle on-screen with precision like 360 gamers have come to be used too; instead movements all feel delayed a split-second, leading to very frustrating enemy encounters where that split-second means life or death.

Overall, I was extremely disappointed with this next step in the Far Cry world. The graphics aren't anyhere near 360 standards, the gameplay is sluggish and short, and, even if you've beaten the original before, you hafta beat Instincts again to play the new Far Cry game. This one is a rental, at best, for hard-core FPS fans.

An oldie but a goodie. My favorite thing about this game is making custom multi-player maps with the easy to use map maker/editor. You can be really creative with design, and drop in and out of Edit mode to First Person mode to playtest as you tweak your design. Very cool. (it's the precurser to the map tool for Far Cry 2, very similar). We've had some good times on Live. And like other people say, the water effects are still top-notch. I hope people keep playing this on Live!