Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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54 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome graphics, solid gameplay, good fun, May 27, 2004
I'm having great fun with this game despite running it on a mediocre system that can't run the game in full graphical flourish. I have a 2.0Ghz P4, 512Mb RAM and an ATI 9800 (the base model, not Pro or XT) card with 128Mb RAM. So it's decent but hardly cutting edge.Despite the fact that of the eight customizable graphics settings, I have set four to "medium" and four to "low", the graphics are simply the best I've ever seen, on any game at any time. The sky looks absolutely real, the water has noticeable depth and shimmer, and the foliage is lush and crisp. The character models are great -- muscles bulge, clothing wrinkles, and blood sprays in a most vivid fasion. This game alone makes me want to shell out a few thousand for a bleeding-edge system. The game play is quite solid first-person shooter fare. There are no huge breakthroughs, though there are nice details like a stamina meter for running and holding your breath. The weapons selection is nice -- enough variety to keep you interested but not so broad that there is much overlap. The voice acting is a model of over-the-top action cheesiness, and the bad guys shout their lines with such enthusiastic machismo that you have to laugh. Fun stuff. The only gripe I have at this point is weak online play. Much of this is no doubt to my location in Asia, which leads to some horrible ping. But it seems I am not alone in thinking the multiplayer needs a bit of tweaking. I guess there is a patch coming out in June that will hopefully resolve some of these issues. Bottom line: Top-notch job on graphics and setting inject fresh life into the FPS genre. Well worth it, even if your system has to make compromises.
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28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Paradise Gone Wrong..." -- Everything Else is Right, April 8, 2004
Where to start, where to start? Well, first let me tell you that I am a huge FPS (first-person shooter) fan, whether it's mindless fragfests like Serious Sam or stealth-oriented action like Deus Ex or the Thief series. I've been waiting for the "next big thing" in FPS for quite some time, namely Half-Life 2, but I think the next big thing has arrived sooner than expected, and its name is Far Cry.Let me get this out of the way before I go on: Unless your PC is is a stud monster with preferably 2.5 - 3.0 GHz processing speed, lots of RAM (1,000+), and a gaudy video card (Radeon 9800), you won't get the full effect from this game. Still, even on a mid-range system with graphics toned down to medium, you will be absolutely blown away. I know I was, and still am. Using the supercool Crytek engine, Ubisoft has created a game that features sensational graphics, terrific AI, decent plot, and unusual locales, namely the Caribbean. Where this game stands out is its graphics engine, which lets you see for miles and offers an unparalleled setting ever seen in a computer game. But be warned: don't expect to just walk into huts on the sand and start blasting away at mercenaries. These guys are good, calling for cover and flanking you every chance they get. You'll have to think about how you're going to approach each mission, and even then, you'll be required to make quick adjustments, thanks to the assault jeep that just showed up right behind you or the gunship that is raining missles from the sky. No two missions are alike, as the AI learns as they go, adjusting to your moves and reacting accordingly. Terrific stuff. The voices are a little over-the-top, which absolutely fits this very over-the-top game. The standard "mad scientist creates some monsters from human DNA" plot is a bit trite, but the presentation of the entire game makes up for it, with engaging cut scenes and terrific direction to your next objective. Overall, though, sounds lend a distinct feel to the game, as the birds chirp when you're outside on the island and waves lap against the shore, or your pinned underneath a palm tree with a chopper armed to the teeth sending death from above, the whup-whup-whup filling your ears as the world goes black. Real-world weapons are at your disposal four at a time, and they do the job very nicely. Crouching and arming yourself with an MP90 in the islands has never been so much fun. And you can drive many, if not all, of the vehicles in the game, including jeeps, assault trucks, gunboats, and even hangliders, which is a nice change of pace from the usual duck-cover-shoot tasks involved with each mission. Each mission is very well defined, but by no means is this game linear. You can get to the endpoint any way you want. If you want to take the whole guerilla army on headfirst, go right ahead. If you want to sneak around and shoot them from underneath the huts, you can do that too. Ubisoft has put the entire game in your hands, and it makes for some truly exciting, innovative gameplay. Some people will have a problem with the difficulty level and overall problems with getting it running at decent speed on a minimally equipped system, but look past this. Also, the auto-save system is a little annoying (no quick saves), forcing you to go through the same mission until you get it right and it reaches the next auto-save point. Not since Half Life has a game been so immersive, so unique, and so rewarding in its gameplay. Far Cry presents PC gamers with a tough challenge that shouldn't be missed.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Current King of FPS, May 5, 2004
Superb graphics are just the frosting on the cake with this refreshingly well done shooter. Not since Half Life has a game includes as detailed or immersive an environment. From the get go, you are thrown right into the mix. The nuances are impressive: everything is laden with gorgeous textures, there are myriad small touches (a shark hanging from a fishing pier, schools of tropical fish swimming through the water, copies of "Evil Science" magazine lying on a desk in the lab).The levels are expansive to say the least. The game keeps coming and coming, and just when you think you've reached the end of the game, there's more. The setting does not get repititous, either - there is a well-balanced mix of gorgeous indoor and outdoor locations. There is dense, lush jungle filled to the brim with trees, bushes, grass, flowers... everything you'd expect to be in a jungle, really. Merc camps set in abandoned WWII japanese bunkers, rusted tank wrecks and aircraft frames, an old skeleton in an Imperial officer's uniform - even a beached shipwreck are all throw in just for eye candy. The lighting and environmental effects are easily comparable to anything in the bootleg Doom 3 E3 demo, including moving light sources, UV/Bump/Reflection Mapped characters/objects/levels, and internal and external cast shadows. In one sequence, I was lit from behind by a spotlight and saw my shadow being cast on steam I was about to walk through in a hallway. In many ways this game may exceed Doom 3's standard (although we'll see when the full version is released), especially with Far Cry's unprecedentedly flawless transistions between interior and exterior locations. And there's little linearity in the design here, either. Although some of the interior locations lead themselves to naturally channeling you in a certain direction I found there was almost always a different way to reach my objective, and sometimes as many as six or seven. The game requires a diverse mix of tactics to beat your opponent, from head on attacks to stealthy stalking. Others have given the AI high marks; let me elaborate on just how cool this AI is: Enemies call for backup on the radio or use smoke signals, use flanking maneuvers, encircle you, and even sometimes run away in fear if you surprise them. Enemies hear you, look for you, and use nightvision or other optics to find you. They use and shoot from cover and concealment. They are probably the best and most realistic AI I have seen in a shooter. I ambushed two mercenaries among a group of around ten who were coming around the nook I was hidden in. After dispatching them, two mercs lined up on either side of the door. One of them yelled, "Go!" to the other one, and then they bum rushed me with guns blazing. I managed to kill them first but only just, getting gravely wounded in the process. One of the remaining mercs then said, "Keep him occupied, I'll go for help" and shots start plinking off the corners of the nook. I heard a lot of movement, and then silence for several minutes. Maybe the troops might have wandered off? But, no... they set up a sniper on a far ledge to cover the door, and the rest of the team formed a semicircle around the entrance just to take me out as I emerged. And this was not a scripted sequence. One of the cooler features of the gameplay is being equipped with a pair of high-tech, long-range-microphone-equipped binoculars. Not only are they invaluable for finding your enemies, much of the exposition in the game is delivered through the conversations of your enemies as you peer at and listen to them through the binoculars. Not only do you get important information about the story, but the mercs seem to have a life of their own. I almost laughed myself out of my chair when I caught a pair of the mercs bitching to each other about the heat and having to pull guard duty. As others have mentioned, the major drawback is that you're going to need a high performance system to run this game. The game can also be glitchy at times, and a few crashes sent me tumbling back to the desktop; the lack of an in-game save made this troublesome because often times the automatic "checkpoint" type saves were a little far apart. Speaking of, a few of the savepoints happened right before a cut scene or before a long trip to a challenging area. I was occassionally frustrated by making it through a major concentration of enemies, getting close to my next objective (taking some fifteen to twenty minutes) and then getting killed within steps of the next save point by the last bad guy, forcing me to do it all over again. The bottom line, however, is: The plus sides of this game far, far outweigh the few trouble spots. I have not had this much fun playing a game since, well, Half Life. This game equals that title's detail and depth, with none of the "puzzle artificiality factor" (annoying jumping puzzles or the requirement to keep criss-crossing the same level over and over again to pull switches or press buttons). Its biggest strength is as a shooter though, and has more going for it there than anything out right now. I recommend it highly.
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