Being a gamer for over twenty years, there are times where this hobby can be very frustrating. When a developer completely cashes-in and delivers an obviously sub-par port of a game on a new system just to make money, it frustrates me. What frustrates me more than that, however, is when I have moments where I am dumb enough to fall for it. Unfortunately Far Cry Instincts Predator (don't even get me started on the stupid name of this title) is one of those "moments".
I never played the original Far Cry on the PC. I did buy & play it on the Xbox and absolutely loved it. I gave it a glowing review and I thought it was the best FPS on the system other than the original Halo. Unfortunately, I got rid of my Xbox (damn addiction to upgrading systems) before I had a chance to play the 'sequal' (a.k.a expansion pack) Far Cry Evolution. So after I got my 360 I was very happy to know that I could pick up both games in one package and I thought this would be a must-buy. Unfortunately, after puchasing this game and spending some time with the original game again I realized I had been duped. This is a crappy port that not only doesn't offer much of anything new, but it actually is WORSE than it's Xbox counterpart. To better explain my feelings about this crappy port, let me take you through my expierences with this game to maybe better explain my frustration:
I booted up the game with much excitement because I was going to get to play a great shooter once again and I even get achievements along the way? Sounds great! Then I saw the opening scene that looked exactly like it did last year while I was playing this on my Xbox. After a bit, I was forced to jump into some fantastic looking water and swim for safety. While climbing up on a wrecked ship I noticed that my aiming controls were very touchy. I then went into the options and turned the sensitivity down a notch. That resulted in very little help as I still was experiencing the pain of my aiming curser going all over the place even with the slightest of movement by my right analog stick.
I overlooked that flaw for now as I figured it was just me and let's get on with this great game. When I eventually came to a part where I swim again, I ended up on a patch of sand listening to some guy in a headset (I knew the plot already as I have played this before), but I couldn't hear him well because some stupid music just popped in and drowned him out. I then came upon a beach and a few enemies. I thought I would use some stealth in dealing with these foes, so I pulled out my 'magic thorn branch' (which you essentially pull out of nowhere), attach it to a tree, make a noise by throwing a rock that I had in my inventory (you have an endless amount of rocks even when there aren't any around, for some reason) to make a sound and the stupid enemy came over and killed himself by walking into my trap.
While that was amusing, I realized the A.I. in this game was still very stupid at times. After that, I thought I would sneak up behind someone and start getting stealth kills for the achievements, which brought me a little sense of amusement. I also noticed that while the enviroments and water still looked great, the foilage that you are crawl around in looks awful. It's laughably bad. Then I thought I would start firing my silenced pistol. When I came to the next batch of enemies I noticed that it was very hard to hit anything. The aiming controls didn't get better from before and I basically tried to use the right analog stick only when I had to. That is obviously a hinderence and shouldn't be happening. But yet again, I trudge on wondering why the hell the game looks like it did when I played it on my Xbox.
Still with me? Ok good. I am getting to a point here. Eventually I get to my first major 'fire-fight' area and I noticed a big difference over the Xbox version. This game is much harder. I am generally a guy who likes a challenge in a game. I also tend to play a game on the 'medium' difficulty setting to start off with. I can't remember if the Xbox version had a choice of difficulty settings, but if it did. I know I would've taken the middle one. I did that with this game, and for some reason, all of a sudden the A.I. went from being incredibly stupid to sharp-shooters. Not only that, apparently the crappy looking foilage that I was crawling around in wasn't providing me as much cover as I thought. Apparently the enemy soldiers had thermal vision of some sort and could see me even though I couldn't see two inches in front of me save for the cardboard looking plant that was covering up my shooting angle.
After defeating these enemies, I went on to the next section where I would attempt to do the same thing. Unfortunately I died (probably something I did and not because you can't hit anything with the crappy aiming, right?) and then remembered my biggest pet-peeve in gaming and Far Cry Instincts Predator does it worse than anyone: LACK OF WELL PLACED CHECKPOINTS! There is NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING, that gets my blood boiling with a game more than developers who are too stupid or lazy to put in adequate checkpoints in a game. And after playing this game for hours and hours (a lot of replaying parts I have already played), this really killed the game for me. Yes I know the Xbox version had the same problem, but the difference with that was I could actually hit someone when I shot at them and it didn't have crappy aiming controls so I didn't need the checkpoints as much because I stayed alive longer.
And why the hell didn't they fix the worst vehicle controls in videogame history?!!!
At this point, I didn't care that this game was offering me both Instincts and Evolution in one package. I didn't care that I used to love this game. I didn't care I just dropped $40 on a game I no longer want to play. I only cared about the fact that I was stupid enough to buy it in the first place. I mean, who couldn't see this one coming a mile away? This is a crappy & lazy port of a great PC & Xbox FPS that gamers should be digusted with. The graphics are not next-gen in any way. The music is nice, except when it drowns out the dialogue. The controls are WORSE than any other version before it. And the fact that it offers you Evolution along with the original game doesn't excuse the fact that Ubisoft was expecting people to fork out $60 for this turd when it came out.
If you already own or have played Far Cry on any other system, stay away from this game. There is nothing really new here and it's shocking that Ubisoft Montreal has actually managed to make the game worse than the previous incarnations. If you haven't played the game before, I would highly recommend renting this. If you can get over the crappy controls & lack of a compentent checkpoint system, you might find a fun game in here somewhere. I just feel that along with everything else that was great about this game last year, the "fun" got lost in translation.
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