With the best graphics and AI I have seen to date, Far Cry pushes the envelope and might give Doom 3 and Half-Life some competition. And all this from a company that two month ago, I never heard of.
Far Cry is the latest game from Ubisoft, who we owe Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell, however, the engine, know as the CryEngine, was developed by a company called Crytek, quite an achievement for their fist game.
The story isn't the most original, since it is basically an Island of Dr. Moreau rip. You play Jack, cruising along on your both, when suddenly, it gets blow up. You end up on an island and are not very welcome there. You basically just wander around until you find a receiver, with a guy who wants to help you get off the island and at the same time, stop the bad guys. As you progress you learn more about the nature of the island and the girl you were on the boat with (who you just picked up the night before). But the story isn't usually the best reason to play a game.
The graphics are incredible, way better than anything else out there. If you want to see all of its beauty, I would recommend a 1.8Ghz and a recent video card, GeForce 4 or 5 or a Radeon. The lighting, reflections, shadows are beyond belief. From the birds flying around (which you can shoot and they explode) to the lighting effects caused when you shoot a hanging light, you can see how much time this must of taken. The AI is also very good, although at first you might thing that it is terrible since they are pretty stupid, this is simply done so that the game can become more difficult as the enemies get smarter. The only fault I found in the AI was that if you wait, the enemies will always come to you, so you can hide behind a corner and pick them off as the come around it. Of course, it isn't flawless, there are some lapses in intelligence on the enemies parts, but great nonetheless.
The good thing is that you can play it on a slower machine, such as my 1.2Ghz, GeForce 2 system. And although not as beautiful, it is still nice and playable. The initial load is long, regardless of your machine, but then, they are extremely short. Once the level loads onto your drive, restarting a level takes only seconds, which is nice when you keep dying and don't have to wait a minute to try again.
There are some nice/original features also. You cannot run forever, you have a stamina bar that lowers as you run, swim and jump. You also have an unlimited supply of pebbles to throw around and distract people. You can carry up to four guns, with a certain limit of ammunition and there are about ten different guns in the game and four different grenades/smoke bombs. You can also interact with a lot of things, although not to the extent of Half-Life 2 (if you've seen the video) or Max Payne 2. The enemies also talk to you, mainly telling you how they will kill you and if they see you kill off some of their allies, they will run back and call for reinforcements (they sometimes even talk to themselves, saying things like "there he is, get him" when they are alone).
The game is somewhat linear, however you do have some choices in path, as long as you end up at the correct destination. You can get into jeeps and trucks, many of which have guns on them, but the driving takes a little getting use to, like it did in Halo. You can switch to a third person view if you want while driving, but then it is impossible to shoot, I would suggest getting use to first person. There are also some scary parts, but nothing that compares to Doom 3 (from what they say) or Half Life. Also, when things get out of hand, the enemies fight the monsters and can actually kill each other.
One problems I had with the game are that you cannot punch or hit anyone with your gun. If you are out of bullets, your dead. You must run around and find more or die trying. The biggest problem however, and I cannot believe this was left our of a PC game, is the saving. There is no quick save, which is a pain, since the saves are often pretty far apart and you can actually miss them sometimes if you don't walk threw a certain point. Also, there is no warning for the checkpoints, so if you forgot to do something, like load up on weapons, you must redo that every time you reload, quite annoying. Finally, the last two levels are tough, but awesome.
This is probably the best shooter to date and the single player mode is worth the $50Cdn alone. There are twenty levels, for a total of about 20 to 30 hours of play. I highly recommend it.
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