Far Cry

The original Far Cry is an interesting game to say the least. At the time it really was quite breath taking - part tech demo and part game. The graphics are clearly dated by today's standards, but it's still pleasant to look at. The islands are laden with lush scenery and various memorable locations and travelling from one place to another is often a visual treat. The game is also one of choice. How to approach this next area, whether to be stealthy or go in guns blazing, whether to use this underground passage to sneak past the guards outside and risk facing whatever's inside. All in all, the outdoor segments are great fun, and the enemy AI, while occassionally stupid, holds up pretty well and keeps the challenge there. Unfortunately, though, the freedom of choice is frequently limited and even removed. A few levels in, the player will encounter new enemies, the 'trigens', and from here the game just starts to feel a lot plainer and more on-rails. There are certainly still great, open missions, including ones where you boat from island to island or even some full blown combat zones that you can either sneak through or participate in, but all in all, after this point in the game, there's many long corridors and repetitive rooms you need to storm through, and stealth is no longer an option when there's corridors full of enemies. The trigens themselves are also just less fun to fight than the mercs of earlier levels. Their AI seems simpler or gimicky, with aprticualr types jumping to preset locations at their own will and most others just charging straight at you, or charging and firing away aimlessly. They don't take cover, they don't try to flank and surround you, they just rely on their higher health to get them through. Couple all of the above with some on-rails shooting from vehicles and the freedom Far Cry gives you at the start of the game quickly fades away. Even the outdoor levels slowly get more an dmore claustrophobic and limit your pathing. Take the later level where you have to reach a volcano: There's only a straight path towards and up it. You can't go around any other side of it, you have to go through garrison points with no alternative route available. it's a shame that with such potential for diversity, the game slowly decides to force you onto rails to force the rather mediocre story and some cliche scripted events upon you. By all means, the game is still good, but it gives you a sense of freedom and then removes it, and slowly whittles down to be less and less enjoyable as it goes on. Gunplay is good and feels responsive, stealth works well enough and the open island sections are both fun to traverse and great to look at. The on-rails and indoor sections unfortunately are nothing new or innovative, and weren't even at the time, though, and the trigen enemies are the same as every other cliche mutant enemy you've fought in every other FPS. Skip the cliches and you still have a solid shooter with some great environments and challenging AI enemies (the mercs). It's pretty mediocre by today's standards, but it still has some points that keep it above water.

Ah, to go back to the year 2004. The year that we got to play Far cry for the first time. That was a revolution in game graphic and in fps games. It started 2 big franchises: Far cry and Crysis (lot of the team that made this Far cry went on to create the Crysis game series). While both are similar, Far cry has some great advantages. It keeps the game more to the ground, not going too much into science fiction. The game is quite long and if you like punishment feel free to put the highest difficulty. By now the once revolution in graphic is long gone but it can still look good, and it now it will work great. I recommend it to anyone that likes FPS games because you need to see how it all started.

There were few games that made some kind of revolution in gaming. What I mean, Far Cry was one of those games. Most people remember how 3D games was looking back in 2004. Until Far Cry was out. Maybe screenshots here doesn't show how beautiful 10 years old 3D game can be, but just check 1st video under "Far Cry max settings". Does it look like a game from so many years ago? It looks even better than some games from last year! I remember that my PC back then wasn't able to play Far Cry like that, but with nowadays PCs, I'm sure that everyone can enjoy the beauty of this game. Look at the water, look at the plants, or trees... It's amazing what could be done in the times when gaming wasn't so realistic looking. Far Cry will be always remembered by me as the game that made some progress in gaming history.