Its hard reviewing a game like Far Cry. It's something rather novel right now,
since its a primarily single player game (there is multiplayer but its far from
the focus) and its not set in World War II. I've been hearing that its the best
game since forever, and while surfing the Internet its hard to avoid the
gushing reviews. Looking at this game objectively is like swimming into a
whirlpool of hype. Is it that good, or are we just starved for a good, story-driven FPS?
Many people think that the shooter genre was born with Doom and its ilk, but
I don't buy it. The first shooter I remember really loving was Half
Life. Doom was a lot of things, but story-driven and complex it was not. Half
Life was all these things and more, and with it the modern shooter was born.
Sadly, coding decent AI and setting up interesting environments in which to
fire large guns turned out to be a lot harder than many people thought. This
lead to two schools of thinking in shooter design: either make it multiplayer in
focus or script everything. While great games came out of both approaches (BattleField
1942 for the former and Medal of Honor for the latter, to name two) they both
missed something. Call of Duty is a great game, and very intense, but after you
play it once the scripting becomes painfully apparent. You know when something
is going to blow up, you learn where the triggers are. A scripted game can be
intensely visceral, but soon it becomes obvious how linear the whole experience
is.
Likewise, multiplayer games have their place, but after a while I get
tired of being dependent on the faceless masses in front of their computers to
make sure I have a good experience with the game.
What happened to giving the player freedom? What happened to good single-player
games?
Let's get it out of the way
First things first, Far Cry is a beautiful game. The CryEngine is one of the
most remarkable things I've seen in a very long time. It handles insane draw
distances, wide-open environments, and corridors with heavy lighting effects,
all with ease. As a demo for the engine, Far Cry is very easy on the eyes. Instead
of the usual dystopian hell-cities we've gotten used to we're set to do battle
on a large tropical island. Half the time I didn't know if I wanted to fight or
to order a fruity drink with an umbrella in it.
The game is pretty demanding on your hardware, but if you have even a
midlevel system with a Geforce 3 or higher card you'll be able to run it if you
don't mind turning down the resolution and detail levels. On the other hand, if
you just paid a few thousand dollars for a new hot rod, this is the game to show
it off. With everything cranked up on a fast machine this game is able to
produce graphics that at least match the screens we've seen of Half Life 2 and
Doom 3. Yes, its that good.
I have a pretty decent system, with an AMD 1700+ at 1.4 gigs and a Radeon
9700 Pro, and I was able to run with pretty decent framerates at 1280x1024 (I
know, I know, oval circles) with the effects turned about halfway up. Even then
though, the game was a stunner. This game is the first round in the shooter wars. If you don't have a DirectX
9 capable card get one. If you've been waiting to upgrade now is the time. Its
finally worth it.
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