Farcry PC-CDROM

Far Cry, a fantastic game by a fantastic company, Crytek's creation is, to say the least, phenomenal, it has its fair share of problems, as does any game. But it also has some amazing features as well.

There are several elements of far cry to make it stand out. Not least to mention the graphics. The first of these that I'll mention is the 'Stealth-o-meter'. A handy little dial that sits around your radar in the bottom left, consisting of two small bars that increase and change color depending on how much you have alerted the nearby enemies to your presence. Stealth becomes a big part of Far Cry, especially on the harder difficulties, often the difference between your life and death, wether it be at the hands of a mercenary or Hidous mutant! (I shall talk about those more later). Sound, also shows up on the radar, as little blips, to help you work out where people are. These two things combined with the wonders of the rock throwing ability can help you escape sticky situations. Carefully throwing a few rocks here and there can distract the enemies long enough for you to slip by happily on your way to more peril.

A few realistic features that I've never seen before are brought into Far Cry also, such as weapons with a sniper scope give off a lens flare when in use, helping you catch those ever so tricky snipers before its too late.

Now, gameplay and the campaign. Well, with horrendously realisitc recoil that sends your shots flying unless you're perfectly still, the campaign can become very difficult indeed. To this end I would recommend to new 'FPS-ers' to take it through on the lowest difficulty before even glancing at the higher. Then again, even this is challenging and can't be taken as a walk in the park...if you try and stroll around acting like god you'll soon find you fail!

Mercenaries have the wonderful abilities to use teamwork, tactics, and can often call in reinforcements if you don't dispatch them quickly enough. Along with having those all important edges over you, such as the occasional helicopter or mortar...you can see how the game can become hard.

After a few levels at the start of the game, you'll come across some small, melee only mutants. These seem to hang around corners almost everywhere, being one of the main plot features of Far Cry, a scientific experiment into creating tougher soldiers (Wether that's all it is, you'll have to find out for yourself ;) ). These seem easy enough at first, simply don't let them get close. But the further you go on into the game the harder they become. Soon gaining not only a considerable size advantage...but also the ability to use weapons and occasionally turn invisible! It's quite scary when you find yourself faced with an invisible rocket-toting 7ft tall beast!

A fair selection of weapons exist to help you combat these enemies, capabale of carrying only 4 at once however you must chose the right tools for the job. You begin with just a pistol and knife, and work you're way up to shotguns, rocket launchers and sniper rifles. There are several vehicles strewn around to aid in your quest for survival (and they usually help in speeding up your transportation...especially avoiding some of those nastier foes!).

The multiplayer could be better unfortunatley, with a slight abundance of maps, and not a fantastic setup for finding servers (there isn't even a filter option?). Gameplay wise there is only one problem I have with the mutliplayer, whilst giving players a re-spawn shiled to stop those annoying spawn deaths is all well and good, they should remove it once that player attacks. The amount of times I have found myself faced with a shielded enemy gunning me down, unable to retaliate is getting ridiculous.

Now, the techy side. The specifications could be a little lower, but its not built on a fantastically optimized engine. The game still runs smoothly, but it requires a slightly higher end machine to cope well. The payoff is however, superb graphics, from reactive realtime lighting, to gobsmacking terrain, it really does provide a lot in the eye candy department. The sounds are nice, although some of the weapons could do with being a little beefier in my opinion but that's just me. There are a few bugs though, if not patched correctly, or the system components are slightly different, you can get odd coloured terrain (I have seen black and white beaches so far.), as well as the occasional campaign glitch such as checkpoints not loading correctly.

Considering this game is now a couple of years old, I'm still very impressed with it. It may have a few bugs here and there, but it is still an amazing game. And to that end it earns 8.5 jaw drops on the OMG scale. (Or 8.5/10 to you normal people ;) ).

What are you still reading for? Go buy it...now!

Want to see a small clip of Farcry in action?...clickie below