 Or Just a Whimper
Maybe you've heard shit like this before, but I'm going to say it anyway, because it's definitely the case here: Farcry is not your typical 'buy-install-new game' type of product. Let's get things straight (this is about performance): before you buy this game, you should consider whether your PC is able to run it or not, and I'm not talking about your computer not being more than the developers' minimum specified 1GHz CPU, 256MB RAM and a measly GeForce 2. Also I'm not talking about 'running' as in watching pretty slideshows of some jungle stuff and then maybe something happens, no. If you don't think your machine can handle this beast, buy the game first, than take it to the computer store, and when the geek that works there asks you 'What'll be, sport? <zing>', or some other stupid shit like that, just hold up the game and he'll understand you're there for an upgrade.
What's the dream machine for playing this game with everything maxxed up? Uhm, I don't really know if there is one just yet, because, well, I'm running a 2250MHz AthlonXP (call it 2800+ or something), overclocked Radeon 9800 Pro (think 9800 XT) and 512MB DDR433, and I still couldn't turn everything on in 1024x768 without my system hanging from time to time, and the framerate just over 40fps, even below 30 under some circumstances.
But don't let me frighten you, the game is very scalable, you could still run it on a, let's say, AthlonXP 1700+, 256MB RAM and a GeForce 3 for example, but quality isn't something you should expect from this game playing on that configuration at decent speed. I strongly recommend a DirectX 9 card and 1GB RAM, this game deserves to be played the way it was meant to in the first place.
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
Some crazy doctor makes some experiments on a remote island, some bitch hires you to try and stop him, some things happen then and you win, hooray! But before that, you get to have a lot of fun. I'm not saying fun as in Ha-ha! but rather fun like doing something that is very exciting and keeps you glued to your seat (if you thought I was going to say 'couch' get the fuck out of here, we still have PC-only games, and good ones at that!).
Visual Pleasure (Oral - Later On)
I know you've all played the demo, I know you've all been impressed, but maybe you missed it, never read any previews, and live on Uranus, so people around you don't really talk about games (hey, if that's the case, could I come on Uranus?). Ahem, yeah. Like I said, this game's graphics are incredible, I didn't know my PC could do shit like that until this game's programmers came and taught it 'this' and 'that'. I've seen good-looking games before, I've witnessed great scenery and the works, but Farcry's are by far the best so far. OK, that is by far the worst phrase I've written so far, so I'm going to cut it out, it's gone too far as it is. Enough said Farcry is THE best looking game I've seen. Forget technicalities, the tropical paradise feeling is so perfectly transposed on your screen you'll just abandon yourself to the game in no time.  Sure, there's the interiors, the sea, rivers, mercenaries, monsters, they all look great, I don't think it's necessary to paddle on that anymore. Remember Quake 3, how different and good looking it was at the time, without being completely innovative in most ways, that game was thoroughly polished to look the way it did. It's the same thing here. I'm not going to tell you that this game has new things, never before seen and shit like that, because it wouldn't be true, but what I can tell you is that this particular product has it all. Maybe you remember Morrowind for its beautiful water, Gothic 2 for the huge landscapes, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time for the neat textures, Splinter Cell for great dynamic lightning, well, Farcry has all of these put together and more. There isn't a single graphics-related item I noticed in this game that I could say about 'Yeah, I've seen it done better elsewhere'.
Stop, look what it's doing to you!
So, everything looks nice, but how does it work? Powered by a fantastic physics engine, Farcry comes to life. Clever animations enable characters to jump, shoot, dodge, fall, die, run and whatever else they do very realistically, everything feels the way it should, nothing that moves ever scratches the eye, it's all natural and harmonious. Boxes and other such inanimate objects also act the way they're supposed, when shot or tipped over they react to the stimuli just as you would expect any other stupid real-life box. Just like the graphics, this game's physics engine seems to be the most powerful up to date, even better than Max Payne 2.
This graphics-physics mix is what gives the game its fresh flavour.  I'm not saying that Farcry is innovative by any means, nor that it is original in any way, but everything has been done right, and the setting for some serious fun has been laid. It's good to know everything looks and reacts the way it should. It's good to know that if you shoot some gas tanks, they will blow up, and the explosion will not only look good, but it will sweep everything in its range, just as you would expect it. If you shoot some monster and it falls in the river, the water will carry him away to the waterfall, where the ride will get even more intense. When some mercenaries sit under a crane from which some container hangs, shooting the container down will mess with the mercenaries' heads accordingly. So you see, everything works towards the player being able to squeeze everything he can think of out of the game.
Hey, but look how it makes you feel!
Surely the monsters and other enemies from the game wouldn't do much if they couldn't think for themselves. Yes, it's one of those boring talks about AI, where I try to tell you shit has changed for the better and you say, yeah, sure, give me a human opponent instead. Well, I'm sure that would be nice, but the single player component is this game's most important part, so therefore AI is as well.
Surely you could notice from the demo how things work. Mercenaries will fool around, talking about stuff, fishing, working on something, reading, whatever, until they notice you and the fun begins. They alert each other, take cover using the surroundings, work as a team, and when a leader is present, things get even more complicated for you. Monsters aren't as smart, but they make up for it either by speed or strength, or both, so they won't be easy pickings either. 
There's also the birds and fishes, they avoid you, get scared, you can shoot them, whatever, this is not really AI but I like the pretty fishes... fishy-fishy! Also, fishes can't call the cops, but mercenaries will often call in for backup, most of the times a helicopter full of other soldiers for hire, so yeah, there'll be more of them I guess.
Just Drive, Far Away
Hooray for in-game vehicles and pr0n, although you kinda have to be eighteen and pay some money for the second one. As far as vehicles are concerned though, they're free to use and fun to drive. You have boats, buggies, jeeps, trucks, with or without guns, and best of all, there's a glider that you can use to skip some of the land action, but not all of it, as the glider lowers itself when near locations meant to be crossed on foot.
Vehicles are good to quickly get about the large maps of the game, but even if graphically it would be possible for the game to let you go wherever you wanted on the island, for example, the story forces you to go through certain locations before others become available, which is very normal.
Other than the vehicles I just presented earlier, you can also see ships, crashed planes, helicopters and stuff like that, but you can't drive those, so whatever. One more important thing about vehicles is that, once you're 'at the wheel', you can change the view from 1st person to 3rd person, which makes driving a lot of fun, and driving over enemies even easier.
And then?
And then some things happen. The graphics and physics are nice, the AI makes shooting enemies pretty interesting, there's even some interiors, but you know, after a while it kinda got boring, until I got to level 14.  Level 14 had me on a sinking boat, fighting some sort of boss in a helicopter. Everything seemed right: it was very difficult, it would have had meaning, there was an 'end' setting, so I said to myself 'This is it, the game ends right here'. But it didn't, it kept getting better and better as the game progressed, and I personally had the impression that I was just about to finish the game for or five times after level 14 and before the game actually ended. Had the entire game been done this way, we would have had us an almost flawless shooter, but even like this it is definitely one of the better ones.
Like I said, the landscapes are huge, thus offering multiple possibilities for reaching an objective. Moving around is kinda slow though. The heavier the weapon you're packing at the time, the slower you walk. Why not endorse the knife at all times then? Sure, you'd move considerably faster, but most of the times you just HAVE to have a powerful weapon handy, you can't know what's going to happen next. Eventually you'll probably get used to the slow movement, although personally I never quite did. But then again you'll be shooting a lot of stuff most of the time, plenty of fire fights that leave you ammo-less very fast, so you have to be careful and aim for the goddamn head. Most of the weapons have a normal firing mode, and an enhanced mode - you aim better, you move slower (if at all).
I need a team, 'cause I'm a playa
Yeah, it's got a multiplayer component as well, but it kinda sucks. Deathmatch, Team-Deathmatch and Assault, standard faeces. Your slow moving character gets blown right away by the very powerful weapons, and then you get tired.  With huge maps and mostly jungle setting, camping would be the option for all players, if not for Crytek's 'fuck you' approach towards campers, which means all weapons 'shine' in the hand of the wielder, so you can't really hide for a very long time because enemies can easily pick you up and then you get bored together. Definitely not a successful multiplayer game, although it runs faster than the singleplayer, and by that I mean higher framerates. Don't ask, I don't know, could be the AI, the scripts, I don't know, multiplayer runs smoother somehow though.
Things that suck ass
Stupid is as stupid does, Tom Hanks' mother once told me, but I'm sure you don't want to hear that. One other thing I'm probably almost sure you don't want to hear is Farcry's music. It's not awful or something like that but I'm really kinda having some sorts of writers' block, although it's not actually me writing this, I'm just saying stuff and there's a small tin robot here that takes notes. I must confess I had a little too much to drink last night, and as a result, I forgot how to write. Man, this is going to suck, I'll have my robot type in the passwords for the adult sites, but he can't sign a receipt or write down a shopping list. I know what I'll do, tonight I'll drink some more, maybe it'll come back, and if not, I'll have to buy smarter tin robots, or keep on drinking.
Speaking of which, the overall sound quality in Farcry is decent at most. You know, sound effects are OK, there's even some 3D positioning, environmental effects are actually nice, but somehow I feel that Farcry has let me down in this area, I was expecting marvellous sound alongside extraordinary graphics and realistic physics, but I guess they just didn't really care, huh?  I mean, come on, your avatar's voice is lame, he delivers stupid lines in a totally uncool way, and that lowers my feeling of immersion in the game. Most of the FPSs I've played were good enough to make me feel I could truly relate to the main character, and Farcry does that as well, in a certain amount that is, because when my avatar says something, man, I kinda feel ashamed.
She married money
I might be going out on a limb here, but here's my take on what Farcry really represents for Ubisoft. They spent a lot of time building the engine, and it was good, almost too good for today's market. So they said: OK, we'll make a game out of it, because we're supposed to do that, we can't just sell this engine to companies that haven't seen it work in an actual product. But what kind of game? Shooters are popular and in some ways easier to do and sell. Hooray, they said, and they started work on Farcry. Simple story, standard setting, standard weapons, they didn't experiment too much design wise, they just made sure their graphics and physics engine stands out as much as possible, and what a great job at that. So other companies saw it was good as well, and bought it from Ubisoft, as you can read in our interview with them.
What I said earlier about them making Farcry just to show off their engine is not actual facts, just speculation, but even if it were so, the final product came out OK, Farcry is a sweet game and it's worth playing, especially that it's out now when there isn't really much happening.
Graphics: 98
Sound: 79
Resources: 80
Gameplay: 88
Total score: 88 |
