Far Cry review

Described as "The first next-generation shooter", Far Cry has already established itself as one of the best games of 2004. When you consider that this is expected to be one of the best game years ever, that is no mean feat. The storyline is good and there are lots of surprises in store. The graphics are amazing and a lot of attention has been paid to making the locations seem as realistic and "alive" as possible. The whole game takes place on a group of islands and there are flocks of birds, shoals of fish and wild pigs which really adds to the realism. The AI is probably the best there is at the moment and enemies display coordinated teamwork and attack patterns. The mercenaries even call in reinforcements if they get nervous, which arrive by air. When using your binoculars to track enemies, you can eavesdrop on conversations between mercenaries, but after a while the dialogue gets repetitive. There are various vehicles which can be used, including boats and jeeps. For most of the game you have a radar tracking device which is not just cool, but downright essential, without it you will get outmaneuvered more often than not. All enemies react to sound and once in an indoor area, I set up a trap for a certain kind of enemy, but they didn't play ball. They sent a scout to investigate, once it spotted me it ran back out of the room to report to it's friends. What happened next really took me by surprise, they ran through a large part of the building(including upstairs and downstairs, where necessary and various rooms) to get to me. There I was standing on the walkway, thinking how clever I was while I waited for them all to come into the room below, when they burst through the door to the right of me! Needless to say I was reloading five seconds later and these are meant to be the "dumb" enemies! Probably the best aspect of the game for me though, is the size of the outdoor locations. This is a major step in the continued evolution of 3d-shooters and it's gonna get even bigger and better from here on. If not for the attack helicopters patrolling the coastlines off the islands, you could probably swim for miles and miles, that's how big the areas are! The rendering of the water is done really nicely and when you swim underwater, the palm trees etc show realistic distortion due to the ripples in the water, they even added air bubbles and on the sea beds are shells, coral reefs and seaweed. Back above the water, nearby objects cast realistic shadows on the surface, but best of all are the waves crashing onto the beaches, they even create foam and look very realistic. The sky and clouds, to my mind, look pretty much photo-real. Being tropical islands, there is a lot of dense vegetation to use for cover as you move around completing objectives. You can easily pick off enemies on your radar without being spotted at all. But beware; they will start searching the area. Indoor locations are a whole different ballgame and the combat is more in-your-face. Far Cry saves automatically at certain points and you can't do manual saves. This makes the game really challenging and you will find yourself almost begging for it to save sometimes. It can get frustrating when you have fought your way through 20 or so enemies, only to make some silly error just before you reach the next checkpoint and have to do the whole section over again. A lot of the fights are unbelievably hard and this alone will have you reloading like crazy till you get it right(or get a lucky break). I was crazy enough to play it on realistic setting, which is the highest difficulty, so for all I know the fights are more manageable on the easier settings. This is probably the toughest, most challenging 3d-shooter I've ever played, if there's a tougher game out there, I'd like to see it. If you play Far Cry from start to finish on the realistic setting, then you can truly call yourself a hardcore gamer and hold your head up high! Note: Due to the high quality of the graphics and size and scale of the locations, you will need a really powerful all-round system to run this game smoothly, even on medium(perhaps even lower) detail settings. © Action Girls 2004.

Featured Action Girls: Valerie.

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