What we have here is an FPS that shows us how things are going to be done in the future. The ideas are old but it’s the way that they are executed in Far Cry that make it stand out (the graphics help, but only for first impressions). The story of the game is that you are Jack and are boating around a mysterious island with some girl when all of a sudden your boat is blown to pieces by a rocket! You swim as hard as you can to shore and find what you believe to be an underwater cave. After you surface to the top of the cave you begin your adventure through this forest that has some seriously heavy military presence.
Welcome to the Jungle
What you have to go through at first are your standard tutorial sections, run, dodge, jump, climb and sneak your way around. This is where you realise you have a stealth meter and that this game requires small doses of stealth to succeed. It’s not what I would call a stealth game really though, most of the time you will be shooting the hell out of some marine. You obviously use this stealth element when you are walking through a camp full of enemies. Cry Team have decided to use the jungle island setting to good use and have given the place loads of undergrowth to hide in.
There are twenty missions in this game with several very tough sections to get through on each. The missions are as non-linear as you can get, you still have to accomplish a task by reaching certain checkpoints to drive the story along, but you can go about accomplishing the tasks in whatever way you choose. You could use stealth to sneak past guards and steal their equipment or you could go in guns blazing and take out every soldier for you own bloody satisfaction. Either way it’s highly enjoyable stuff. For example in an early mission you could quietly pick off the perimeter guards of a camp, sneak up to a jeep they have just begging you to drive, turn on the engine and then head for the hills, mowing down all who stand in you way. Its not just jeeps you get but a whole host of vehicles including boats and even hand gliders! The missions are either to get to the end of a section, blow something up or find an artefact. Yes it’s all old but it’s all good at the same time.
“Engine Engine Number Five”
Cry Teams “Cry Engine” is top stuff; the lighting effects really work brilliantly on the characters and their surroundings, especially in the dark indoor areas where I couldn’t help but think of what Doom 3 will be like, especially when the monsters start appearing. I wasn’t so keen on the amount of jungle in the game though, I’m probably much more used to the claustrophobic indoor areas, or maybe I secretly long for Doom 3 but this will certainly do for now. The game’s physics engine is pretty good, for example you might be in another of those pesky marine camps, only this time you threw a rock down a hill, and then when the soldiers go to investigate the rock and are down at the bottom of the hill you use your mischievous streak to push some oil drums downhill to crush them! HAHAHA! Failing that you could always blow the same drums up with your weapons causing them, them soldiers AND their camp to blow up and collapse. The way you can interact with the scenery is awesome, if there are soldiers heading towards you on a rope bridge simply shoot the ropes off and watch them plummet to their doom. Other nice touches include on the old freighter level if you shoot the hull of the ship from the inside little holes appear with light beams shooting through the smoke filled interior. Lovely stuff. All in all it’s graphically stunning.
BOOM!
Sonically the game is great too; the 5.1 surround jungle is great, complete with annoying bird and bug effects. One thing that is cool though is that the marine banter in the game is hilarious. This game has gone for the Duke Nukem (remember him) or Serious Sam approach to humour with such choice phrases as “I’m gonna rip you a new one” or “You want more that? I got more that!”, general banter, and the “oh my god, these things are loose!” chicken marine behaviour when the ape monsters attack. The story is driven via some standard macho voice acting that can be really funny at times, for example “Sometime the soldiers use hand gliders to get around the island… you DO know how to use a glider don’t you?” To which Jack replies “I learn pretty quickly when I got people shooting at me!” You get the idea. Yep it’s very good sonically and musically it has some nice espionage movie-style tunes much like those in games such as Splinter Cell or Metal Gear.
