.FLYINGHEAD WE GOT GAME!
.TITLE Far Cry, a graphically stunning first-person shooter
.AUTHOR James Booth
.OTHER
.SUMMARY This is a game with stunning graphics. The tropical setting is a nice change from the typical dank dungeon and industrial settings of most shooters. Carrying twice as many missions as most FPS games, Far Cry will give you many hours of enjoyment. Normally, we don’t cover strictly desktop applications in Computing Unplugged, but News and Contributing Editor James Booth just begged and begged, so we had to let him run with this review. You’ll be glad we did.
Welcome to Computing Unplugged Magazine’s monthly/biweekly/weekly/pretty-much-whenever-we-feel-like-running-it gaming column. The We Got Game! series will address gaming primarily in the mobile computing setting, with an occasionally desktop title tossed in when we feel it warranted (or, as with this article, we just can’t help ourselves). We’ll cover gaming on the Palm and Zodiac platform, Pocket PC, laptop, and PSP/Nintendo DS, and possibly even consoles. So sit back, put on your carpal tunnel brace, moisturize those thumb callouses, and get ready to get your game on.
Far Cry, from Crytek and Ubisoft, is just that: a far cry from any other shooter I’ve played.
Normally, we don’t cover strictly desktop applications in Computing Unplugged and this has been out for a while, but David knows I’m a gigantic game freak and has agreed to indulge me from time to time [The begging was a really quite pitiful, but he did ask so very nicely — DG].
Could Far Cry be played on a notebook? Sure, if you have one of those $3000-4000, top-of-the-line, gaming notebooks like the Area-51m from Alienware.
I won’t gild the lily here; Far Cry has some pretty hefty system requirements. I won’t quote the manufacturer’s minimum and recommended, because those specs can be kind of arbitrary. But I will say that Crytek definitely had hard-core gaming PCs in mind when they designed Far Cry. You’re going to need a fast processor, a boatload of RAM, and a fairly recent high-performance video card.
Hey, who cares about the mortgage payment? You want Far Cry to run smoooooth!
.H1 The story
In Far Cry, you are Jack Carver, formerly of the Ocean Patrol, whatever that is. Wearing his red and white Hawaiian shirt, Jack ferries passengers and cargo around the South Pacific.
Your most recent fare, attractive journalist Valerie Constantine, has been taken prisoner on a mercenary-laden island in Micronesia. These same mercenaries have seen fit to RPG your boat and leave you for dead. In this case, RPG means Rocket-Powered Grenade, not Role Playing Game! Your boat’s toast and your goal is to rescue your passenger, escape the island, and dish out a little payback in between.
.H1 Looks like…
Far Cry has some of the most visually stunning graphics I’ve ever seen, and I’ve got a low-end video card. Unlike most shooters, a good portion of Far Cry takes place outdoors on the tropical island where you’re stranded. The Crytek engine gives a true sense of space and atmospheric immersion with amazing distance clarity in the neighborhood of a kilometer. The water renders better than just about any I’ve seen in a game. It laps at the shore of the sandy beaches and boats roll with the waves, as you can see in Figure A.
.FIGPAIR A This shot looks up and down the same stretch of beach.
Water isn’t the only thing that looks great either. Figure B shows a jungle shot.
.FIGPAIR B Look at the plant detail in this jungle.
.BREAK_EMAIL Want to know about the game’s physics, or just blowing stuff up? Tap here.
The game engine’s physics do a pretty fair job simulating the real world. If you’re too close to a flash-bang grenade when it goes off, you’ll be blinded too. Too near an explosion, it’ll deafen you for a minute or so. Speaking of explosions, they toss bodies through the air like they’re rag dolls. The physics of the game also allow you to take advantage of cover, and shoot through thin barriers, like tents and wood.
You can see the tracers from enemy fire and almost feel the bullets zing past. When using a scoped weapon, you’ll experience weapon drift that varies between standing, kneeling, and prone, with prone being the most stable, of course.
The character models in Far Cry have been understandably improved over last year’s crop of shooters, but not as good as what I’ve seen with some that are due out this fall. The Crytek engine does a good job of smoothing out the curves and textures, making the characters less chopped and angular. Far Cry also offers you either a first or third person view.
.H1 Sounds like…
For the most part, Crytek has done a pretty good job with the audio aspects of Far Cry. They’ve included a lot of really subtle little elements that you may not notice at first. All of these things, like birds, insects, the sound of the water lapping at the shore, the whistle of the bullets as they streak by, and the rustling of the plants in the breeze, add up to create a genuine environment with atmosphere. The doppler effect of the helicopter rotors (increasing in volume as the helicopter approaches, and fading as it departs) is a very nice touch that adds to the reality of the game.
I was impressed quite a bit with the music soundtrack of Far Cry. The game is scored like an action movie, with appropriate up-tempo music during gun fights, and eerily haunting songs during moments of tension. Normally, I turn off the music in all the games I play as I find it a distraction. But with Far Cry, I actually enjoyed having the music on because it meshed so well with what was going on in the game. There was one song in particular that I especially enjoyed. It was played when Jack was outside and had a Polynesian/tribal/island feel to it.
The dialog in Far Cry isn’t going to win any Oscars. It’s an action game, with typical action movie dialog. The same kind of fare you’d expect from an Ahnold, Sly, or Seagal flick. You know, shot full of testosterone and quippy one-liners.
There’s one thing I must say about the in-game and cut-scene dialog. The volume is entirely too low. I found that in order to be able to hear the dialog, I had to turn the volume up to a ludicrous level. It certainly made the gunfire seem real enough.
I’ve noticed this is an industry-wide problem and not specific to Far Cry. It seems like the volume of the dialog in all games is too low compared to the special effects.
Any game developers out there, please take note… The in-game and cut-scene dialog needs to be a lot louder. In reality, it should be louder than any other part of the game.
.H1 Plays like…
Far Cry has some pretty stern hardware requirements. It is, of course, playable on lower-spec machines, but gameplay will suffer as a result, being jumpy and choppy, even at the lowest detail setting. To truly appreciate Far Cry, and get the most from it, you need a high-spec machine; at least the recommended configuration.
Far Cry is something a little different when it comes to the FPS (first-person shooter) genre. It has twenty missions, giving a good twenty hours or more of gameplay. Most shooters only give you ten or twelve missions. In this respect, it reminded me a lot of the No One Lives Forever series and the first Red Faction.
The back-story for Far Cry is pretty flimsy. That is to say, almost non-existent. There are two very brief paragraphs in the manual that offer very little. The opening intro isn’t much help either. It’s an assaulting barrage of imagery that really does nothing but confuse.
The story itself certainly isn’t going to win a Pulitzer or Hugo. This is, after all, a shooter, with a shooter-type story. It is sufficiently different though to separate Far Cry from the typical blast and smash FPS.
One of the really nice things Crytek has done with Far Cry is to make the maps extremely large. The loads may take a while, but its well worth it to be able to cover a lot of ground, only loading about once an hour or so.
The environment of Far Cry is relatively free-roaming, allowing you to go pretty much anywhere. Helicopter patrols are the only thing to keep you from heading out to open sea.
Being an FPS, Far Cry is basically linear, but the free-roaming aspect generally gives you more than one way to reach your goal.
Stealth will be your friend in Far Cry as the enemy AI is on the level of psychic. Most of the time, they will see you long before you see them.
Beware. The enemy mercenaries use squad tactics, shout orders to one another, and they’ll call in Blackhawk air support and Osprey-delivered reinforcements if you’re stomping them too bad. They wear body armor and get tougher, with more body armor, the further along you get.
You’ll be limited in your weapon carrying capacity, forcing you to occasionally drop one in order to acquire a new one. There’s an ample array of real-life weapons, grenades, mounted weapons, and other equipment to toy with. Gadgets like combination night vision/infrared goggles, and binoculars, shown in Figure C, equipped with a directional microphone, allow you to hear conversations from nearly a kilometer away.
.FIGPAIR C These shots show the view through the binoculars at different distances.
One thing that disappointed me was the inability to holster your weapon. Your movement speed is based on the terrain and the weapon your holding. There were times when Jack needed to move fast, and could have if he wasn’t holding a weapon.
Jack will have the opportunity to handle a wide range of real-life vehicles in Far Cry, from the dune buggies in Figure D to HumVees and heavy trucks, to boats and hang gliders.
.FIGPAIR D Let’s go!
Figure E shows a shot of the hang glider.
.FIGPAIR E The hang glider, a shooter first?
.H1 Dewey, Cheatem & Howe
Do you use cheats? I do. A lot of gamers look down their noses at cheats, but I like them. Only for single player games, of course; using them in multiplay would be unethical.
Why use cheats? Well, the point of playing the game in the first place is to have fun, right? It’s not fun if you have reload every five minutes because you’re getting killed.
Far Cry, like most shooters, has some cheats, or developer codes if you prefer, that are available by accessing the console or editing the devmode.lua file. The codes are out there if you want to use them. If you do, you know where to look for them. It’s a good thing too, because you’ll need them.
Frankly, there are some portions of the game that I don’t think can be completed without cheats. Some of the enemies in Far Cry are brutally strong and determined not to go down. Some of them took three full clips in the head from an assault rifle before they dropped.
Another shortcoming of Far Cry that necessitates using cheats is the lack of a save feature. Your games are saved by checkpoint. The patch updates the frequency of the checkpoint saves, but still, you need to be able to save when you want. How else are you going to try all of those stupid stunts if you can’t save first?
.H1 All for one, one for all
As popular as it is these days, Far Cry of course has a multiplayer aspect. There are three supported multiplayer options: Free For All, in which the player with the most kills wins, Team Deathmatch, where the team with the most kills wins, and Assault, wherein one team assaults a defensive position held by another team.
In the Assault mode, players can choose to be a Grunt, Sniper, or Support troop. These character classes are only available in the Assault mode.
I must confess, I don’t like multiplayer games. Never have, and probably never will, so I didn’t actually check out the multiplayer portion of Far Cry. In fact, in all of the game reviews you see me do, multiplayer will be the one aspect that I don’t actually try out. Considering the hefty system requirements of Far Cry, I wouldn’t recommend trying to tackle multiplayer with a dial-up connection.
.H1 If you build it…
Far Cry also comes with its own level-editing program called the CryEngine Sandbox. With Sandbox, you can create your own mission maps, or full-blown adventures for that matter.
I couldn’t find direction-one for Sandbox, and it has a pretty complicated-looking interface, as you can see in Figure F.
.FIGPAIR F Without instructions, the Sandbox looks pretty complicated.
The good news is that plenty of resources are available in the online Far Cry community, where you can also find other player-created maps, both single and multiplayer.
.H1 Put it all together
And what have we got? One of the most visually appealing and wide-ranging, primarily outdoor FPS games to come along. You’ll need a real workhorse system to play it at the highest graphics setting, but even a moderate machine like mine handled it without too much skipping and jumping.
It’s got some issues. Like low dialog volume, no save-as-you-go feature, and some extremely difficult sections that scream for cheat intervention. But for the most part, Far Cry was a really fun game to play. It definitely had that "just a little bit longer" factor.
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The tropical setting is a nice change from the typical dank dungeon and industrial settings of most shooters. Carrying twice as many missions as most FPS games, Far Cry will give you many hours of enjoyment. I highly recommend it for a ripping good time, and I look forward to a sequel.
I rate Far Cry from Crytek and Ubisoft at 4 out of 5. If not for a few pesky shortcomings, this game could have made a 5.
.RATING 4
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on Far Cry, visit http://www.farcry-thegame.com.
For more information on Ubisoft products, visit http://www.ubisoft.com.
For more information on Crytek, visit http://www.crytek.com.
For more information on Alienware, visit http://www.alienware.com.
For more information on No One Lives Forever, visit http://nolf.sierra.com.
For more information on Red Faction, visit http://www.redfaction.com.
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.BIO
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