Far Cry (PC, 2004)

FarCry is the first installment of the Crytek / Ubisoft title , and gets a 4 of 5 from me as a direct result of the game not having any "quicksave" feature. Due to not having a quicksave ability , the game can cause you to run into problems and have to go back to your last "checkpoint" , which are also not frequent , but strewn about your course at random.

The graphics are good although not highly impressive. Seeing as the game involves 1 man against many enemies , it creates an environment where FPS players will like the challenge. There are mostly island jungle missions that connect to the storyline and it's intracacies , without alot of inner building sections. Having no partner , you weive your way through alone picking up ammunition , armour and health. The ammunition is plentiful , but the armour and health packs have to be earned along the way , making the missing quicksave feature , even more noticably needed.

On a scale of 10 , I would recommend that this game is an 8 - due to it's obvious shortcomings. With a quicksave feature , I would give this game a 9 due to it's graphics and playability. FarCry does have plenty of playability if you can ignore the constant need to restart from your most recent checkpoint , if you are killed.

The game does require you to manage your ammunition and the types of weapons you choose to acquire in your arsenal , IE : sniper & assault rifle , or 2 assault rifles and your knife : due to sniper fire upon you.

Even on the easy level , you will have to plan ahead due to numerous enemies who relentlessly search for you on your way through the massive foliage covered jungles. Just when you thought you were safe , there are jungle monsters who cut you with their claws fairly easily and quickly.

The storyline is good enough to keep you interested , but the missing quicksave will have you looking back into the options to find it as a result of repeatedly restarting from a checkpoint (annoying).

It's a jungle game with everything but "quicksave". If you like FPS's with no aircrafts or tanks , this game is for you - you will have alot of fun trying to stay alive long enough to gain your control back.

I recommend this game for FPS players , but I can't say I would highly recommend it - due to it's repetitious requirements with regards to checkpoints.

FARCRY2 : FarCry2 is completely different from the original and lacks playability due to it's repetative storyline. Set on a single map and based on what appears to be mostly African countryside , you repeatedly follow the same roads and meet the same enemies during your missions. Each mission requires you to reach a destination located on the map , via the same roads. It can get boring driving jeeps around to find your mission locations.

I would give FarCry2 a 4 of 5 and 8 of 10 due to a lack of structures. There are few buildings to navigate through , and there are also no tunnels underground. In pursuit of the Jackle who supplied guns to 2 sides in their wars , there is little accept repetative gameplay and driving.

The good parts of FarCry2 are that the weapons are good and authentic with no spaceage weaponry. Being that there is so much repetition you will want to walk instead of drive , leaving yourself open for a long walk in open fields.

As you proceed through the game you will encounter weapons that jam and some surprise attacks by your enemies , but nothing that could be called a battle.

I saw this on the shelf when it came out a few years ago, but my computer at the time didn't have enough RAM & a powerful enough video card to play. I recently upgraded my system and found the game here on Ebay, and boy is it a little overlooked classic! First of all, it's a great OUTDOOR first person shooter. There aren't many FPS that allow you such freedom of movement and the feeling of immersion in the jungle. The Island that you're on allows for many different scenarios and there are missions from jungle chaos to caves, to bunkers, to forts, to abandoned ships....The variety of weapons are great, the enemy AI is fairly intelligent and challenging especially at the hardest level. Lots of attention was made to sounds and detail in this game and it adds to the excitement of finding out what's around the next corner/tree! The developers had a sense of humor also. You can spy on enemies with your binoculars and listen to their often hilarious conversations. Another cool aspect of this game is the ability to drive vehicles and boats. Powerful weapons accompany them and sometimes it's just fun to drive around the jungle!

Anyway, tell your girlfriend/wife to go out for awhile, because if you get this game, you'll probably be playing it for several nights - deep into the morning hours! It even holds up graphic and gameplay-wise to standards of current games.

Rating applies only to installation.

The version I got had 5 CDs. I didn't know it came that way. I had only seen the DVD version before. The install program hangs on the 2nd CD. The script simply doesn't continue reading the 2nd CD (other than to detect if the proper CD was inserted). Since it never continues reading the CD, it never continues extracting files from the .cab files. The install hangs on the 2nd CD. The install script was coded back when Windows XP hosts had MSI (Microsoft Installer) 3.1. Almost all XP users would now have version 4.5 due to subsequent Windows updates. So it could be the install script won't work with the new installer.

It is not a problem of not being able to read the 2nd CD. I can copy all files off of it onto the hard drive without any errors. So I figured to copy all files from all 5 of the install CDs into a folder on the hard drive and run the install from there. Nope, you get a 1607 Installshield error. I tried using msconfig to disable all startup items but still no go. Cannot reboot into Windows' Safe Mode because the MSI service is unavailable upon which the game installer relies. I was about to give up when I decided to try the install inside a virtual machine that has a clean install of Windows XP but with all updates except for IE8 (XP comes with IE6 which was upgraded to IE7 but I stopped there). In the VM, the msi.dll (for the MS Installshield library) is at version 3.1. That is the version for which the game installer's script was written. The install completed okay inside the VM. I was concerned that it would complain about the emulated video controller not meeting minimum specs but it didn't check during installation.

I've had this game on this same host before but it was the DVD version. The auction didn't mention it was for a 5-CD version (and I probably would've waited until a DVD version came up for sale in my price range). There is one other possibility that I didn't test. On my host, I have auto-run disabled for the CD/DVD drives. This is because it is a security hole to allow removable media to automatically execute programs when media is inserted. The 2nd to 5th install CD would normally auto-run a noautorun.exe program which might be a means of detecting and using the newly inserted CD. In the virtual machine where the install progressed normally and successfully, I do not have auto-run disabled. So I don't know if the successful install inside the VM was due to it having the older MSI version (3.1 instead of 4.5) or from its noautorun.exe executing using the auto-run feature in Windows for removable drives. I suspect it was due to having an older version of MSI available in the VM.

The VM emulates all hardware except the CPU; however, it is old hardware that gets emulated which won't meet the minimum specs needed for the game. So I copied the install folder through a shared folder on my host and moved it to where I wanted. Luckily the game doesn't rely on any registry entries to run so copying the folder of game files was all I needed. The game loads okay on my real host (haven't played it yet but the install was the first hurdle to circumvent).

I managed to get it installed but what a pain. The DVD version never had this installation hang. If not for having a VM with old MSI 3.1 version, I would have never got this installed (and then copied to my real host).

If you haven't checked game out yet, do yourself a favor and do it now!

Why is Far Cry Great?

Graphics + Story + Gameplay = Complete Game!

GRAPHICS
Domo 3 may be getting all the accolades for it's graphics right now but nothing is cooler than running abount a series of Island and being able to see the trees swaying in the wind a MILE away. Seriously, how can you ask for more? Booootiful boootiful graphics is all I have to say. When the game first starts you are in a small cramped cave, a la' Doom3, and your first thought it wow great visuals. This is basically the un-avoidable tutorial section. However it is quickly over and next thing you now you are stepping outside. @#$%@$#%@ holy crap!! I found myself rubbing my eyes. There was no way this was a real, it had to be some sort of fake out. Before me was a full fledged real life system of islands, with swaying trees, moving grass, wildlife, ocean water with a tidal effect! Did I say holy crap?? Soon you obtain a set of binoculars, and you think to yourself OK now I can find out how real this really is. Zooming in on an Island in the distance I was thinking to myself "no way they let me actually see this island in the distan....@$#%#@$% there are people on that island and they are moving!!" ...AND the parabolic mic in my Binocs is letting me hear what they are saying. And not a repetitive conversation! Real words, real story line dialogue! Holly crap.

STORY
I don't want to be crass but in this day in age we all should expect more from a game story line than find the $^%$ key! And Far Cry delivers, with a full fledges plot that drives the game play. You start out trying to evade capture from mercenaries on a set of islands, which turn out to be the experimenting grounds of a Dr. Moreau type, creating mutant monstrosities.

Slowly but surely you are pulled into a quest to put a stop to things, however it is all done in away that you are never thinking at any point WHY??

GAMEPLAY
Sniping from a mile away, driving boats, jeeps, flying hang gliders? Playing evade and capture. Stopping the mad rush of a swarm of mutants. Setting up a bomb to play up a radio bunker. All in one game? YES YES YES. Searching for the key to some crappy door just to shoot more baddies.. NOT IN THIS GAME! Nothing is cooler than watching a firefight between the escaped mutants and the Island mercenaries from a mile away, letting kill each other off, before setting up your sniper rifle and picking off the remainders. Of rushing through the mayhem to steal a jeep and escape across and Island while a full out battle rages around you. Strong AI rounds out this game, but enemies responding to noises that you make and using a variety of TACTICS to hunt you down.

All in all with this new price drop if you own a PC for gaming you cannot afford to pass up on this game!

As a previous owner of this title, I have to say that this is by far one of the prettiest, and most difficult, first person shooters (FPS) I've ever played, and I'm glad I'm getting another copy!

For those of you not familiar with the game, here is about as brief a synopsis as I can possibly write: you're some type of secret agent dude, looking to rescue a secret agent dudette on a tropical island. There's some type of paramilitary research facility where they are creating nasty mutants that are trying to kill everybody on the island. Basically, get the girl and get out of Dodge!

Graphically, when this game first came out, many computers couldn't handle the demands. Now, with cheap computers and graphics cards for under $100 that can handle nearly anything, this game doesn't come close to stressing out a computer. Keeping that in mind, nevertheless this game is beautiful to look at, even if one is own sitting back and watching another play. The water looks inviting, the trees and grass sway with the breeze, birds and bugs fly by.

Now for audio: the soundtrack is good, paced with the action of the game. Sound effects seem true-ish, although I haven't fired many of the weapons. Subtle sound effects are there, too. Overall, the sound adds to the atmosphere.

The AI for bots is very good, and they seem to work together as a team. For instance, in one firefight, at the foot of a stone stairway leading up a mountain, two guards were firing at me from two different angles, while three others crouched low and circled from behind. On a base, when you're trying to shoot at targets, one of the bots will try to sound the alarm to call for reinforcements. The AI is almost scary.

Game play itself is standard fare: WASD controls, mouselook, etc. Other features, though, like the many levels of zoom, binoculars that also pick up sound from whatever is being looked at, etc., make this an overall well-polished game that gave Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 a run for the money! Anybody who hasn't played this game is really missing out on some FPS goodness.

My current system is an AMD Ahtlon 64x2 3800+, with 2 GB RAM, 1.5TB HD space, DVD+/-RW, Sapphire ATI Radeon 3850 w/512 MB, and Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Exteme Audio sound card with a Logitech 5.1 surround system and a Gateway 22" LCD (1680 x 1050). Game runs smooth as glass on my rig, with 84 FPS (as measured with Fraps) when everything is maxed out. Good enough for me.