Far Cry

aka: FC, Far Cry Classic, X-Isle, X-Isle: Dinosaur Island
Moby ID: 12534
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

You play Jack Carver, a charter-boat businessman in Micronesia, on a job to escort Valerie Cortez, an ambitious journalist, to the island of Cabatu. The next thing you know someone's blown up your boat (and with that, everything you owned in the world), kidnapped Valerie, and left you for dead. Your job now is to rescue Valerie and get back at the soldiers who destroyed everything you had.

Proprietary Polybump mapping, advanced environment physics, destructible terrain, dynamic lighting, motion-captured animation, surround sound and the ability to render an entire kilometer of actual terrain in real time all showcase CryTek's new CryENGINE.

Advanced A.I. means enemy soldiers make realistic decisions based on observations of the current state of the world. These highly trained mercenaries are designed to utilize environmental features, attack in groups, divide and conquer, respond to player actions, and call in reinforcements from air, land, or sea.

Far Cry ships with a Sand Box Editor, allowing you to create and edit your own maps with an easy drag and drop interface.

Spellings

  • 孤岛惊魂 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 極地戰嚎 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

428 People (351 developers, 77 thanks) · View all

Developed by
  • Crytek GmbH
CEO and President
COO/CFO & Executive Vice President
CMO & Executive Vice President
Creative & Technical Director
Executive Producers
Producers
Assistant Producers
Lead Programmer
AI Lead
Multiplayer Lead Programmer
AI & Game Programming
3D Engine Lead
Physics Lead
Sandbox Lead
Renderer Lead
Animation & 64bit Programming
CryEngine Optimisations
Optimisations & Dot-3 Lightmaps
Multiplayer Programming
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 87% (based on 50 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 205 ratings with 13 reviews)

Good looking FPS

The Good
Of course, the graphics, It's nothing but really really beautiful. The view distance is nice, you can see the bad guys helicopter take off and come towards you from miles away, and when he's close enough you blast him with the rocket launcher and all bad guys fall out screaming into the water way below. It is for moments like that I'm a gamer....

I also like the simple gameplay in the first missions. Enemies are stupid and easy to kill, you just reload your sniper rifle and move on to the next pretty little island.

With the binoculars you can listen to the enemies conversations. This is a neat thing imo, and they're pretty fun to listen to.

One more thing : the ragdolls. When you kill someone, he sometimes ends up in hilarious positions (like sitting up, or standing against a door). I had many laughs from this.

The Bad
The story is bad. I don't even know why they bother, it would be ok with me if the story was just "this guy wanted to kill people and blow things up on a tropical island".

The game also becomes insanely difficult towards the end. The enemies become better at aiming and wear more armor. I guess this could be good for some, but I just want to kill and move on, not reload the autosave 37 times.

The Bottom Line
Buy this game, it's worth it. Everyone will be talking about it, you don't want to be left behind do you?

No doubt, this is the 2004 game of the year.

Windows · by Grov (657) · 2004

Just a little touch of paradise...

The Good
Way back in 2001, nVIDIA was shown a technology demo called X-Isle: Dinosaur Island by a small development company known as CryTek, to showcase the capabilities of nVIDIA's new third-generation GPU. nVIDIA was impressed and realized that it had potential, that CryTek was happy to turn it into a complete game, just without the dinosaurs.

Players control Jack Carver, a former special-forces soldier now in the boat charter business, is hired by a woman named Valerie Constantine to take her to an uncharted island in Micronesia. Val knows that something is about to happen so she takes off in a jet ski. Jack's boat is blown up by mercenaries for some reason we don't know. Perhaps the mercs have a bad history dealing with people in Hawaiian shirts. He is left stranded on one of the islands where he uncovers a more sinister plot.

Early on in the game, players pick up a communications device in which Carver uses to make contact with Doyle, who helps him accomplish missions such as stealing a vehicle from a camp and cutting off communication between the islands. Preventing him from doing this will be mercs and creatures that were developed in a lab you eventually infiltrate at the end of the game. You can deal with these situations through stealth or going out with guns blazing.

The artificial intelligence of the mercs is brilliant. They are able to detect noise and go investigate where that noise is coming from – as indicated on Carver's radar - so it is important to get down on the ground and crawl like a snake. When they do spot Carver, they will open fire and move about in a specific pattern, making it difficult to get a clear shot. One thing I find amusing is the way they hide behind trees or rocks and demand where you are.

You can take down enemies with a variety of weapons such as handguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and rocket launchers, with each weapon more effective in certain situations. The rocket launchers, for example, is ideal for blowing up enemies from a long distance. You can only carry four weapons at a time, but can drop one of yours for something a bit better.

Another thing that Carver carries around with him is a pair of binoculars. Not only can these be used to locate any enemies in a distance, but its built-in sound enhancer allows him to eavesdrop on conversations. I found that most of these conversations interesting, since they usually give you a hint on what you need to do later.

As I just mentioned, you have to steal a vehicle from one of the camps, but you also have a chance to commandeer trucks and patrol boats and jeeps. It may be fun to drive around and mow down enemies that get in your way, but these transport is prone to damage, possibly by mercs aiming their rockets at it. My personal favorite are the hang gliders that give you a bird's-eye views of the island, and it is easy to control them once you get used to it.

I normally avoided going out too far into the horizon, for fear it would send unwanted choppers to my location. I also liked driving the jeeps as it allows you to mow down any merc that happens to get in your way. The highlight of this game is using the binoculars that you pick up earlier to not only look at distant areas close-up but to eavesdrop on the enemy's conversations. The conversations are interesting, with some talking about Carver. You can also haul a grenade in their direction, and they become alerted, actually trying to hone in on your location.

Far Cry was the first game that utilized the CryEngine, which was quite new at the time. The engine provided humongous indoor and outdoor areas, as well as the ability to see long distances. There were times that I really wanted to wander off the main island and go exploring an island that is completely isolated, but I risked summoning an attack helicopter that cannot be shot down, even if you hurl a few rockets at it. Also, I like the shadows that get reflected on whatever weapon you are carrying as you pass by palm trees. By the way, I like how they just sprout out from the ground as you approach the island.

Far Cry uses a checkpoint system, in which the game is automatically saved when you cover a certain distance. I quite like this system, because you are not limited to a certain amount of save slots and it allows you to go back and play each chapter again if you like the missions that occur in that chapter.

The game comes with its own sandbox editor that allow players to create their own levels, and there are plenty of mods out there for other players to have a go at. In my opinion, the best mod out there is “First Contact”, a mission that has you exploring the planet Hestia evaluating its possible risk/benefit to humanity. It features a beautiful alien world and contains a story well worth diving into. There are even total conversions that upgrade the game to today's standards.

The Bad
The action turns to dark red when the mercs are shooting at you from all directions. This, combined with the flashes their bullets produce, is enough to hurt your eyes. Also, when you attempt to take out an enemy using the sniper rifle, the crosshair jumps around even if you don't move the mouse, making it difficult to get a clear shot.

I talked about how the artificial intelligence of the mercs is brilliant: the way they move and shoot, making it difficult for you to get a clear shot. But some of their actions are questionable. I've seen one merc stand behind another while opening fire, resulting in the merc in front go down. Then, there's the situation where you throw a grenade at a merc just standing in the same spot. In this case, he will stand there waiting to be blown up.

I didn't like how Val kept Carver company near the end of the game. The annoying thing about her is the way that she gets ahead of you and risk being shot at. She can get killed, and when she does, you get killed as well and you have to go back to the last checkpoint, even if you are not low on health.

Also, I found the ending to be rather weak.

The Bottom Line
In conclusion, Far Cry is so much better than any first-person shooters before its time. It basically has you walking through breathtaking locations, shooting down mercs that get in your way and completing a set of mission objectives given to you. You can use binoculars to spy on enemies and overhear their conversation, and throw grenades at them occasionally and watch them hunt you down. You can use any weapon you like to take them out, with the basic weapons ideal for taking out enemies earlier in the game. (Too bad about the sniper rifle.) The more heavier weapons are effective against enemy vehicles.

As I mentioned before, users can create their own maps and distribute them freely on the Internet. To be fair, Far Cry isn't the first game to be shipped with a sandbox editor of its kind. Half-Life came out a lot earlier and shipped with the WorldCraft editor.

For their first game, Crytek did an excellent job on making Far Cry reflect real-life situations and introducing features that were unusual for a first-person shooter before its time. The graphics and sound are great, and any FPS gamer should purchase this.

Windows · by Katakis | カタキス (43092) · 2017

One more step along the world I go

The Good
Far Cry reminds me of a lot of games, ranging from antediluvian classics such as Midwinter and Hunter, to relatively recent titles such as Delta Force, Trespasser, and Operation Flashpoint. Like all of those games it takes place mostly in the open air, and gives you considerable freedom of movement and action. You can hide in the bushes, steal buggies, climb up mountains, and sneak around. And you can also blow things up with a small arsenal of explosive and projectile weapons. The basic plot is that you are a beefcake man and you are trapped on an island and you have to follow a voice on the radio and you have a sidekick who is a thin bulletproof woman with hotpants and you have to kill a scientist who is old but muscled (like an old wrestler) and there is a twist and then you kill a second scientist THE END.

Far Cry is a game of two halves. It is rather like Half-Life in this respect. The first half is excellent. Far Cry starts off as an arcade-style variation of the "soldier sim". You are in the jungle and you have to kill mercenary soldiers and blow things up. With a nip and a tuck and more work this could have been an excellent Vietnam War / Malaya Emergency game, although it does boil down to a series of little encampments that you assault one at a time. You cannot run very fast, you cannot run or swim indefinitely, you can only take a few hits to your uncovered body, and you cannot fall great distances. Your weapons resemble real-life weapons rather than science fiction laser guns. The mixture of stealth and fighting is well-balanced, and best of all the baddies are clever. They duck behind cover and wait; they try to run around you, and they move realistically, rather than the aerial flea-hopping of other games. If you alert the enemy, they will come after you, whereas in other games alerted baddies tend to flap about for twenty seconds before returning to their patrol, even if their buddy has just been shot dead right next to them. You can steal buggies and speedboats, and also a surprisingly addictive rubber dinghy that feels fast, because your viewpoint is six inches about the rushing, undulating water.

The graphics are famously attractive and also famously hard on your computer. No matter what you have under the hood, Far Cry wants more; a faster processor, faster and more memory, and a better graphics card. Thankfully the game will run on relatively modest equipment, and although the water effects are simplified, it still looks mighty fine, like a woman. Some of the game's vistas are breathtaking; on several occasions the levels are designed so that you exit a cramped tunnel directly onto a sweeping mountain view. Far Cry's terrain is undulating and the foliage is detailed. The game prompted me to cry a tear for the notoriously unfinished Trespasser. Like that game, Far Cry has lots of plants and trees and a physics engine, and it takes place on an island, but it all hangs together whereas Trespasser fell apart. Far Cry's physics engine is of the standard bouncy-moon-gravity variety, and plays no real part in the gameplay, although there are a few instances when you can push barrels onto the heads of the baddies. It is noticeable that your bullets are not affected by gravity, and consequently long-range shooting is trivially easy.

The Bad
The second half of Far Cry is less impressive. The game can model indoors and outdoors environments at the same time, but generally there is a level load between the two. The indoors segments are relatively uninteresting, because they are like a lot of other, similar games. The maps have lots of detail - not as much as Doom 3, although there is more variety - but they are just standard techbase maps. There are fewer opportunities for stealth whilst indoors, and the immersion is broken when grenades and gunfire do not alert enemies in the next area.

For a game that looks so good, the cutscenes and dramatic sections are very poor. The pre-rendered cutscenes are unattractive and add nothing to the drama. The in-game cutscenes are reminiscent of Resident Evil, from as far back as 1996, in that the actors gesticulate wildly and continuously as they talk. Every phrase is accompanied with hyperactive shrugs and points. I suspect that the programmers wanted to show off their ability to capture realistic motion, and therefore decided to have as much motion as possible, any motion, all the time. The voice acting of the main characters is decent. Our hero Jack Carver seems to be modelled on Bruce Campbell. The soldiers that you fight have a set of stock phrases that they use over and over again. It made me appreciate, yet again, the brilliance of Half-Life, in which the stock voice phrases were sparingly used, or distorted so as to become sinister. In Far Cry, you are attacked by mercenary soldiers who sound like beach bums, and shout "How'd you like them apples!" over and over again, as they attack you. There isn't even a good end-game sequence.

The third strike is fatal, and kills the game for me. As with Half-Life, Far Cry has a stock of inhuman monsters to compliment the human ones. Whereas the monsters of Half-Life were imaginative and well-executed, the monsters of Far Cry move like men in ape suits and look like shambling blobs. They are apparently mutated monkey-men. Most of them can kill you with a single swipe of their claws - from what looks like beyond their arms' length - and they take a great deal of damage before expiring. This kind of instant death gameplay does not appeal to me. The big ones generally stand still, and fire missiles that travel slower than you can run, which looks ridiculous. Some of the monsters can leap like Spiderman, but without Spiderman's commitment to justice and fair play. Some are invisible. They are uninteresting and bore me. And when they are involved, the difficulty level goes off the rails. It is as if a second team of programmers had been brought in for a few weeks, to finish the game off, and these people were angry at the world. The difficulty level goes through spikes, in that there are a small number of extraordinarily hard sequences dotted throughout the game. It is hard, in an unfair way. The big monsters simply absorb too much ammunition before they die, and there usually isn't a "clever" way to get around them.

The game has a day-night-day-night cycle. During the night-time you can only see with your torch, which is ineffective in the open air, and with your night vision goggles, which run out of power after a few minutes. Thankfully they recharge, but this is a slow process. The game therefore often becomes a cycle of advancing with night vision, waiting for a few minutes, and then advancing again, as you cannot afford to blunder around in the dark.

During the final quarter of the game you have a sidekick. She is not as stupid as most other computer game sidekicks, but she is nonetheless not the brightest star in the firmament. A lot of the time she waits for you to clear out the next area, which is fine by me, but the concept of sidekicks reminds me too much of those old levels from "X-Wing", whereby you had to protect a damaged Rebel Alliance cruiser / hospital ship against wave after wave of TIE Fighters and - oh dear - after half an hour it would be destroyed by a sneak attack and you would fail the mission.

The Bottom Line
This game is part of an evolutionary chain. At the beginning of this review I mentioned Midwinter, a British computer game from 1990. Midwinter was set on a frozen island, which was rendered in solid 3D with attractive, undulating terrain. You were a resistance leader, and there were several ways you could retake the island, most of which shooting at or capturing people and vehicles. Far Cry is much the same, but less grandiose, with a level-based structure, and modern technology. There will be others like it. I wonder what will come next?

Windows · by Ashley Pomeroy (225) · 2006

[ View all 13 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The PC version of Far Cry appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Development

The game actually started out as a tech demo made by Crytek, to demonstrate the capabilities of Nvidia's (then) new graphics chip, the GeForce 3. Much like what happened with Serious Sam: The First Encounter, it then got turned into the complete game it is now.

German version

The German government agencies for the protection of children are not to be trifled with – a lesson that publisher UbiSoft learned the hard way with Far Cry.

Due to realistic violence, especially with regard to the ragdoll model of the enemies, the full English version of Far Cry was banned in Germany by the federal agency BPjM on April 2nd 2004, meaning that any kind of advertisement for this version is forbidden, and it may only be sold on request to persons aged 18 or older.

UbiSoft and developer Crytek had anticipated this, and created a special version of Far Cry for the German market – the usual procedure to abide by the strict German standards. In this version, ragdoll models were disabled. As expected, the modified version was rated “18+” by the USK, the official German rating board. Any game with a USK rating may only be sold to persons of the specified age group, but is protected from being banned. UbiSoft produced and shipped a large amount of copies of this German version, which hit stores on March 25th 2004.

At that time, the BPjM judgment on the English version was pending. The BPjM testers quickly found out what was already widely circulated in the Internet: Crytek had not physically removed the ragdoll model from the German Far Cry, they had just disabled it -- and every user could turn the feature back on with just a few simple modifications. This made the German version identical to the English one. Identical content is the one criterion that would allow the BPjM to ignore a USK rating and ban a game. That, however, had never happened.

Up to now. On April 2nd 2004, the BPjM banned the German version of Far Cry along with the English one, on accounts of identical content. From one day to the next, stores nationwide were no longer allowed to display the boxes of the most popular, extremely successful action game.

UbiSoft’s reaction was feverish, yet professional. As soon as word had spread that a ban was imminent, the company started the production of a new, non-modifiable German version to replace its now worthless predecessor. This second edition retained the USK rating “18+” and was distributed two weeks later, on April 15th. UbiSoft took back all copies of the previous version at its own cost.

The German second edition cover of Far Cry is easily recognizable by a big red box in the upper right corner containing the line “Deutsche Version” (German version). If you happen to own one of the banned first editions, you should probably hold on to it; over time, it may become a collector’s piece.

Graphics

The game allows you to set a way to render it, such as the bright "Paradise," the dim "Cold," or the cel-shaded "Cartoon."

Patch 1.3 of the game adds support for HDR lighting (high dynamic range lighting) on the new nVidia GeForce FX 6xxx line of graphics cards. Its inclusion makes Far Cry the first commercial game to support HDR lighting!

This feature increases visual quality in the game tremendously, improving the detail and dynamic range between light and dark, and simulating lens exposure effects between light and dark areas of the image.

The feature is not accessible from the game configuration screen, but must be enabled via the command line, console or config file. The feature is not available on ATI's competing generation of graphics cards due to the implementation/hardware limitations.

Mods

Far Cry fans have created an unofficial modification that adds a Capture the Flag multiplayer mode and comes with five new maps.

Far Cry seems to be on its way to become the most longevous game in history. Following the visual change that patch 1.3 meant by enabling HDR, two patches were released to bring the game up to the world of 64 bits. While they don't really take advantage of any 64-bit specific features, these patches do improve graphics even further, and they add a couple of new levels and some other stuff.

What, you didn't make the jump to 64-bit yet? Fret not. Most of those graphical enhancements are available for 32-bit users as well, via a little thing called the FC 64ecu to 32os conversion patch.

Movie

The game became a movie in 2008. The main character Jack Carver is played by Til Schweiger. Although it does not stick to the game's storyline, it cuts close with the setting and game elements. German investor Boll KG bought the rights to turn the game into a movie franchise in February 2004, a month before the game hit stores.

Patch 1.2

In July 2004, patch 1.2 was soon recalled after the release, due to unexpected behaviour on specific hardware configurations. There was no fix released afterwards. Users had to revert to 1.1 and then wait until October 2004 for a new patch (1.3).

Title

On May 28, 2002, developer Crytek changed the game’s name from X-Isle to Far Cry. The “X” was too allusive of Microsoft’s game console X-Box.

Awards

  • 4Players
    • 2004 – Biggest PC Surprise of the Year
  • GameSpy
    • 2004 – #9 PC Game of the Year
    • 2004 – Special Achievement in Graphics Award (together with DOOM³)
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • February 2005 - Best German PC Game in 2004 (Readers' Vote)
  • Golden Joystick Awards
    • 2004 - Runner up to DOOM³ in the "PC Game of the Year" category
  • PC Gamer
    • April 2005 - #18 in the "50 Best Games of All Time" list
  • PC Powerplay (Germany)
    • issue 01/2005 - Best German Game in 2004

Information also contributed by -Chris, Dr. M. "Schadenfreude" Von Katze, MAT, piltdown man, Sciere, Tiebes80 and Zack Green

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Cyberzed.

PlayStation 3 added by Sciere. Xbox 360 added by Kabushi.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, tarmo888, Sciere, Kabushi, PhoenixFire, Yearman, Patrick Bregger, Victor Vance, FatherJack, 一旁冷笑.

Game added March 24, 2004. Last modified March 7, 2024.