Far Cry

The Good
Far Cry is one of the most revolutionary shooters in a long time. It's difficult to classify a game like that, a game that allows you to experience a complete freedom in your actions. We're talking about a FPS game, but you can play it as a perfect tactical shooter.

What makes the game different isn't the diversity of the environments in the game. What makes the game different of another FPS game is its own essence. We're used to play games (not just FPS games) where everything is planned. When the programmers set the enemies on the stages of a game, they set them thinking about the best way to get rid of them, like if everything was planned. Far Cry is the opposite. This game has huge stages with many enemies but we can feel that the programmer didn't mind about how we take care of them. He had no plans about how to kill them when he set the enemies there, they're only there and nothing more. How to take care of the enemies is something that depends just on your decision.

Talking about that, you can kill the enemies in many ways. You can sneak and kill them with your knife (well, some of them...) or just going berserk and killing everything that you see on your screen from a stationary place with a rocket launcher.

Graphics are good, with a high quality physics for everything. We have many stages including heavenly places where to spend your holidays. There are also some inside structures stages, ruins, factories and many more (even a volcano!) that will increase the game's length, which will be increased by game's difficult too (specially in the harder difficulty levels, we will die a lot of times 'till we pass through).

There are many weapons but you can carry just 4. Choose those weapons that you like more because none of them is specially better than the others, it will depend on how do you want to play the game. For example, if you want to be noiseless you'll need the knife, but if you want to kill everything fast you won't need it. There are different vehicles too, from the classic jeep to a hang glider.

Storyline is a bit typical and it reminds me the 80's movies. The main character is something like a superman who may kill a whole camp without messing his hair up (even if we needed 10 attempts...)

The Bad
Checkpoints are a good save system for a game that needs it. To use a manual save system could have ruined many games because it'd be easy to save your game in an inappropriate moment. However, the game is really difficult and that's why you'll hat the checkpoint system many times. Every time that you see the "Saving game" you'll think "well, that's a relief!"

The sound should have been better, specially the radio communications because the default volume is really low. It's the same problem that we have in other games like Bioshock. Even if you're in silence it's difficult to hear what they say (there's no need to say what happens if you're in a middle of a fight). No subs available.

When you start the game you don't know exactly what you're playing. You don't know if you're playing a classic shooter or something more tactical (anyway, you don't know in any moment of the game), that's why in the beginning you'll feel like you're not playing the game as "it should" be played. For example, you take cover on a determined place, hidden in the grass or behind a rock, and you kill a mercenary, the rest of the mercenaries of that area will go there to see what happens and then you start killing them one by one (well, it's not as easy as it sounds, but it could be done), taking care of a whole camp with that strategy. That sensation is something that only happens at the beginning when you don't know what you're playing, but once you've understand how the game works you won't feel it anymore.

Sometimes you want to move stealthily, and of course you go on crawling, but he's too slow. When you try to kill some bad guys that way, you could fail on your attempt, and it's possible that you've spent like 20 minutes to go there with that strategy. If you die, the next time you try, you won't do that again because it needs a lot of time and you'll go there killing everybody as fast as possible (it doesn't mean that you'll survive if you do that way, of course...).

There are many weapons, that's true, but most of them look the same. There are many different machine guns and just one shotgun and one rocket launcher.

The Bottom Line
A really different FPS from other games of this genre. It has many elements of the tactical FPS games but it's not a tactical game at all (but it could be if you want, that's the magic of this game). It's a good choice if you're looking a different game with an almost perfect AI of the enemies and many different ways to progress. If you have no patience don't try unless you want to lose your temper.

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.

The Good
+Graphic +Physics +Story +AI +Fun conversation between mercenaries

The Bad
-Very difficult even on the lowest difficulty -Low amount of weapon arsenal

The Bottom Line
If you dont play this awesome game, you definitely must.