Far Cry is a first person shooter set around 2020 on a set of tropical islands somewhere in the South Pacific. The story and exploits are focused around freelance mariner, Jack Carver. Jack Carver, the hero, has left his mysterious and bitter past behind and dropped out of society to run a charter boat business in the South Pacific. He is hired by a beautiful journalist to take her secretly to an uncharted island in Micronesia. The game begins as mercenaries destroy Jack's boat and he is stranded on the island. You as Jack must find the journalist, help her foil the plans of the evil Dr. Krieger and his evil minions, and get off the island alive.

For a lot of first-person shooters it's easy to simply say it's just another first-person shooter and leave it at that. Fortunately, Far Cry is definitely above average. The first thing you notice about this game when you start is the graphics. They are stunning and everything seems so crisp, detailed and juicy, even at the lowest graphics settings. This is a real island, it's huge, it's green, the sky is a bright blue, the sand is clean and the water sparkles. There are different jungles, rivers, swamps and mountainous beachside cliffs. Of course, there are all of the man-made facilities as well. The physics engine is impressive as well. There's realistic water physics and the foliage provides a realistic amount of cover. Enemies also fall with a rag-doll style effect when shot. Also some structures can be destroyed with the effect being as you would expect in real life. There is no doubt that Far Cry is one of the best looking, if not the best looking, PC game I have ever played. If you are one of those people who has upgraded recently for DOOM 3 or Half-Life 2 you will be in awe. The graphics were impressive even on my non FX - GF4 Ti4600 w/o AA. No game up until now has offered such an incredible sense of immersion thanks to its graphics and style.

The second thing you will immediately notice in the game is that it's extremely difficult, and for good reason - the single-player campaign packs more than 20 hours worth of gameplay. There's no quick save option during the game (developers promised to add this feature in next patch), so you can't manually save your progress. Instead, the game saves at pre-defined checkpoints throughout levels.

Far Cry has pretty unpredictable and intelligent A.I. For instance, if the enemy notices that you're trying to hide, they'll advance to investigate immediately. So, you cannot simply hang back and pick off your enemies one by one - if you try this they actually come and seek you out! It seems the enemies have a very accurate understanding of what the world around them is like and how they can interact with it. Needless to say it puts a lot of pressure on you, giving you a sense of constant threat and danger. Of course, the tension increases when you enter the dark jungles. Even on the lower settings the AI in the game is very alert and smart!

Of course, there are many different kinds of enemies, and some of them are very strange, especially the mutants. There are some scenes when you are up against these creatures that look like they came from the new DOOM 3 that will scare the crap out of you! Weapons are varied and well done. Far Cry features plethora of weapons including Machete, Wrench (if it's needed, you can use it also for melee attacks), Jungle Falcon (a semi-automatic hand-gun), Jack Hammer Shotgun (semi-automatic; perfect for clearing small corridors or rooms with lots of enemies), P90 SMG (it reloads very fast), MP5 SMG (compared to the P90 Submachine Gun, the MP5 is less accurate but comes equipped with a silencer), M4 Karabiner (offers high rate of fire and reasonable accuracy over medium ranges), AG36 Assault Rifle (pretty fast), OICW (Advanced Assault Rifle - equipped with flat trajectory HE munitions), AW50 Sniper Rifle, M249 SAW MG (huge rate of fire; less accuracy), Rocket Launcher (designed to destroy enemy boats and vehicle), Flag Grenades, Flashbang Grenades, Smoke Grenade, binoculars and night vision.

There's also about five different drivable vehicles - Humvee (allows you to transport a lot of people at the same time /in Multiplayer/), Buggy (fast, quiet and pretty strong - designed to get across long distances in every kind of terrain), Zodiac (water's buggy - designed to get across long distances on the water), Gun Boat (fast and strong motorboat, armed with a 50cal, machine gun), Paraglider. In addition, you will be able to drive the vehicles in both 1st and 3rd person, and use powerful mounted weapons while driving.

In terms of multiplayer, the game features 11 maps and Deathmatch, Team-Deathmatch and Assault modes. Two of them are teambased, on of them is single based. The Assault mode is similar to the mode in Battlefield1942. There are also two different teams. One team has the assignment to conquer a base and hold it a certain time. The bases are marked with flags. The other team must detain that. The multiplayer isn't really anything special. But there's Half-Life-like mod loader in the main menu, so we can expect some interesting moods soon.

This is definitely a game I would suggest to buy. It should tie you over since DOOM 3 / Half Life keep getting pushed Far Cry is a game that you simply must play. Buy it. You will not regret it.

Related links: demo (Glider&Humvee mod), demo2, homepage.

gameplay movies: movie1 (2.8MB), movie2 (5.2MB),  movie3 (3.4MB),  movie4 (5.4MB)

System requirements:
Minimum: Windows 98SE/2000/XP (only), 1GHz CPU, 256 MB RAM, 64 MB DirectX 9.0b-compatible graphics card, Sound Card: DirectX 9.0b-compatible PCI card, DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0b (included on disc), DVD-ROM: 4x DVD, 4 GB free HDD space.
Recommended: Windows 98SE/2000/XP (only), AMD Athlon 2400-3000+ or Pentium 4 2-3 GHz, 512-1024 MB RAM, 128 MB GeForce 4 128 MB to GeForce FX 5950; ATI Radeon 9500-9800 XT, Sound Card: Sound Blaster Audigy series, DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0b (included on disc), DVD-ROM: 8x-16x DVD, 4 GB free HDD space.
Multiplayer: Broadband with 64 Kbps upstream to play (512 Kbps upstream to host 8 players)