Far Cry Review

[SALvation]

You are Jack Carver, a charter boat captain, taking a female report, Val Cortez, to investigate some islands in the tropics. She goes off for a closer look on a wave rider. You remain behind. Someone blows up your boat with a rocket launcher. You are able to swim to shore, where there are weird creatures and also mercenaries chasing you.... back into the water, where you wind up in an underground cave and the game begins....

The game is massive. The version I previewed comes in on DVD, more than 3 gigabytes. There will probably also be a CD-ROM version on 5 or 6 disks.

The islands are tremendous and are about as realistic as it gets. It is a very bright, colorful and sunny environment. You can see over great distances, and anything you can see, you can get to. There are lots of brush and trees everywhere, useful for hiding, a wide variety of terrain, both in the islands and also in the ocean. The water is very well done, and the beach has some nice surf effects. You also see birds, clouds, fish, and wind effects. The birds, strangely enough are there, and then gone. I am not sure if it is a bug, or a problem with not having a good enough frame rate. There lots of lookout towers, satellite dishes, radio towers, etc., to explore (and blow up). The skins and textures used throughout the game are very nice. The bump-mapping is very well done on many surfaces. The player model and NPCs are very detailed. The game features a lot of special effects. Being in the range of a grenade will muffle your hearing for a period of time. A flash-bang grenade will white out everything, and as that fades you will see the burned in image of whatever you were last looking at...

The physics are also great. That has pretty much become par for the course, but it seems like they have done a little extra for this game. You can knock stuff over. Crates and bodies knocked into water will bob. Enemies shot into the water will bleed on top of the water. Blasts are more spectacular and also devastating. You have objects you can shoot in order to cause chain reactions that can kill enemies. Shooting hanging lights will cause the beam to dance around. The light effects are very well done, you also see this in the enemies at night when they move their flashlights from side to side.

They have done extensive work on the enemy AI. The enemies will work together as a team. You will see things like cover fire, diversions, stalking, and flanking maneuvers. This not your standard mass of enemies all attacking at once. Taking out a team leader will disrupt their team tactics, and they will then work on a solo basis, and may be easier to take out. There are problems in rooms, but that is to be expected. Enemies will run past you, and the way they come in and out of doors is problematic, but I think every game has issues like this. The enemies are generated at the time the level starts, rather than respawning. It can be irritating in some games to clear an area, cross a checkpoint, and then have enemies coming out of the buildings you have already cleared. Although the enemies are clever and work together, you can improve your game by listening to audio cues. They will yell when you are seen, yell when they lose you, yell when they are calling for reinforcements, and yell when they are reloading. Still for many of the areas, there are too many enemies to fight. The stealth, brush and cover is better used at these points, and rather than confronting the enemies, it may be better to thin them out while at the fringes. The problem with stealth is that if you are seen, then you can wind up being attacked by enemies on multiple sides. There is a standard way to do things, but the game is fairly open ended. In some areas you can skip checkpoints entirely. Because of the huge open settings, you can probably go around most dangerous areas in order to avoid damage. Because of the enemy AI, you are guaranteed a different experience each time you approach a group of enemies. Sound will alert enemies as to your presence. The way this happens however is not uniform, and it appears to be a line of sight thing. The sound will carry for extended distances across open spaces, but will not go around corners to nearby enemies as you would expect.

The game play works with a series of checkpoints for your progress. There is no save game option. You have a series of profiles to work with, and they contain levels and checkpoints passed. The checkpoints appear to be fairly well balanced. Some games can be irritating with unnecessary repetition. Hopefully this game avoids that.

Visually, this game is stunning. It is really one of the first to utilize all of the advanced special effects in pixel shader 2.0 / DirectX 9. For the eye-candy --- the ideal is to be able to run the game at 1600 X 1200 with all visual effects turned on. I don't think the system has been built that can do that yet (and get a decent frame rate). It seems like with some of the DirectX 9 games, the controls can appear to suffer from 'lag' in single player mode, just moving around in an empty building, much worse in open areas with multiple enemies. That is very unacceptable, and it becomes magnified in multiplayer mode. The game features settings where you can specify your system specifications - low, medium, high or very high, it adjusts the settings from there. I ran the game with a Geforce 5900 and a 2400 MHz Pentium. It gave a default of medium, 1024 X 768, no anti-aliasing. I found that to be a little laggy however, so I turned it down to 800 X 600, and that was acceptable. Of course it is all disappointing, but it is to be expected. In the quest for realistic game play we have the hardware and the software taking turns playing catch up. For the past two years since the ATI 9700, the current top hardware had been more than adequate to play anything thrown at them with fantastic resolutions and frame rates. Not the case with the new DirectX 9 games coming out. I think it will probably be one to two years before video cards come out that can really do these games justice. Just a simple experiment with frame rates, I found @ 1600X1200 Very high with anti-aliasing gets 15 fps inside, 2-11 fps outside. Very unplayable. 1024*768, Very high, gets up to 28 fps. 800X600 gets 40 fps, and moving the graphics settings to medium, 800X600 gets about 50 fps. Turning off the anti-aliasing gets an additional 10 fps. It is a bit of experimenting to find what works best and provides the best visuals. I found 800X600 with no anti-aliasing and high detail settings to be a very nice experience. 30 fps sustained is the minimum for a game to be playable. I would want to see at least 60 fps, that should allow enough of a threshold. The 50 fps is manageable, but it lags at times. For multiplayer, the eye candy is irrelevant. It can all go off for maximum response time.

I also see a lot of problems with the graphics. There is a lot of flashing, as if from a dirty screen buffer. That may be a problem with either DirectX 9 or my video driver (both recent), but then again I have not seen that in other games, so....

The controls are fairly standard fare. Most players will be used to the setup. You can also lean to the sides, and there is a prone position to get past low obstacles and also to hide from enemies. Weapons have an additional shooting mode. Holding down the right mouse button will activate a 'zoom' feature. Not too much with a handgun, but more so with a machine gun. In addition, hold the spacebar to hold your breath for further accuracy. I don't find either to be very accurate at a distance. Enemies are harder to kill and it is difficult to blow things up. The game does feature headshots, which makes it easier to take out enemies, once you adjust the mouse to suit your aiming speed, and also adjust the visual settings to get rid of any lag.

One of the selling points of the game is the vehicles. Jeeps, boats, hand gliders, etc. The vehicles can take damage. They can also host weapons, which help for clearing areas. There are also fixed grenade/gun placements, useful for shooting or taking out large groups of enemies. The game has a third person view available in the vehicles which can help with maneuvering them.

The player has the standard health and armor setup and an additional stamina bar. This is used for sprinting, jumping and swimming, which will all temporarily use up some stamina. On the lower left there is a compass. All enemies have transponders and they show up in the compass. It also points to your next destination. There is also a stealth-o-meter which will notch upward as enemies hear or see you. Binoculars help extend your range of vision (and hearing) and will pinpoint enemies in the distance.

Overall, I was very impressed with this game. It is the first real fully next-generation game available. For this game unfortunately, it is either eye candy or playability. Although the game still looks great with the settings turned down, you wish that you could have both. It is unfortunate that this will probably continue to be the case in other highly anticipated games due to come out this year, at least until the hardware fully catches up.