Suskie's Far Cry review

On release, Far Cry seemed like a masterstroke of first-person shooting to me. In the years since, HL2 and BioShock have rendered everything else in the genre absolutely irrelevant, but I still enjoy blasting through the first few hours of Far Cry more than most other shooters. An eight seemed harsh initially, but in retrospect it's probably about right, if only for the ridiculous Trigens. On a good day, though, I'd suggest it deserves the extra mark for being just like LOST. ;)

I've always wanted to review this game but never did (and probably never will) because I love so much and hate so much about the game that I don't know where to begin. It would probably turn out to be 20k.

Uh... except Lost actually has a good plot?

I want to play this game now. Haha

This was a great review. From the very start, you catch my interest; with the numerous sarcastic and witty bts, you keep me entertained. And when you move into the description of the game itself, your transitions and explanations are well-written and engaging. The only part I didn't like about this review was the second-to-last paragraph, where you talk about the Trigens or whatever. It sort of felt like you lost your steam there - the transition was weak, that sort of thing. But the way you inevitably concluded the review worked well... Overall, though, great read.

One thing, though:

Using the think jungles to your advantage is the obvious course of action, and the open-ended level design ofFar Cry

Typos

Lost has a plot at all? I thought the entire plot was that crazy people were crazy. Go figure.

I'd bought the 360 version of this last night off Ebay for pennies before this review went up. I'll have to see how the console version stacks.

Thanks for your comments, Wolfqueen, and for spotting those typos. This was the first review I wrote on my new laptop, and I made a number of mistakes while adjusting to the smaller keyboard. I thought I'd caught them all, but obviously I was mistaken.

Also, EmP: Is the 360 version even the same game? I haven't played it yet so I have no idea how it compares.

I'd have been much more harsh, I loved the first 1/3 of Far Cry but just had to stop playing two or three chapters into the monkey part.

To be honest I expected a bash review. It was a good read, but from the first moment I started reading, I remembered how much I hate Farcry with it's AI. You see, they can shoot you from a mile away, through the sodding forest, straight in your bloody face each and every time. I swear, I think all of those mercenaries, every single one has the potential for being the best marksman on the face of the planet.

That's an interesting comment, DE, because I definitely didn't have that problem. I agree that those mercenaries had no trouble finding me, but even once I was spotted, very few of their shots (at least from a distance) landed. That was actually my reassurance that even if I was spotted, I wasn't dead yet. So as I said, interesting.

The 360 version is a better version of the Xbox game I think. You get a few neat abilities (called feral powers or something, you can mutate into monsters) but the game is much smaller since the original Xbox couldn't handle the giant levels. I think it's also easier.

Anyways apart from the Trigens there were a bunch of little things that annoyed me, such as:

-Horrible hitscan, would headshot non-armored mercs with a sniper and not kill them and sometimes shoot them in the leg and take them out
-The problem DE mentioned. Sometimes I could jump up and down behind the mercs and they wouldn't notice and other times I would be spotted from miles away and blasted with an unaccurate machine gun.
-Horrible quicksave system! For the most part it was good but there were some instances where you fight a boss and it doesn't save until a few gameplay minutes later.
-Too much memorization towards the end. Perfection is needed to make it past some heavily Trigen-covered areas.
-Can't shoot even a pistol in water. I believe this was fixed in the console games.

However when it was good it was really good. Still probably a 6 or 7 but could've been really great if soem of the flaws were gone and the Trigen's appearances were greatly reduced.