Far Cry (PC)

Developer:

Crytek

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Release Date:

2004

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Systems:

Windows

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Today on Super Adventures I'm going to immerse myself in the ultimate next generation FPS, Far Cry! That's how they describe it on the box anyway. It's also clearly labelled FAR_CRY, you can see the logo right there, but it's always written out as "Far Cry" in text so that's what I'll be calling it.

2004 wasn't a bad year for first person shooters, with people finally getting their hands on massively hyped sequels like Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and Halo 2. Far Cry on the other hand was a new IP from a unknown developer and it came out of nowhere. I never saw it coming anyway, which is ironic really considering how damn flashy it was. But it's been a decade now and I'm curious to see how it holds up as a game now that it can't coast on its visuals any more.

TECHNICAL BOX

The latest patch released for the game brings it up to version 1.4, but I'm not going to be installing that for two equally good reasons:

1. I've heard that v1.4 is mostly a multiplayer upgrade and it screws up the single player game to the point where enemies can see and shoot you through walls. Not sure if that's true, but it kind of puts me off.
2. There's an alternative v1.32 AMD64 patch I can install instead that improves performance on 64-bit systems, works on Intel processors too, comes with an optional Extra Content Pack to enhance the visuals, and even makes the game DRM free.

Apparently the Steam version comes with both patches already installed, with the v1.32 64-bit executable hiding in the game's Bin64 folder, but I only own the DVD version so I can't test that. Feel free to let me know if I'm wrong.

(Click screenshots to make them bigger! If you want to.)

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Here, have a screenshot of the menu screen. Everyone loves menus.

Actually what I wanted to draw your attention to here is this 'Render Mode' option, which isn't something you typically see in a game. Who knows what mysterious effects it has? I'll have to remember to go through them all when I'm in game.

Oh this reminds me, some people have issues getting the game to start when the lighting is set to 'Very High', and this can be fixed by opening the 'system.cfg' file and changing 'r_ShadersPrecache' to 0. I know this because I spent forever trying to get the damn game to load. After screwing around settings and compatibility modes, and finally reinstalling it all from scratch, I eventually realised it just didn't like my screen capture tool. Oops.

The intro cutscene begins in reverse, with the un-destruction of a small boat called the Medusa on a rainy day in paradise, as it pulls itself together from debris scattered across the water and de-explodes. 

The camera then flies a few islands back to reveal... the Medusa arriving at the archipelagos with these two on board. Time starts skipping forward and the woman rides off on a jetski, leaving the guy in the Hawaiian shirt to become the target of a guy with an RPG.

He survives the explosion (he was messing around on top of the mast for whatever reason) and is thrown into the water.

Or maybe he fell into a volcano? The game can't make up its mind.

Nope he definitely ended up in water, only this time it's shallow and there's monsters in it. I've played the game before but I'd totally forgotten that these Trigens were revealed so early. I won't be meeting them in gameplay for a long while though.

Our hero runs away through the jungle evading the monsters and mercenary machine gun fire... except he doesn't because he's actually still swimming away from his exploded boat. He manages to make it inside an underwater cave just before a grenade explodes, sealing the tunnel behind him. So only the swimming part actually happened then? Well that was unnecessarily confusing.

By the way, this intro cutscene was squashed vertically in game for me to fit my widescreen resolution, so I grabbed these shots straight from the video file instead. The other cutscenes are going to be way worse though as they're in a 4:3 aspect ratio.

Hmm. I don't think I'm a fan of the 'Cartoon' render mode; it's not quite Borderlands is it? The 'Paradise' render mode is basically the default look with the saturation turned up, 'Cold' is the default look with some of the colour drained out of it, and 'Improved' is the default look with... pretty much no difference that I can notice. Oh wait, I can see a bit more of a glow to it. Works for me, I'll leave that on.

Turns out that the underwater tunnel led inside an old Japanese fort which doubles as a tutorial obstacle course! It's taught me how to look around, crawl, throw rocks to distract enemies, and use my Stealth-O-Meter next to the radar! Yep it's actually called a Stealth-O-Meter.

Ah, this is going to come in handy. It's a mysterious ally on a phone who can give me objectives along the way while explaining next to nothing about what's going on here! I've also found a Desert Eagle pistol and some shelves for me to jump into and knock over. Physics!

I've learned that our guy is called Jack Carver and his ally on the phone is Doyle. I've also learned that Jack is the dopey smart-ass type of action hero and his voice actor is playing it for comedy. Doyle's the exact opposite, cool and composed, so it kind of works.

Hey look at the shadow his arm's casting on his shirt, you won't see that in Half-Life 2 or Doom 3. Not on the human models anyway. Anyway my first objective is to cover that shirt up with some armour. My second objective: find an exit and make my way to a small camp nearby.

March 23, 2004: the date that video games started to look like this. Well okay that's not entirely true, as I've got the Extra Content Pack from 2005 installed which apparently increases draw distance and improves textures, but I've no idea how much it actually changes. All I know is that I like how the plants don't become a pixellated mess when I get close up to them.

Doyle suggests that I search the huts for weapons and equipment, but there's mercenaries wandering around down there and I've already learned from the intro that they shoot on sight. I'm tempted to take a shot at the guy fishing off the pier, but who knows how many more of them will pop up if I give myself away, and this grass is a poor substitute for a chest-high wall.

This sneaky bastard came around the back of the building behind me while I was creeping around! A headshot is an instant kill, but the guy made me jump so bad that I'm happy any of my bullets hit him at all. They'll all be on to me now so I'm going to run inside the hut and take them out one at a time as they step through the door.


A FEW KILLS LATER.

I’ve got a lot of room to move out here, but unlike the sequels it's not an open world game. I mean the island's pretty much open to me as long as I don't stray too close to where the helicopters are patrolling, but this place is only a tiny fraction of the game and it's pretty obvious I'm meant to be sticking to a certain route. That means I've got a long tedious walk ahead of me if I don't head for that hill over there with a guard tower on top of it. On the plus side, the guy up there hasn't seen me yet.

I couldn't help but notice that the remap keys screen didn't include a button for 'check map', but Doyle has dropped a waypoint on the radar for me so I'd have to really try to get lost. It's pointing towards another hut so I'll go check that out now.

Oh damn, that made me jump. I found some sound amplifying binoculars inside the shack, looked out the door with them, and found myself pointing right at a firing range. These mercenaries are a fair distance away from me right now but with my new binoculars I can deafen myself with their gunfire, listen in on their conversations and tag them with green brackets.

Tagged enemies are permanently marked on my radar, so I can keep track of them from now on no matter what they're doing. Trouble is that I have to see them to tag them, so if anyone's standing behind a wall or crapping in a bush they'll remain untagged and free to sneak up on me.

Doyle wants me to get through this mercenary base on the left of the hill and acquire a vehicle, and I’m thinking this'll go more smoothly if I slaughter them all first. Starting with that guy in the guard tower.


A SHORT WALK AND A SWIM LATER.

I thought this guy in the guard tower was going to make things tricky for me, but he's thoughtfully put himself in a place I see from here. I reckon I can get a couple of bullets through that railing and cross him of my list without even setting foot on that deathtrap ladder.

Hey, it worked! Took more loud gunshots than I would’ve liked but he’s dead now and I've got enough time to disappear into the jungle before his friends in the base make it up here to investigate. But… I could really do with some extra ammo.

Fuck it, I’m going up the ladder to get his gun. Then I’m racing back down CAREFULLY because if I slip, the fall will kill Jack just as sure as getting caught halfway up it when the enemies get here.

Oh shit, that was close.

I could tell from the orange blips on the radar that some of the mercs had been alerted and we walking to the guard tower, but I didn’t notice these two until I practically charged into them. Looking at my Stealth-O-Meter it seems they haven't seen me either.

This foliage works great for stealth, but it didn't really occur to me until now that it works both ways. I knew generally where tagged enemies are and which way they're facing thanks to the radar, but it’s a long range radar and it's not going to point out what bush they're hiding in. I just have to stay low, listen out for noises, and keep an eye on the Stealth-O-Meter to make sure they're not behind me with a gun up to my head.

The game's definitely going more for tension than run and gun shoot 'em up action, and has music to match. Good for people who like to be a sneaky predator, less so for those with no patience for crawling in the bushes.


A FEW KILLS LATER, AT THE MERC BASE BY THE HILL.

Turns out it wasn't so hard to get into the merc base after I'd lured everyone around it away to their deaths. I could've been in trouble if a stray guard was hiding in one of the buildings, but the only things lurking inside were health kits, body armour, and a keycard I used to get myself some ammo. Also look over there, a Humvee for me to borrow! A checkpoint would’ve been nice, but you can’t have everything.

I think I’m done here now, so I'll go and… oh SHIT is that an alarm? And now someone's shooting at me from somewhere! Fuck fuck fuck.

The alarm brought a helicopter over to look for me, so I bravely ran off and waited it out. Then I sniped the sneaky mercs, strolled back, turned the alarm switch off, and stole their truck. The game seemed satisfied by this and finally allowed me a checkpoint.

Now I’m driving my truck along the beach, using the keyboard to steer it into mercs while blowing up patrol boats with the turret. Well trying to anyway, as this bloody boat refuses to explode!

Damn! Was that a missile? Whose bright idea was it to give the patrol boats instant kill missiles?

Well at least loading the last checkpoint is nearly instant on a modern PC. In fact loading is pretty speedy in general, though I do have it installed on my SSD so it's not a fair test.


A FEW INSTANT DEATHS LATER.

This time around I managed to bail from the truck in time to not get blown up and ran away to where the boat couldn't see me. Trouble is I was careless and got spotted by someone else, and couple of stray shots from nowhere stripped away all my health. The game could really do with some of those incoming bullet direction indicators you see in newer shooters, because I have to know where the bloody enemies are first before I can swing around and put a bullet in them.

I know about the guy up there on the hill at least and I really need to do something about him soon because I can survive maybe a tenth of a bullet right now. It wouldn’t be a huge issue if Jack knew how to do that regenerating health trick (or could be bothered to carry spare health kits for later), but he can't.

Oh shit, I actually killed the guy and it turns out he was standing next to a health kit! I honestly expected to get shot along the way but I guess there really wasn't anyone else hiding in the bushes. Now I'm curious to see where this hill path goes, because it's kind of out of the way.

Aw crap, they've got a bloody aircraft carrier parked over here! How is that fair?

It's been here since World War 2 and it's covered in holes and rust, but it's also covered in mercs and they've got a considerably newer patrol boat patrolling the boat, so I’m thinking I should probably dive underwater and hope my Breath-O-Meter holds out until I make it to a gap in the hull. Yep it’s really called a Breath-O-Meter (the game doesn't take itself entirely seriously).

They spotted me at the last moment, but I managed to make it safely inside the ship before losing all my health and that's the end of level 1.


LEVEL 2: CARRIER.

Whoa, I feel like I’ve wandered into Fallout 3.

The game has become more of a typical first person shooter in the narrow corridors of the ship, as I can't snipe people and there's no bushes. I'm bursting through doors and spraying each enemy with burst fire before they have a chance to react. Though I keep forgetting to shoot them with the camera first, so I'm getting a lot of screenshots of dead bodies and empty rooms.

Speaking of guns and shooting, I can't aim down my M4's sights exactly, but holding the right mouse button does raise the gun up, tighten the crosshair and zoom in slightly for a more accurate shot. That's actually fairly uncommon for a PC shooter from this era, as in games like Half-Life 2, Doom 3 and Escape from Butcher Bay you're stuck firing from the hip.

Hey I can go back outside!

Crap, is that a guy with a mounted gun over there on the bow? Look through the gap between the pillar and the wall... with a magnifying glass. Oh plus there’s people up on the upper deck shooting at me too! So many tiny specks out to get me, each in need of a good headshot. Good thing the camera zooms in a little when I aim or else I'd be struggling.

I’m supposed to be searching the ship for Valerie (the woman from the intro who disappeared on the jet ski), so I have to kill whoever I can see here and clear a path around the deck until I find another way back inside.


SOON.

Still no Val, but I did find her passport and a video of a press conference. Seems that whatever brought her here relates to the work that mad scientist Doctor Krieger is doing on these islands. Hang on, isn’t Krieger the mad scientist villain in Doom 3 as well?

Wait, I’m thinking of Doctor Betruger; Doctor Krieger’s the mad scientist from 'Archer'.

It’s hard to tell what the memo is about, it's practically illegible, but I can at least make out the last sentence which says “Tonight’s movie will be the Island of Dr Moreau.” Krieger may be a lunatic carrying out horrific genetic experimentation on animals, but at least he's self aware about it!

Checkpoint! I love these things. Ladders are often good too.

There's no point sticking around now that I know Val isn’t here, so I need to get hold of a boat and move on to the next level. Apparently that means going up, as there's no other way out of here but the way I came in.

Dammit Far Cry! The ladder led up to the landing deck, which has soldiers facing me from three sides, and a bloody gunship on the fourth! Check the radar, you can see the ripples of gunfire.

I wish I could see where the cover is on the radar too, as someone just got me while I was reloading.


A FEW RAPID-FIRE DEATHS LATER.

1, 2, 3, DEAD, every single time I restart the checkpoint and climb up the ladder. If there’s any good hiding place up here to duck behind, the mercenaries aren't giving me the time to find it. Sure there’s plenty of boxes, but the trouble with being attacked by four sides is that a box only protects me on one of them.

Would be nice if I could play it Doom and stay mobile but the enemies are way too accurate for that. I mean they can miss and there’s a moment before they get their crosshairs lined up, they’re not infallible robots, but I won’t be weaving between their bullets.


WAY TOO MANY RETRIES LATER.

Ah shite, this time I fell off the carrier!

Well at least there’s a net to climb up on this side so I won’t have to make my way through the entire level again.

Hang on, I've just realised that the boat I need is hanging from chains over on the left. I remember that from the last time I played the game as I was stuck here for ages looking for a lever before I realised I could just shoot the chains. Nothing stopping me from hitting them from down here and then riding the boat off into level 3! Man it's such a relief to know that I don't have to beat the carrier deck after all.

Actually fuck it, I’m loading that checkpoint at the ladder again, and I’m going to keep doing this carrier deck until I get it right and win my boat the hard way. I'm only playing on normal difficulty, I shouldn't be struggling with this!


EVENTUALLY.

LAST. MAN. STANDING.

This time I dived beside the raised side of the deck where the gunship couldn't hit me and the enemies to my right couldn't see me through the boxes. A few enemies were brave enough to charge at me, but they proved too dumb to flank me. Turns out it's a lot easier to take out a squad of enemies when they're running out into your line of fire one by one and you're not being shot in the back.

Man it was tense though, especially when I had to pick myself off the floor and go hunt down the shy ones. For all I know there could be one left, crouched behind a box somewhere, ready to pop out and gun me down while my guard's lowered. I really need to get off this level.


LEVEL 4: PIER (A FEW MINUTES LATER).

Man, this always happens. I find a hand glider, the mercs find a helicopter! It’s fine though, I also found a rocket launcher earlier so I think I can take them.

It's pretty obvious which way you're supposed to go here, but my objective is to meet someone at a pier, and this is an island, so I couldn't resist stealing a boat and seeing if it's possible to sail around the outside and skip the entire level. And the answer is... yes, you can do that. But that also means skipping all the checkpoints too, and once you get enough bullets in you the return trip is even faster


SOON, ON THE PROPER PATH.

Screw the rocket launcher, I just found a sniper rifle!

This thing is incredible, because it can kill anything with a single shot from halfway across a level. Seriously, I'm taking out helicopter gunners 356 meters away and I’m not even at maximum zoom. Shame playing the game in widescreen makes it looks like someone sat on my scope though... also it's giving me flashbacks to Invisible War's circular menu.

The sniper rifle has only two major drawbacks, but they’re pretty major:

1. The ammo is ridiculously rare, to prevent you from finding a nice spot and depopulating half the level from it. It's a super weapon, not something I get to use all that often.
2. I had to sacrifice another gun to pick it up due to the four weapon limit. That's another 'feature' you didn't find in many PC shooters back in 2004, though it definitely caught on. (I chose to leave the rocket launcher behind in the end.)

LEVEL 6: TREEHOUSE (HOURS LATER).

Okay I'm finally at the level I've been trying to play up to. I can't write about Far Cry without reaching... the TRIGENS! They're horrifically deformed genetically altered super-primates, presumably 50% more deadly than whatever a Bi-gen would be (but not quite as badass as a Quad-gen). Uh, they're down there somewhere, you'll have to take my word for it. The mercenaries and Trigens are having a little war right now after my sabotage set them free and it's all getting very Half-Life out here. I think it's best I stay out of it.

This is Crytek's favourite trick: introducing pain in the ass sci-fi monsters into the plot after a few satisfying human shootin' levels. They went and did it again in their Crysis series, only that time it was aliens invading the game. In fact Crysis is so similar to Far Cry in gameplay you could almost call it the sequel... not that the game has any shortage of them.

THE FAR CRY FAMILY TREE

Far Cry's been blessed with spin-offs, sequels, remakes, a sequel to the remake, remakes of the sequel, spiritual successors and even a movie, and you can see most of them here on this handy colour-coded guide!

• The blue line runs through Ubisoft's Xbox exclusive remake Far Cry: Instincts and its equally console-bound successors. Instincts retells Jack's story to give him superpowers and Instincts - Evolution continues it. Vengeance is a reworked port of Evolution for the Wii and Instincts - Predator is a remake of both Instincts games for the Xbox 360. So now you know!
• The purple line leads right to a Uwe Boll movie so you're better off ignoring it. Currently rated at 12% on Rotten Tomatoes!
• The green line goes to Ubisoft's series of multi-platform open world sequels, which dropped the sci-fi monsters (until Blood Dragon) and apparently have nothing to do plotwise with the original game or each other.
• The red line is for Crytek's own successor series to Far Cry, with a different name but familiar gameplay and aliens in place of the Trigens.
• There's also a port of the game called Far Cry Classic for the Xbox 360 and PS3, but it's been rebuilt with Far Cry 3's Dunia 2 engine and is a bit cut down and reworked. It also puts little arrows above tagged enemies to make them easy to spot though, so it sounds good to me.

Hey, I managed to get a shot of one of the Trigens! Sorry it's so fuzzy, he was pretty far away at the time (because I'm not dumb enough to let one get anywhere near me).

These things are mutated primates and they behave like the fiends in Quake; they're all about the leaping and slashing. Except a fiend generally doesn't rip you apart in two hits on normal difficulty. Not really what you want to be facing off against in a game where the checkpoints are miles apart.


SOON.

Oh fuck they put one behind this door! You think these primate Trigens are good at leaping around, you should've seen how far I just jumped when I saw it. Fortunately this P90 of mine can annihilate anything I put in front of it. Takes about 20-30 rounds to kill one, but this thing can empty a magazine in a couple of seconds so that's not a problem... a least not until the ammo runs out.

I've got to go in there haven't I? Inside with all the Trigens and their two hit kill pounce attacks. I'm really missing my quick save key right about now. I could actually bring down the console to save whenever feel like, but I've been avoiding that to get the authentic Far Cry experience. The authentic, repetitive, trial and error Far Cry experience.


LEVEL 9: REGULATOR (EVEN MORE HOURS LATER).

Oh come on, I was lying under a desk! It's kind of hard to ambush an elite squad coming through a door when they always know exactly where I'll be hiding, and now I have to replay the last room all over again. Again. Man, the authentic Far Cry experience really sucks sometimes.

These armoured enemies are far more bullet resistant than your average goon unless I go for the headshot, and believe me I would if they'd just stop murdering me for a second. It’s funny, I went into the game expecting the Trigens to be the most annoying enemies, but whenever I find myself beating my head against the game it's always because of some pesky humans.


LEVEL 10: CONTROL.

Seems that the fight against the armoured soldiers was just a difficulty spike and I'm sailing through smoother now. The gameplay's always a little bit trial and error-y, and I've been okay with that, but I've been struggling to find the fun in my failure lately.

These new rocket launcher Trigens I'm fighting now are a bit crap too. They're such a pain in the ass in fact that this one didn't even bother to turn up for my screenshots, even when I turned my cool CryVision goggles on. Usually I'd play it again and retake the shots, but... nah. This level was miserable enough the first time through and I don't really want to get up close to the bullet sponge monstrosity who can atomise a person in one hit from the other end of the corridor.

Not that there's anything wrong with rocket-firing monsters, Doom did pretty well with them for instance, but they're not a good match for Far Cry's less arcady gameplay. I'm not going to be whipping out a plasma gun and dancing around his projectiles. In fact I think I'll be turning this off here.

Before I shut up though I feel like I should point out that the game comes with its own editor and the thing actually runs in Windows 8!

I've been playing around with it for about 30 seconds and so far all I've learned is that its power is only matched by its baffling complexity, but having a live version of the level to fly around in as you work is always handy to have. Plus I was able to generate new landscape and embed that damn carrier inside an ocean-textured hill, so my revenge is finally at hand.


CONCLUSION

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I can't hate Far Cry, I just can't. Which is good because it's actually a pretty decent game for the most part and has moments where it's downright great. It's definitely a cut above the average FPS games of its era, like Elite Force II, Soldier of Fortune 2, Chrome, Jedi Outcast... maybe even No One Lives Forever 2. Man the game got on my nerves at times though, mostly because of how stingy it is with the health kits and checkpoints. Death comes fast in this game and it's not always clear where it flew in from.

Though on the plus side the save system keeps every checkpoint you ever reached so it works great as a level select. The game has profiles so you can have multiple playthroughs on the same install, which is handy for people who want to start from scratch or for those who let friends or family play on their gaming rig.

Not that you'd likely need much of a gaming rig to play this maxed out these days as CryENGINE 1 is getting on a bit in years and looks it. But it also looks all kinds of pretty if you're able to overlook the distant trees popping into view (plus I had a weird bug with the rock textures floating next the polygons sometimes). Crytek got the feel of it right and I can think of worse places to visit than a tropical paradise, especially when it lets you leave the ride and find your own paths. There's no radio towers to climb, NPCs to chat to, or respawning enemy camps to deal with, and you never have to skin animals to craft a bigger wallet. This is a pure level-based first person shooter with plant-based stealth and plenty of excuses to use a sniper rifle. And it definitely isn't crap.

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No 'next game' clue this time because I have absolutely no idea what it's going to be. I'm usually better prepared than this, but my main hard drive just died and I've spent the last few days restoring the backed up files I have and crying about all the stuff I lost. Also I've been lazy.

But feel free to leave opinions about the game, give me feedback on my site, or list all the ways I'm doing things wrong.