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Far Cry is an all-new first-person shooter from development newcomers CryTek, and despite their inexperience compared to companies like Valve and ID Software, their first game is looking just as impressive as the other big titles on the horizon. While Half-Life 2 was looking very impressive in trailer form at ECTS, and will no doubt knock the socks off any game before it, the fact that Far Cry was playable at Ubi Soft's stand made its appearance almost as prominent, and no doubt is why it secured Best PC Game of the show in the ECTS awards.
The main reason why Far Cry can be compared to the likes of Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 is down to its spectacular graphics engine. Whereas other games have concentrated on high-detail enclosed environments, Far Cry tries to add a sense of scale to its world by allowing the player to see for kilometres into the distance with hardly any detail degradation. The game's story takes place on a group of Polynesian islands complete with mountains, valleys and tropical forests to push the title's graphical capabilities to the max. At close quarters you still have all the detail you'd expect from a modern first-person shooter; you can see individual blades of grass that sway in the wind, leaves on trees and realistic reflections in the water. However, climb up one of the mountains, look out over the world and you'll find where the game's true beauty lies. Trees stretch out into the distance, and you can see buildings and even enemies miles away - you can even use a sniper rifle to zoom in on them and take them out, or use a laser mic to hear their conversations!
Far Cry also boasts some impressive artificial intelligence and physics modelling to make its world as believable as possible. Enemies will work both alone and as a team, and will include sniper, stalker, scout and grenadier units. They will take full use of cover by hiding behind trees or rocks, and can even call in for land, sea or air support! In the section of the game we played, an enemy helicopter was called in and we had to shoot it down - after much pelting with various weapons, the vehicle eventually crashed to the ground, but rather than disintegrating and disappearing like in most other games, its burning wreckage remained a permanent feature on the island! The game also has a pretty impressive physics engine, so that enemies will respond to being shot in different parts of their bodies, and will fall naturally on the terrain. You can also use the physics system to your advantage; at one point in the game we were defending a camp on the top of a hill, with enemies climbing up after us. Fortunately there were barrels in the camp which we could push over and send them tumbling down the hill, knocking over the enemies on their way!
In terms of gameplay, we found Far Cry to be far more tactical and stealthy than most first-person shooters. Due to the game's jungle-based environments and camouflaged enemies, you really have to be very careful with every step you take, and scope-out areas before-hand to assess the enemy presence within them. While we were playing, it was all too easy to walk into an ambush and find yourself being attacked by three or four enemies, all camouflaged and using the natural cover to make it difficult to hit them, so going in all-guns blazing certainly isn't the answer. Admittedly, we might just be bad at the game, but we were told that the developers are still adjusting the difficulty level, and that the show build is much more difficult than what the final code will probably be like, which made us feel a little better about the helpful guys at Ubi Soft putting it on God Mode to let us see the rest of the level.
Overall, Far Cry is an incredibly impressive game, that should provide enough interesting new features to distract gamers from Half-Life 2, and probably secure Ubi Soft another triple-A first-person shooter franchise. With CryTek also looking to license the game's engine out to companies for use in other games, the technology could even become as widespread as the Doom or Quake engines. We look forward to hearing much more about this title closer towards its November release, so keep your eyes on the site!
Marc Hull
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