Sunny blue skies, white sand beaches, crystal clear water... Paradise comes in many guises, and the islands of Far Cry would, for many, be a place to relax - were it not for the inhabitants to all be mercenaries out to kill you.
You are Jack Carver, and you're not liked around these parts. As one man armies go, you don't look the gruff military type, but I'm sure you'll pick things up quickly. You'll have to if you want to survive.
I've not played the original Far Cry, and am looking forward to it. How much of what I know from other entries in the series can be found here too? I've no idea. Grab your suntan and your body armour. We're going to need 'em.
Fun Times
While it took a little bit of fiddling in the config files to get up and running without hanging, Far Cry plays nicely today, opening with a slick, almost trippy intro video showing how Jack came to be washed up on these islands.
His boat has been blown up, and he's being shot at. There are also monsters in the jungle. I don't know what that's about. Are we having visions? Is our brain already beginning to feel the effects of a lack of oxygen?
Whatever the answer, we wake up in the ruins of an old concrete bunker, and this first-person shooter can begin. You know the controls. Leans and peeks are present too, and crouching for stealthy movement is accompanied by going prone for an even lower profile. Jack's an athletic chap, it seems.
He's also wanted. Dead, one would presume. This guy's quite mad at him, that's for sure. Who are they? What's their beef with us? I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.
The tutorial section then alerts me to the idea of chucking stones to distract enemies, a mechanic that I used in Far Cry 3. That's one thing that has stuck around then. I think I could get used to this.
Ah. Well, that didn't quite go to plan. Turns out it only takes a couple of bullets to kill you. Nice to know early on, I suppose. We'll not be doing that again, will we?
Heading through the bunker, we pick up a radio that is conveniently left in the open, on a channel used by someone who not only wants to help us but who knows where we are. It's all very clunky. Apparently, it has a biosensor or something to detect the presence of a person. Whatever. Just welcome the help, pick up the pistol, grenades, body armour, and we can finally start to get some payback on whoever it was that blew up our boat.
Our first task is simple, and we are allowed to approach it however we like. I can see a couple of mercenaries milling about, so I try to approach it very quietly, crouching amongst the bushes and hoping to not be seen.
The plan works about as well as I expected it would. I'm not aware of any melee attacks or stealth kill options, which is fine, because I was spotted long before I was ever in a position to sneak up on someone from behind.
In the frantic moments that followed, I struggled to get used to the sensitivity of the aiming a little but was quite efficient in dispatching my targets before they got me. Sometimes it just takes a couple of shots. Maybe I was getting more headshots than I thought. Either way, enemies were ragdolling all over the place, clouds of blood spurting out of their wounds. I guess that'd be thanks to ticking the 'Gore' checkbox in the options...
I do pick up some ammo to replace the many rounds I spent, as well as a machine gun. It's alarming how unphased Jack is with having to do all of this to survive. He must have quite a backstory I'm not aware of.
Following our radio-buddy's advice, we grab some binoculars to scope out the camp up ahead. To further add to the weird sci-fi equipment, these binoculars come with the zoom you'd expect, and the directional microphone and body tagging that you'd not.
Your radar now pings with coloured blobs - part arrow, mostly blob - telling you where your enemies are. It's not an incredibly useful radar, but I'll take it over not having one, especially when we have to infiltrate that camp, steal a vehicle, and head elsewhere for an unknown reason. It's all go, I tell you.
As I skulk my way through the greenery, I get to admire Far Cry up close. I don't know what I was expecting, really. I assumed it wouldn't be featureless green hills, but I probably didn't think these islands would be covered in foliage, dotted with trees, rocks jutting out of nowhere. They look like they come from an old videogame, but there's a reason for that...
No, Far Cry looks excellent. In modern games, you'd know exactly what kind of plants can hide your presence, because they've conveniently tall or they glow when you enter them or something. In Far Cry, as in real life, you don't have a damn clue if you can be seen or not. You're crouched, sure, but are you crouched behind anything large enough to obscure you? Is there anyone else crouching behind another bush? What's behind that rock?
Even scoping ahead doesn't prepare you for everything, as I stumble into a lookout tower, occupied by a threat I need to deal with quickly.
Once again, the stealth got very loud after that. From my lookout point, I could see mercenaries climb the hill towards me, one by one, getting gunned down in a burst or two of machine gunfire. I was told that alerting one guard would cause them to work as a team to hunt me down. I can't say I felt like that was happening.
After killing seven or so mercenaries, one of them finally saw sense in raising the alarm, and the helicopter that was buzzing around the camp earlier started descending.
I didn't survive long after it dropped a few guys off, let me tell you. But that plan worked. It was louder than I'd like, but we can do it again, but better.
Nope, ok, we can do it worse. These bullets really are lethal. You'll want to avoid them.
Frustrations
It took a couple more attempts to get through the camp without dying. I learned a few things, though. Things can explode, for one. That was nice. Sometimes it looks like my shots are hitting something two feet in front of me, rather than where the crosshairs are. That's a little concerning. Maybe a visual hiccup, perhaps worse aim than I think. Either way, not a significant problem.
But getting through this camp quietly... that's a problem. I'm not sure how stealth is best used in Far Cry. Thankfully, the shooting side of things works well, and I finally get through and can steal myself a vehicle.
It doesn't drive amazingly well but does come equipped with a 500-round machine gun that you can fire while driving (Jack is just that good). Tearing out of the camp at ridiculous speed with little sense of direction, I find another beach. And another group of mercenaries finds me (hard to miss me, to be fair).
The checkpointing system thankfully plonks me back at the start of my drive. Knowing that it's tricky to control, I proceed to park my jeep up a tree, where it near immediately explodes, leaving me on little health.
After all that faff back at camp, and now a jeep that seems to go from 0-60 without going through 1-59, I was on the verge of calling it there for the time being. But I gave it one more go.
Further Fun Times
I'm glad I did. Tearing through the jungle, I emerge at the top of a cliff to see a wrecked boat that I need to get on. I'm travelling at such speed that there's nowhere for me to go but off the cliff, my jeep plunging into the water, never to be used again. Lookouts onboard spot me (how could they not at this point?) and open fire. Diving underwater does nothing to protect me. I guess the crystal clear nature of these tropical waters isn't helping me.
Still, this looks interesting. Let's give it another go.
Yeah, that's a better place to end it. Inside the wreck of a ship, potentially trapped, definitely surrounded by mercenaries. A far cry from the usual, eh? Eh? Oh, suit yourself.
Final Word
While the difficulty doesn't exactly make it a leisurely stroll, the fluidity of the gameplay allows you to experience Far Cry in so many ways. In my case, that mainly meant reactionary. I could have planned ahead and used my binoculars to see what guards were doing at any given moment, but at the same time, I could have ramped a jeep off a cliff and opened fire at rocket-wielding guards from the cover of a palm tree.
The open-world of Far Cry allows you to approach the situation your way, and unlike many games on this 1001 list that have let you do such a thing, in this game, I can actually see what I'm doing. Three cheers for bright environments.
Now, you might argue that it's not as open as it could be, or that everything will end up with you having to shoot everything in sight before it is safe to progress. You might be right. I haven't seen a whole lot to know otherwise, and from my own playstyle, I can see that things will more often than not result in lots of violence. But even if Far Cry doesn't quite match what we think it'll be, or doesn't play like its sequels do, there's quite a lot here to enjoy.
I can't recall the plot at all. I don't know who is who or how they're related. If I paid more attention and uncovered more of the story by heading into the mercenary infested parts of these islands, I might have something else to say on that. I think it's more a case of the gameplay being the focus, though, and what great gameplay to focus on.
If you've not gone back to the roots of Far Cry, you should. I'll have to push through it some more, which shouldn't be too much trouble with all these checkpoints. So long as they don't throw me off any more cliffs...
Fun Facts
Starting off as a tech demo for Nvidia, the CryEngine was soon turned into Far Cry.
Far Cry, developed by Crytek, first released in 2004.
Version played: PC, 2004.