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Reviewer:
Craig
Review Date: 31/03/2004
Score: 94%
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At
this point in time we should be playing Half Life 2. Doom
3 should be just round the corner and DirectX9 games should
be as common as a Hussar rolling a vehicle. Alas that is not
the case. The most optimist estimates of HL2 are the end of
the summer and Doom 3 will probably be into next year. So
in the meantime we need to feast on some of the lesser names.
STALKER is due soon and looks good, and Far Cry is now with
us. Coming from Ubisoft, makers of Splinter Cell, the demo
had whet our appetites, but is this game, the first to really
use DX9 to it?s fullest the real thing or another false dawn.
You
play Jack Carver, some sort of retired secret agent type.
After being attacked whilst running a yacht charter you have
to rescue your journalist employer from the grasp of the ubiquitous
evil madman. So far, so unoriginal. Never fear though, because
whilst the storyline is not exactly groundbreaking the setting
is new, and the story although predictable is unfolded well,
so you are never quite sure where you are going, or more importantly
what you are going to see when you get there.
And
so to the game itself. Well, one thing is sure. The graphics
are the best of any PC game I have ever seen. Some of the
levels owe more to a Kuoni brochure than a PC game. In the
training level make you way from the underground cavern where
you have been washed up across a beautiful Pacific island,
past beach huts, colourful birds, waters swimming with tropical
fish, and white sand beaches. If someone wasn?t shooting at
you, you could imagine settling down with a Pina Colada. It
is very refreshing to play a game that has such clarity and
brightness to the graphics. All of the foliage is animated,
and casts true shadows, even on the gun you are carrying.
The animation of the characters is very well done, even down
to the physics models of the corpses.
But
Graphics do not a game make, to quote Shakespeare (are you
sure? ? Ed). How does it play? The game is described as being
non-linear, which in parts it truly is, however in the most
part, purely because of what you have to achieve you follow
one of usually one or two paths. Each level seems to start
and finish with a set piece battle, with some ground to be
covered in between. The AI of the opponents is a step forward,
but is still slightly flawed. They will alert each other if
they hear you, will call for back up. They will also use the
cover provided by the terrain. That said, they don?t seem
to be able to see you through a leaf, and once when I had
shot the gunner out of a helicopter, it just proceeded to
follow me round, doing nothing.
The
game is not without its flaws though. The vehicle usage is
limited. You use jeeps and boats to get around, but they are
bit part players and you get the feeling that the game would
not lose much without them, but could gain if they had been
used more. I suppose the best comparison is with the tank
level of Medal of Honour. The enemy vehicles however are well
used, and the sound of an approaching chopper will find you
racing for cover. Unfortunately they can?t be hijacked!
The
game has multiplayer capabilities. Three modes are included:
Death Match, Team Death Match and Assault (Attack/Defend set-up).
The Multiplayer is limited at present, but you get the feeling
that Crytek (the developers) decided to provide the building
blocks for others to create as the game ships with Mapping
and developing tools. The modding community could have a field
day with this.
All
of this graphical beauty though comes at a price. To get the
game running with all of the graphics turned up you need,
according to the manual, a 3GHZ Processor, 1GB of Ram, and
a Radeon 9800 Pro or equivalent. The median settings are 2G
processor and 512MB ram. It claims to run on a 1G, but I think
that will rather like trying to win a grand prix in a Robin
Reliant.
This
is certainly the best Single Player game I have played since
Medal of Honour and probably since Half Life. It is one of
those games that you lose hours to and keep going back. You
don?t mind if something takes 10 attempts to do, because you
can see a strategy developing, and there is always more than
one way to achieve something. If your system can handle it
? buy this game. If it can?t ? buy a new system and then buy
the game.
If it had shipped with more to the MP it would be as near
to perfect as you can get
