Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Keith Schleicher

Crytek practically blindsided the gaming industry with Far Cry for the PC.   While the industry was preparing for the visuals of Doom 3 and Unreal Tournament 2004, Crytek proved that you don’t need to be a huge name to leave an impression.  Far Cry’s visuals stood out, especially with the water effects.  Soon Far Cry was stealing the spotlight.  Not long after Far Cry Instincts was released for the Xbox, giving a new experience to owners of the big black console.  Now the Xbox 360 gets it share of Far Cry loving with Far Cry Instincts Predator.

In FCIP, you play Jack Carver, a man more concerned with getting a paycheck and keeping his boat than fighting any kind of enemies that might come his way.  His most important possession is his “tour boat,” which looks like it is going to fall apart at any moment.  After bringing a journalist to a remote island and taking a short snooze, he no longer needs to worry about the boat.  The boat is attacked by choppers and blown to bits.  Jack escapes to the island just before the boat explodes.  This is where your adventure begins.

The graphics for FCIP are impressive…for an Xbox game.  While the graphics have been enhanced for the Xbox 360, they don’t look much better than the original Xbox.  The graphics are blocky and the textures don’t help the graphics to look much better.  The textures are rather bland, not even hiding the polygon count of the backgrounds and characters.  A lot of the game takes place in the jungle environment, and traveling through flora is crucial to survival.  Getting up close to the floral really reminds you that you are playing a game and not traversing a tropical paradise.

The characters in the game aren’t very well animated.  The animation looks rather stiff.  While enemies respond, they seem to want to stand upright.  Getting hit by a trap or being hit with a weapon causes a slight spray of blood, but it looks very simplistic.  While you can go prone, you don’t see your arms move in this mode.  It feels like you are actually floating over the land.

The graphics do sport a few bright spots.  The water effects in the game are spectacular.  Swimming in the water really feels like swimming.  The further you dive into the water the more murky the water becomes.  It’s doubtful you’ll see better water effects for a while on the Xbox 360 or any other console.

A stereo sound system really enhances the sound of the game.  The positional audio is used to great effect.  Listening to an enemy gives away their position.  At times I felt like looking over to the side to see who was there when I was listening to an enemy talk to a cohort.  Because of the density of the environment, using sound is a better way to find out the positions of the enemy.

The voice acting is done well.  Jack likes to make wise cracks all the time, which helps give him more personality than “the Doom guy.”  You’ll also be hearing a lot from David Doyle, your liaison to get off the island because of the situation you have found yourself in.  While he doesn’t have the volume of a Drill Sergeant, he knows how to get your attention and lead you along.  You can hear the small talk of the enemies, similar to No One Lives Forever.  While the dialog is less varied, you want to be sure you are listening to the enemies for their position.

Your stance while moving also dictates the amount of sound you make.  If you stay upright and run, your footsteps are going to be loud.  Crouching helps you make less noise, but it is still easy to notice.  While moving prone, the amount of sound you make is so minimal that you’ll strain yourself to hear yourself move.

The music is enjoyable, but it’s nothing to write home about.  The music does its job, but it is almost too far in the background to pay attention to it.  Some of the sounds could be a bit more prominent as well.  The other sound elements are enough to keep the score in this section up.

While some console shooters have made the controls simpler for the amount of work they do, FCIP actually has a fairly complex control scheme that they use.  The left analog stick is used for movement and clicking causes a stance change.  The right analog stick is used for looking around and using the sight on weapons.  The left trigger throws objects depending on your inventory, while the right trigger shoots enemies and sets traps.  Pressing A jumps, hitting B does a melee attack, using X reloads your weapon, and hitting Y activates your feral abilities.  The right bumper toggles the weapons available to you use while the left bumper toggles projectile weapons available for your use.  The D-pad lets you use binoculars by pressing up, select special weapons by hitting down, choose your primary weapon by hitting left, and selecting the secondary weapon by right.

The controls work really well, but there are some issues.  Since several of the buttons have more than one function, it might be more difficult for new players to get into the game certain buttons have more than one function.  Your stance has a lot of bearing on the game, so the controls for that are important.  However, you have to click in the left analog stick to do that, and it can be confusing which stance you’ll go into.  Also, switching weapons can be tricky, especially when you want to go into the mode to lay down traps.  It would have been nice to have a more effective way to switch weapons.

FCIP is a first-person shooter, and it has a large enough arsenal for one.  While you only start out with a butterfly knife, you are able to get handguns, shotguns, machine guns, and sniper rifles.  If you enjoy tossing weapons you can find hand grenades, pipe bombs, and Molotov cocktails.  Your arsenal is quite varied.

While you have plenty of contemporary weapons, you also have the ability to set traps for your unsuspecting victims.  Initially you can set up a branch whip around a tree to hit an enemy.  There is nothing sweeter than having an unsuspecting enemy walk into a trap and get whipped by the trap.  Eventually Claymores become available.  These fragmentation mines blow up when an enemy comes into close proximity of it.  Throwing rocks at unsuspecting enemies can lure them into the traps.

If this wasn’t enough, you gain feral abilities.  These abilities give you a significant advantage to attack your enemies.  Your feral sense can smell the scent trail of enemies and see in low-light conditions.  You can speed up to cover a large amount of ground in a short time and make long-distance leaps.  The feral climb lets you see areas that you normally wouldn’t be able to climb.  The best feral ability is the feral attack which lets you slash enemies apart instantly with your bare hands.  This works best in close-range situations.  To use the feral abilities, you need adrenaline.  Adrenaline can be gained by moving stealthily around enemies, taking physical damage, resting, and eating MREs.

The variety of weapons and abilities really makes the game a lot of fun.  You can take on your enemies in a number of ways because of the variety.  Being able to try different tactics never makes the game feel boring.

Unfortunately, a few issues crop up in the single-player game.  The AI of your enemies isn’t very good.  You can sneak up to enemies a little too easily before being detected.  Most of the time they just stand there and you’d have to make a loud ruckus to get their attention.  They also don’t seem to notice the actions of their teammates.  I had one guy hang back after one of his friends flew over from a trap instead of investigate.  Examples like this are found throughout the game.

Secondly, FCIP sports the original single-player story of Far Cry Instincts as well as a new storyline.  If you haven’t played the original Far Cry Instincts, you are in for a fun time.  However, if you buy this game with the intentions of playing the Evolution storyline, you are going to be disappointed that you have to play through the first story again to unlock Evolution.

Finally, the gameplay in Evolution is a bit of a disappointment compared to Instincts.  The sense of exploration and discovery is gone because you start out with the same feral abilities.  The storyline isn’t as interesting either.

FCIP isn’t a long game, but it’s not short either.  Since it is like getting two games in one, you can enjoy the game for a while in the single-player portion.  The lack of original content brings down the Value score.  However, the multiplayer gives plenty of options to extend the life of the game.

Multiplayer is available with up to four players on a single Xbox 360 or sixteen players through system link or Xbox Live.  All of the typical Xbox Live options are available to get together with other players.  Five multiplayer games come in FCIP.  Chaos is deathmatch where the first person reaching a certain number of kills wins.  Team Chaos is the same as the Chaos mode but with up to four teams facing off.  Steal the Sample is a version of Capture the Flag.  Seek and Secure requires you to locate active stations and hold it for your team.  This requires a lot of teamwork.  Finally, Predator has a group of mercenaries trying to reach a transmitter and power a sonic alarm.  When the sonic alarm goes off the predator dies.  However, to get to the sonic alarm the mercenaries need to cross the map into the predator’s territory.  The predator may be outnumbered, but all feral abilities are available to the predator.

Twenty-two maps are available for the multiplayer games, which is a significant number.  Some of these maps are from the original game, while some are new.  If you don’t like any of them, a map editor is available.  Using the map editor you can create a new map and change the terrain by increasing or lowering it and changing the type of surface.  Adding objects like vehicles, weapons, items, environments, and respawn points is simple because the interface is very intuitive.  Creating a map for a specific multiplayer mode has requirements, and the editor makes sure that you fulfill those requirements.  Maps can be shared with other players as long as the requirements for at least one multiplayer mode are complete.

Far Cry Instincts has a lot going for it.  The intuitive map editor can add a lot of life to the game.  The lack of original content and poor graphics are disappointing, but the gameplay is still a lot of fun.  If you never played any of the previous Far Cry games, you should at least give this game a rental.  Those who have played Far Cry before are going to be a bit disappointed.

Gaming Trend Score

81

1. Graphics: 74
2. Audio: 85
3. Controls: 83
4. Gameplay: 84
5. Value/Replay: 78
6. OVERALL:81