Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7495 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Mastertronic Ltd
• Released on: 2006-01-01
• ESRB Rating: Rating Pending
• Platform: Windows XP

Manufacturer's Description
A tropical paradise seethes with hidden evil in Far Cry, a cunningly detailed action shooter that pushes the boundaries of combat to shocking new levels.

Freelance mariner Jack Carver is cursing the day he ever came to this island. A week ago, a brash female reporter named Valerie had offered him an incredible sum of cash to take her to this unspoiled paradise. Shortly after docking, however, Jack's boat was greeted by artillery fire from a mysterious militia group swarming about the island.

With his boat destroyed, his money gone and the gorgeous Valerie suddenly missing, Jack now finds himself facing an army of mercenaries amid the wilds of the island, with nothing but a gun and his wits to survive by. But the further he pushes into the lush jungle canopy, the stranger things become.

Jack encounters an insider within the militia group who reveals the horrific details of the mercenaries' true intentions. He presents Jack with an unsettling choice: battle the deadliest mercenaries or condemn the human race to a maniac's insidious agenda.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic graphics and gameplay but some minor and major flaws
As other reviews have said pretty much what I have to say, I will just list the flaws.

Firstly I would like to point out what J. Scott "whitefort" had to say in his review. He stated:

'The main problem is that you can't save the game whenever you want.'

This is NOT true. In game simply press the key next to '1' and below the 'Esc' key on your keyboard and a console will come down.

Type \save_game and press enter. This will save your game wherever you are. Your manual save will be shown in the load menu but it will not feature a picture.

This game is great but there are some annoying flaws that can greatly reduce the gameplay.

1. If you have a new graphics card made after the release of this game, the likeyhood is the ingame graphics will look awful, even on the highest detail settings. Simply apply the latest patches and all will be fixed.

2. The volume of the guy that helps you is far too low compared to the other sounds like gunfire and talking enemies. I struggle to hear him and often miss key words so I don't know what I have to do. You will have to turn him up. Just make sure you don't forget to turn the volume down otherwise you'll scare the poop outta yourself when gunfire commences!

If you do miss what he says press and hold the Tab key to show your mission objectives.

3. The most annoying bug is the end of level bug, often caused by installing mods to the game, where you get to the final checkpoint and nothing happens. Where the level is meant to end and proceed to the next...nothing happens and I was forced to reinstall the game and start from the beginning. So be warned when messing around with mods. I read this occurs when you have a previous save game before you install a mod and then you continue that save game after you install the mod.

Of course you may not experience flaws 1 and 3 and if you do they are easily rectifiable. This game is still worth the money. Even after 2 years the graphics do not fail to impress. The water effects on full are stunning.

The BEST Game I have played
I actually got this game free with a graphics card, so wasnt sure what to expect. Its incredible. In short this is the best FPS I have ever played, and its incredibly cheap. You start off in a fairly average FPS storyline- guy gets trapped on island.. lots of guns and people to kill. Its all looking pretty average until, UNTIL you see 1) the outside of the island with shimmering water glinting in the sunlight and 2) the expressive character models with their (usually) amusing dialogue.
Thats the first sign this game is something special. You get given a small gun, and some body armour then you are told to get somewhere avoiding the mercinaries. Avoid them?! Shoot them!
The AI for the game is also great. The enemies work in teams and one will be shooting you while one runs off to raise the alarm. Enemies will shoot through windows and take cover behind the lush vegetation or try to sneek up on you. After some liberal shooting it turns out the game can take another direction- vehicular combat! There are buggies and jeeps scattered on the island fitted with guns and rocket launchers (for the jeep). The vehicle physics are quite cartoonish, but fun and soon you will be whooping as you bounce over potholes.

The game will also run on even the low end graphics adapter. I am using an Nvidia Geforce4 MX420 with 64mbs of RAM and with all the graphical options on high it works smoothly. This game will run smoothly on almost any modern computer.

All in all this is a criminally overlooked game that deserves to be ranked among the top 10 best FPS's of all time. Seriously. This will blow you away

Hardcore fun!
The Game

The story line is a little bland and pointless, with the usual 'megalomanic who wants to rule the world with his army of minions etc' story. But aside from that, the AI engine offers one of the most hardcore challenges I've ever faced in a first person shooter. I dare you to play this game on Hardest mode; one shot and it's over for you.

WHAT'S NOT GOOD

The voice acting in this game is below standard, with the mercenaries coming out with really dumb and Luddite-ist comments; for example, two mercenaries half way through the game, complain that the scientists 'sit around doing nothing the whole time, while the soldiers do all the dirty work'. Clearly the level of stupidity of these mercenaries is unsurpassed.

Some of the sound effects are simply ridiculous. For example, when you throw a grenade (frag) at your enemy, it should not make a noisy, resonant 'boom' sound, but more of a 'crack' sound, so my step father tells me. Also, when you tap the mouse buttons as opposed to press them for a split second, the weapon repeat fire sounds get cut off before they finish, so the machine guns all sound terrible when you're using them strategically.

WHAT'S GOOD

The Graphics quality is amazing, even with most option turned down to Low, and only Water effects set to Medium. I like the fact that the sea water is crystal clear, so it looks like you're staring into a very deep swimming pool. There is a great range of thrown weapons (smoke grenades, light flash bombs, frag grenades), as well as about nine different fire arms to use, some of them sporting different fire modes.

The levels are massive! Each level is one island in a sequence of archipelago islands. The fact that you have buggies and rovers to drive around in, is great too; and you can run people over, and then watch the carcasses fly into the air! How funny. Not only can you drive buggies, rovers, hand gliders (in the air), but you can also drive big trucks, although they are quite slow. Shooting down helicopters is fun; once you hit the guy who's operating the machine gun from above, his carcass drops out from the copter, and the copter flies off for good, unless you blow it up.

SUMMARY

For the most part, the game is great fun, with massive levels, full of intelligent enemies who will hunt you down like there's no tomorrow. You will have to use stealth if you want to survive this game. Try playing it on Hard mode, for the challenge of a life time.