Far Cry Demo Impressions

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Ever since participating in the Far Cry multiplayer beta I've been desperate to see if the single player portion of the game could match the multiplayer's potential. I'm pleased to report that the single player demo has been released today and it locks Far Cry in as a must have for me. It's worth the time and effort to download the huge 496 meg demo.

You can download it yourself at Fileplanet, Fileshack, Filerush, Gamershell and damn near every other download site you can think of. Read o­n for some impressions of the demo and some more screen shots.

Once the demo finishes loading you are immediately presented with a large, tropical island, sparkling blue waters and a couple mercenaries discussing the finer points of fishing with grenades. The moment you walk out from behind a bush you will be spotted but o­nly if the mercenary turns his head and happens to see you. No magic NPC radar in this game as far as I can tell which means hiding and moving quietly will serve you well when you need to.

  

The Graphics:

Sexy! Huge landscapes coupled with colorful, detailed graphics and it runs smoothly to boot. Not to say Far Cry isn't a hog, you will need a meaty system to play with everything turned up but dropping some details will still leave you with some nice visuals while maintaining a smooth frame rate. I'm very, very impressed with the Crytech engine.

The Sounds:

Good sounds so far as I can tell. I don't seem to lose any noise because I happen to be facing the wrong direction like some games tend to do. o­ne neat feature is that the binoculars will funnel sounds from great distances to you when you look through them. So you can zoom in o­n a couple mercenaries and listen in o­n their conversation from a mile away. Nice touch.

The Gameplay:

Much has been made of Far Cry's AI and with good reason, these guys are quick o­n their feet. Not to say they're tactical masterminds but they don't just rush you and they do find cover fairly well. For example, I sniped a guy standing with a couple buddies and they actually reacted! What a treat. Not o­nly did they react, they jumped in a boat and came after me with the o­n-board mini-gun. Another telling feature is that reloading a save game will often yield different reactions and results. Your enemies don't just stand around, they walk patrols, they stop to talk and sometimes they come at you from areas you never expected them to turn up.

The damage system reminds me a lot of the Soldier of Fortune series. You can take a few hits but this isn't Quake and a well placed shot can put you down in a hurry. Luckily, the same goes for the bad guys.

  

That's all I have to say about Far Cry for now, we'll be talking about it more in the future as the game gets closer to the March 23rd release date. Do yourself a favor and give the demo a try, it's well worth your time.

- Certis

Comments

I didn't get the demo last night even though I wanted to. Are the physics turned on Certis?

Just something to add to this mini-review: The effect you see in shot 2 (the rail with the explosion) is a blur/haze effect you get when damaged. You get a similar effect with damage taken from falling and from smoke in your eyes coming from a smoke grenade. I think the effect is brilliant and looks great. I was so shocked to see the effect the first time I walked through an enemy's smoke grenade I thought it was going to a cutscene(that or something was wrong with my monitor). Much to my surprise my eyes cleared and an enemy mowed me down with a M-60. Good fun!

Yeah, physics seem to be in although I didn't come across too many areas that made good use of them so far.

Certis wrote:

Yeah, physics seem to be in although I didn't come across too many areas that made good use of them so far.

Cool on one hand but doesn't sound too interesting on the other, physics that is.

What is the hardware you guys tried it on?

P4 3.0ghz
1gig of ram
Radeon 9800 Pro

Crap, my rig is getting old. Stupid progress.

Alright, alright. I'd go stand in line. Someone bring me some beer and give me a bathroom break later tonight, Okay? It's going to be a LOOONNNGG wait.

Ok Certis, we have comparable configs except you have a tad better CPU and extra half-gig of RAM. So, Far Cry needed toning down on your comp? Wow! Hog and then some... What was the approximate fps when you pushed it all the way? I'll understand if it's "NDA-able"

As much as I try to avoid it... I need to upgrade or even get a new system! This blows... The game looks cool though...

Ok Certis, we have comparable configs except you have a tad better CPU and extra half-gig of RAM. So, Far Cry needed toning down on your comp? Wow! Hog and then some... What was the approximate fps when you pushed it all the way? I'll understand if it's "NDA-able"

I can talk about the demo, sure

I only turn down lighting and shadows to medium, the rest I leave at high running at 1280 X 1024 with no AA to speak of. I still get the occasional stutter but that could easily be solved by dropping something else or hoping they make it even smoother before retail.

You see, this shot here, you can see the mountain right?:
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/modules/gallery/album04/farcry7

While this shot is me on THAT mountain looking down at the island I started on, smack dab in the middle of the screen. No loads between here and there either and I RAN the entire way. Huge levels!

http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/modules/gallery/album04/farcry3

O.M.G. ... No load... Lemme get a sip of this here beer again...

Ok. I am happy. That's not my res, I'm still on 1024x768, having still a 17" tube. Since I don't dig AA, AF and such, I think it'll run like a dream on full detail. Thanks a million.

Sweet. I haven't had a good FPS to play in a long time.

I love how the bad guys finish what they were saying even after they're on the ground full of holes.

The physics are beautiful. I shot the osprey on the landing pad with an AA missle from down below. A huge chunk fell off the landing pad by me and caused a secondary explosion with parts fling everywhere bouncing off the walls. Then the blur/haze effect when I approached to close to the smoke from the burning hulk.

The sniper rifle combined with the ragdoll physics is so nice. One bullet to the head and a bad guy slid down a hill before falling from the cliff while flailing all over the place. I almost feel guilty for enjoying this.

Nice shrubbery to.

Running fine with all settings on high in 1024x768.
A64, 512mb 333mhz, ati9800.
With all settings on very high it was to choppy. I'll have to mess with it some more to find the sweet spot.

I am going to catch seven different kinds of hell for saying this, but I really don't see anything that impressive. I'd rate it a 7 or 8, but definitely not a 10. It'll either get buried by other FPSs this year or it'll be a blip, like a Freelancer or a Max Payne 2. I was more impressed by Call of Duty.

Oh wait, it's an Ubi Soft game. They lost my business by adding new copy protection into a PATCH.

Oh wait, it's an Ubi Soft game. They lost my business by adding new copy protection into a PATCH.

Actually, that was a snafu with Safe Disc according to the official response. The next patch should clear it up. *shrug*

I thought Ubi Soft was the company trying to prevent people from using Alchohol 120%?

WOW.

That is all I can say right now.

I thought Ubi Soft was the company trying to prevent people from using Alchohol 120%?

Yeah, they put a new version of safe disc in with the latest patch and safe disc messed up some stuff. I believe they're removing it in the next one.

I d/led the game last night, but was too tired to play it. I'll give it a shot this evening. But the thing I'm most curious about is the fun factor...Physics & graphics sound dandy, but does it seem like it will be fun?

I think it is really fun and I am guessing that the GWJ crew would have a blast in multiplayer one day.

hubbinsd wrote:

I d/led the game last night, but was too tired to play it. I'll give it a shot this evening. But the thing I'm most curious about is the fun factor...Physics & graphics sound dandy, but does it seem like it will be fun?

It's fun...but then again so was a few other games I can think of that I played through once and never touched again. I'll admit, when I went beserk with the assault rife, I was yelling in my Schwarzenegger accent, "You have been voted off the island!"

It's too choppy on my 1.7MHz P4 with GF3 running even at 800x600, and at 640x480, it gets funky -- psychedelic clipping effects.

It runs fine on my 1GHz machine with 512M RAM and Geforce4 Ti4600 with all the settings set to medium no AA/AF. It looks great with those settings too.

It's fun. I like the island environment. I'm sick to death of WWII.

Oooh. Maybe a new game for the GWJ guys?