Last year, there was a lot of buzz going around about a game on the PC called Far Cry. Most of the buzz was over how ridiculously good-looking the game was, and while it didn’t have the most compelling gameplay, it was still an enjoyable game with some truly memorable visuals. When Ubisoft announced that they were porting the game over to the Xbox, I was skeptical to say the least. After all, how could they possibly hope to port over such a graphically intense game to the Xbox, which could not even compare to a high-end PC? Well, I will be the first to admit that I was too quick to pass judgment as Far Cry Instincts manages to be a very enjoyable FPS that easily contends with the likes of Halo.
The first thing you should know is that Far Cry Instincts is not the same game as the PC version. In fact, Far Cry Instincts is in many ways much better than its PC brother. The standard solo game consists of a relatively entertaining story to back up some truly extraordinary gameplay, and the multiplayer portions of the game are some of the best available on the Xbox. The included map-editor is also a nice addition, making cause for some truly interesting multiplayer possibilities long after the solo game loses your interest.
The solo game kicks things off with you, Jack Carver, taking a woman on a tour to explore a remote island in the South Pacific. Without warning, your boat is reduced to splinters by mercenaries for no apparent reason, and you are forced to jump ship and swim to the island for safety. From here, Jack is left with nothing but his wits to survive and to uncover the unsettling truth behind an island that shares some rather creepy similarities with The Island of Dr Moreau.
Far Cry Instincts plays just as any FPS would. In addition to the usual gameplay elements found in a good FPS, traps can be set to lure your enemies into as well, which can make your life a lot easier if you can thin out your enemies before alerting them to your presence because most of the time, you are severely outnumbered and outgunned. Truly, the core concept in Far Cry Instincts is the need to use the game’s lush environments to your advantage. In fact, the setting is what pushes the gameplay forward: its great fun to sneak through a lush jungle thick with bushes and trees to hide in or behind. Another interesting addition to Far Cry Instincts’ gameplay is that you can crawl underneath the many raised huts and roll onto your back to take out enemies from beneath by carefully aiming through the floorboards. Later in the game, Jack is exposed to some of the experiments that are being conducted on the island, and he gains some truly kick-ass feral abilities: being able to send your enemies flying 30 feet into the air with a melee attack is extremely satisfying, as is tracking your enemies’ scent in the dark. Eventually, Jack becomes a fierce killing machine that is seemingly unstoppable... and I stress the word “seemingly...”
There are also an impressive number of vehicles for you to commandeer such as hovercrafts, wave runners, boats, hang-gliders, ATV’s and Humvees. Unfortunately, controlling them isn’t always the easiest task: all controls for the vehicles are done with the left analog stick, so to accelerate, you push forward on the analog stick, and you steer with the same analog stick. You can also shoot your weapon while driving by using the right analog stick. Doing so is a pain though due to the fact that your point of view follows your gun and not the front of the vehicles, so don’t be surprised when you repeatedly slam into trees or roll over your vehicle while trying to shoot at the bad guys. It’s frustrating, but there are very few moments in the game where precision driving and shooting is asked of you, so for the most part, the vehicles merely serve as a faster way to get from point A to point B. Personally, I would have preferred that aiming the gun was restricted to the front of the vehicle.
The story isn’t half bad. While it’s not going to win any awards, it does successfully lure you in so that you are always curious as to what will happen next. It’s also a pretty long game, and throughout that span of time, a lot of things change: the gameplay does a wonderful job of evolving to keep things relatively fresh. Let me just say that going from the under-powered Jack Carver armed with only a knife in the beginning of the game to a significantly transformed killing machine towards the end is pretty wild, and in between the two, there are moments where you will experience sheer terror, and there are moments where you will gleefully witness first-hand the sheer terror that you invoke in your enemies. Just when you think you are invincible, the game introduces a new threat to balance things out once again (you are not the only one on the island that has undergone strange experiments...)
Level design in Far Cry Instincts is superb. Very rarely does a game have environments that will suck you in like Far Cry Instincts. The only game that comes to mind that tops Far Cry Instincts as far as environments go is Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. My only gripe is that there weren’t more save points. There are some truly difficult portions in the game and it’s never fun having to go back and redo them: a save-anytime feature such as the one found in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory would have been greatly appreciated (and to take that a bit further: all games should have this feature.) The levels are also HUGE, with no load-times to be found once the map loads. Luckily, the addition of vehicles makes traversing these huge levels a little bit less cumbersome.
The graphics are nothing short of amazing. Naturally, it does not look as good as the PC version did, but by console standards; this is easily one of the best of the best. What’s truly impressive here, is the fact that most of the time you are in broad daylight, where the developers cannot rely on shadows to hide things. The color palette is very pleasing to the eye: the emerald blue color of the ocean, the gorgeous greens and browns of the jungle, and the breath-taking beaches make for some seriously tasty looking eye-candy. Getting too close to some of the foliage will reveal some pixilated textures, but that’s just nit-picking: Far Cry Instincts looks fantastic.
For all the great things that can be said about Far Cry Instincts, the audio was surprisingly mediocre. For starters, the weapons sound bland and cheap. The music, while not terrible, didn’t really fit with any part of the game either. There were moments where the audio did a good job of ramping up the suspense with strange noises and movement beyond your field of vision, but more often than not, it seemed to kick in way too late or way too soon. But the most obvious audio issue was the actual mix. The dialogue between characters at key plot points was far too quiet and muffled, and to make matters worse, there was often suspenseful music playing way too loud at the same time. During these key points, the dialogue is literally drowned in all the extra noise going on and it’s very frustrating to not be able to understand the plot that is unfolding before you. Fortunately, you can turn on subtitles in the options menu, but I didn’t realize that until I was about 1/4th of the way into the game. The voice acting isn’t too terrible (if you can hear it,) but the over-abundance of four letter expletives seemed a bit forced to me.
Far Cry Instincts also offers a robust multiplayer experience. Aside from your usual death-matches, there are some interesting new games to play as well. The most memorable to me was the Predator game, where one player gains unlimited use of all of the feral abilities from the single-player game, and all other players must try to survive. It’s pretty cool to be the predator, and it’s also suspenseful to work together with other people to bring down the predator.
Another great addition is the map-editor for multiplayer games. I personally love it when games include something like this because I find it to be extremely fun to create your own map with choke points, barriers, vehicles and turrets. It’s all here, and it’s not as difficult as one might think to create the ultimate multiplayer map.
Less than a month from the time of this writing, the Xbox will be replaced with Microsoft’s new Xbox 360, and I still don’t quite understand why... With games like Far Cry Instincts and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, it’s quite obvious that developers are just now starting to truly take advantage of the Xbox, and it’s kind of sad to see it go so soon. If you are looking for that one last hurrah on the Xbox, Far Cry Instincts is a great place to start. I would venture to guess that it will still be entertaining you both online and off right up to and maybe past the Xbox 360’s release. Is it the greatest console FPS ever made? No, not quite, but it ranks right up there with the likes of Halo. It looks wonderful, it plays well, it tells a decent story, and it offers up enough variety in the multiplayer games to entertain for weeks on end. I do believe that this is truly the last great FPS that we will see on the Xbox so don’t miss it.
