881st played so far
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2004
Developer: Crytek
Publisher: Ubisoft
I’ve really played this series out of order. Sure, we played the second and third game in that order, but both have their own quirks developed after this game. Far Cry 2 is described by many as an open world oddity, not reflecting where the series went and an interesting faction and mission system. Far Cry 3 is a true Ubisoft open world game, following the same course as the Assassin’s Creed series after the first and others – a big open world with loads of side activities and some set up that lets you unlock/earn the map step by step.
Far Cry, the first game, predates both of these developments, although its engine became the basic of everything Ubisoft after that. I’ve been looking forward to playing it and seeing where all of this goes.
Our Thoughts
It’s weird to play a game like this that has, as far as I can tell, no side activities. It’s a shooter in a big world, but rather than using that world for the many different situations, touches and small encounters other games like this seem to have, here it feels like you’re simply traveling from one point to another, while the world doesn’t really reward exploring. There’s nothing to discover and little to do other than taking on each mission. Yeah, it looks good in places, but in the end it’s hard to shake that feeling of it just being filler, sometimes with some enemies mixed in, but mostly something to drive through.
The missions are a lot more interesting, of course, and it feels like you get a lot of avenues to finish the missions – using stealth to travel in through various routes, taking enemies out one by one or a frontal assault, while for one I holed up in an observation tower and used sniper rifles to take them all out. It’s not as diverse when taking on a massive beached ship, where there are a few alternate routes, but mostly you go down one path, taking out enemies as you go. This is, of course, also one of the less interesting parts of the game as I played it, and even the arena fight at the end feels a bit standard.
Final Thoughts
I don’t think it’s unfair to say that this game is a step towards what the Far Cry series would become, but that it’s not that yet. It’s a lovely world to explore, with some good set pieces and taking down camps that work. At the same time, it still feels more level based than the big world seems to imply – the stepping stone aspect being as interesting on the game as anything else.