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Any
PC fanatic with a love for First-Person Shooters would have played FarCry,
a game now renowned for it’s difficulty, but previously renowned
for it’s divergence from many other First-Person Shooter of the
time. It was released in March, 2004, to quite a bit of
anticipation, and it deserved it. The game changed many aspects of
what people considered the standard for First-Person Shooters, by
adding the options of proper Close-Quarter Combat - obviously
influenced by The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay
- and a Long Range
Gunplay Battle System, plus the intelligent AI was like
nothing seen before!
Now
FarCry: Instincts, released after a year and a half of work
on the FarCry Engine looks set to take the First-Person
Shooter genre to a whole new level. As the game starts – in all
it’s graphical glory – players of the first game may have a
little shock, you start in a fishing boat near a small,
south-pacific island, taking what seems to be a rather arrogant
female journalist on a photography tour of the island. She wants to
get closer to the island but, because of the stories you’ve heard
and the rocks that are near the shore, you don’t want to in your
new boat. Consequently she gets in a mood chucks down a lot of money
and nicks your water scooter, realising there’s nothing you can do
you get some kip for a bit, only to get woken up by a military
helicopter that’s about to gun down your boat. After jumping to
safety from your burning boat in to the water then swimming - yes
swimming - to the nearest shore, which unfortunately is the island
you wanted to stay away from in the first place; you get to delve
into the weird and wonderful world this island houses!
Once
on the island, you have to face a whole outpost of highly trained,
skilled mercenary units, armed with a small gun, some traps, stones
and your wits. This is one of the first games I’ve ever played
that successfully manages to combine the Stealth and the
First-Person Shooter genres so effectively. It’s truly brilliant;
the amount of times I’ve laced a copse of trees with traps, waited
on the other side of it for a patrol to come wandering past and then
lobbed a stone into the middle of the traps,  alerting at least one
of the guards, this leads him to wander into the copse to check
where the noise came from, setting off at least one trap, his
team-mates when hearing his screams of course run in to check out
what the problem is; yep, hours of fun. The amount of ways to deal
with every area, every group of enemies, and even every enemy is
phenomenal – the set-pieces are far less constrictive than with
ninety-percent of the competing Stealth/First-Person Shooter genre.
The
control system is perfectly adapted for the Stealth/First-Person
Shooter game, the click of the Left Analogue controls whether
you’re standing, crouching or lying down, holding it takes you
straight from one extreme to the other. The Black and White Buttons
are switch buttons, one switches between the traps you can have, the
other switches between grenades and rocks allowing you to choose
between taunting and annihilating people. You also have a melee
attack on the B Button for when the ammo from the humongous range of
weapons you have runs out.
The
AI is one of the most advanced I’ve seen for a while, the enemies
use advanced tactics, formations and actually communicate to try and
take you down. What’s even more impressive is the fact that there
seems to be personalities put into the hardened killers sent to hunt
you out, many times have I been hiding in a bush as a couple of guys
wander past having a mild mannered conversation. There’s even
clever and dumb opponents, there’s been times when I’ve chucked
a grenade into a group of people, the shout of “GRENADE!!!” goes
up and they all dive off in various directions, apart from one who
stands there looking around confused for his last few seconds of
life!
The
story of the game is amazing, it just flows from beginning to end,
and every map - or arena as they seem to be - is soaked in story.
It’s all so very, very interesting. Through the story of the game
you start to acquire many varied and ultimately useful Instincts
(hence the name of the game), these start coming slowly after a
pinnacle part in the story, then they start to come quicker and
quicker as the whole thing gets more and more intense.
Multi-Player in this game is a very different twist on what people
usually expect; instead of the usual Deathmatch, Capture the flag
and King of the Hill, there is now Chaos and Team Chaos, like
Deathmatch but just a little more chaotic! Instead of Capture the
Flag there’s now Capture the Sample, which in all honesty, is a
very, very similar idea. Instead of King of the Hill we now have
Predator Mode,  which is wholly expansive and often comparable to one
of Giest’s more inventive Multi-Player Modes. You can have
either one or two Predators with up to eight Mercenaries for each.
The map has a Sonic Alarm Generator in it, which will kill the
Predators if turned on; it’s the job of the Mercenaries to turn
this on, whereas it’s the job of the Predators to kill all of the
Mercenaries. Predator’s re-spawn every time they are killed,
Mercenaries re-spawn only when the Predator does; quite complex, but
when the Predators have all of the Instinct powers and the
Mercenaries have lots of guns, it becomes very simple indeed, one
big blood-fest!
The
Map Editor featured in the title is absolutely awesome too; you get
the option to completely create your own island, complete with
military base, research lab, swamp or whatever else you want. There
aren’t any grids to work to; you build it all to whatever
specifications you like. It’s designed better than any other Map
Editor I’ve had the pleasure of working with – even if it
doesn’t feel quite as complete as the likes of TimeSplitters:
Future Perfect - as it allows you to switch between editing and
playing in the Map with one touch of a button, and where-ever your
cursor is when you press the Black Button to go into the Map is
where your character will be when you start.
Graphically
the game betters any other Xbox title I’ve seen, ever. The
in-and-out-of-water effects are stunning, the water itself is 
stunning. The people could be living and breathing and their
reactions to in game effects are lifelike. The scenery is absolutely
stunning with many of the views not looking out of place in a
“Best Shots of Hawaii” picture book. The lighting effects are
amazing and the transition of light as the day goes on helps the
game’s suspension of disbelief no-end. In addition to the
surrounding environment, gameplay has a huge effect on your
characters faculties - as you progress through the game and its wild
and wonderful story, you’ll find certain things mess with your
head and therefore your vision, in certain cases. This not only
looks awesome but affects you in a similar way that you’d expect
it to in real life; for example, when a flashbang goes off, not only
do you see it on your screen, but your eyes also get affected and
you find it hard to see for a fare number of seconds afterwards.
The
sound of this game rocks as well; everything from the sound of you
carefully coming out of water to the sound of crawling through the
undergrowth has been mapped to perfection. The guns all sound vastly
different even feel slightly different with the modestly variable
Force Feedback feature inbuilt with the Xbox Control Pads. Similar
gameplay-hindering occurrences can happen to you character’s
hearing also, like when you’re sensitive to sound the high pitch
noise of an alarm actually hurts you, or when a grenade goes off a
little way from you, you end up with a ringing in your ears for a
few seconds afterwards. There are just loads and loads of little
tiny additions within the game that you don’t even notice but just
make the whole playing experience better. Even the music adds to the
experience of the game, for you music buffs there’s even a helping
hand from the well-known Electronica artist Paul
Haslinger (Tangerine Dream), adding his own unique style to the mix.
As
a whole, FarCry Instincts fares quite well, there are
a few flaws; Level Checkpoints failing to re-load, 2D object
scarring and a little pop-up, but little else. The huge variety of
weaponry is bigger and better than any realistic shooter around, but
the traps, stones and the brilliant backstab move makes them almost
irrelevant. The enemies are structured and clever making re-play
value huge as every time you play a situation it will be slightly
different - and even if you get bored of the in-game Levels, you can
just make your own and take it online!
FarCry
Instincts is clearly an awesome game. It certainly fares better
than the recent competition from the likes of Conspiracy: Weapons
of Mass Destruction, Medal of Honour: European Assault,
and, possibly, it’s even better than Halo 2. Everything
done in this game has been done right, the enjoyment whilst playing
it is huge, the re-play value is huge and, damn it, I know if I
wasn’t writing this review now I’d be playing on it even though
I really don’t much like the whole First-Person Shooter genre.
This game has done something that every First-Person Shooter has
tried to do before but this has pulled it off, to take the genre and
do something different with it. I personally think these guys’s
deserve an award for the sheer amount of work you can see in every
square inch of this game.
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