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| Addiction Level | 9/10  |
|---|---|
| Graphics | 9/10 |
| Value for Money | 10/10 |
| Reviewer Rating | 9/10 |
| Overall Rating | 5/10  |
Full review by
Elricardo
expert review 
on 26th Apr 2006
User Rating : 9
Respect :
0
Good Points: Excellent graphics. Well designed, beautiful environments. Feral abilities is a refreshing addition.
Bad Points: Checkpoint saving means repeating difficult sections. Occasional massive spikes in difficulty.
General comments: I was bought Far Cry Instincts for Christmas 2005 and having briefly checked which was the fire button, jumped straight in. I was pretty much immediately hooked. The story line is pretty minimal, you are Jack Carver and having left the military under a cloud are now running a boat for hire in the middle of nowhere. You take on a suspect charter and are embroiled in some huge conspiracy.
The game starts when your boat is blown out of the water. You spend the rest of the game heading towards checkpoints or contacts and later begin homing in on the final bad guy. It is a linear set up and you will not struggle getting from a-b.
Any X-Box owner will compare first person shooters to Halo/Halo2. This game fares very well. The controls are as you'd expect, shoulder fire buttons, jump, action button etc. The stalks move you in the usual fashion with strafe and look up/down available. The graphics are up there with the best I've seen. Most of the scenery is jungle based and can get a little repetitive, but generally it is a visually stunning game. At certain points I actually stopped shooting to have a look around, the shading and distance perspective is absolutely spot on.
The action is equally well handled. You get the option of grenades or you can dual wield. The selection of weapons is all there, with a good choice of predominantly automatic machine guns. The computer AI is also pretty good with foes taking cover, but generally speaking on normal level you can play through it without hitting too many brick walls. There are the standard offensive alternatives to shooting in the stealth and kill approach but it is seldom needed. In fact it becomes less and less necessary the further you get into the game due to your feral abilities.
Shortly into the game you are captured and injected with a drug. You then escape and things start to happen to you. You become sensitive to sounds and over the next few missions develop feral strength/attack/smell/vision/run/regeneration. In short they enable you to smash doors, run fast, see in the dark, smell enemies from distance, regenerate health and attack with deadly force. They all get used by level design, i.e low light environments or a broken bridge that neads a huge leap. The feral abilities are a nice addition, they do remove some of the skill from the game as with feral run and attack employed you can wipe out a lot of people in quick time. Rag doll physics, as ever,means that victims of such attacks get flung about 100 yards, which is a laugh.
The opposition is also kept fresh, ranging from standard soldiers to mini dinosaurs and even exploding zombies. Moving around is also varied, you get to use quad bikes, 4x4's and boats. These are easily controlled, but I found that so pleasing is the action I preferred to move on foot.
Towards the end you get involved in some pretty hell for leather encounters but combine feral health with liberally scattered health and your pretty much always going to make it. I quite liked that since the game auto saves at spaced checkpoints, and nothing irritates me more than losing an end of level firefight and going back to the level intro.
The end game battle is genuinely tough and will take half a dozen go's or so, topping off around 15hrs of play. It could take much longer or less depending on whether you investigate everything or are checkpoint driven.
In summary. This game is right up there with Halo as a gaming experience. The action is varied, well handled and occurs in a graphically superb environment. Feral powers add a nice angle to proceedings and for the first time ever I actually considered replaying the game, which I never can be bothered to do. The only negative is the occasionally repetitive jungle scenery and over the top effects of the feral attack. Both are very minor though.
Elricardo's review and ratings | 706 words
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