We are in a world of big games where you know what you're going to play months before it even hits the shelves. Games are taking longer and longer to come out, and more often than not, getting pushed back until it feels like you'll see the heat-death of the universe before the release of a game. Then there are exceptions to this rule, games that sneak up on you and come out of nowhere. Exceptions are what make life worth living, and games like Farcry are the exceptions that make a gamer's life.
Farcry lept into my view a few months before its release with a buggy, but ultimately astounding single player demo. I had never seen such smart AI, such beautiful graphics and such free-flowing level design as I found in the demo. But, being the bitter, jaded human I am, I thought the game would be delayed indefinitely and when it did come out, play horribly.
I can humbly admit, I was wrong. Man, was I wrong. When I picked up the full version, I was blown away by, get this, the TRAINING LEVEL. There was more fine detail and love put into the training level than most games receive in their entirety. The game kept knocking my socks off every few minutes throughout the entire time I was playing. Simply put, Farcry is the paragon of first-person action/adventure shooter games. Nothing even comes close to what the talented team at CryTek has pulled out of their digital caldrons. Nothing.
Now that I've already spilled the beans about how I feel about this game, let me tell you why. Farcry is the first of a new generation of games that are utilizing a new technology called "Normal Mapping". I'm about to go geek on you for a minute, but stay with me, you're going to learn something, I promise.
Every game you play is made up of one of two kinds of graphics: sprite-based animations or polygon-based animation. Sprites are hand-created pixel artworks that are 2Dimnesional; anything on the Gameboy Advance uses sprites. Polygons are what 3Dimensional games use; they exist in virtual space and can have depth. 3-D models are nothing more than a collection of polygons stitched together in the proper way to look like something else. The more polygons you have, the more detail you get out of your models, and the more life-like your game is. The catch is that polygons eat processing power like Homer Simpson eats doughnuts. So, you can only have so many polygons on the screen at any one time and still have your game be playable.
Normal Mapping is a way to get past that. In technical terms, a Normal is a non-existent line that sticks out perpendicular to a polygon defining which direction is "up" for the polygon. Now, some geniuses out there have figured out a way to take the information from a model that is several million polygons, and map it to a model that has just a few thousand. Let me try that in plain English. They are taking the look of a multi-million-polygon model and making it move and render like a low polygon model. This allows game developers to stick lots of very pretty models on your screen at one time, make them move and react and not turn your computer into a heaping pile of slag. Using normal mapping, companies have taken the graphical bar and raised it a few thousand feet.
Ok, I'm done with the geek speak. Farcry is the first PC game to use Normal Mapping. They call their version of the technology Polybump, and it's what gives their game its graphical edge. How big of an edge is this? Gigantic. Nothing out there looks like this game does, heck; nothing even remotely comes close to looking like this game.
The first thing that will strike you once you stop staring at how beautiful the nearest tree is how big this game actually is. The draw distance in most games is a few hundred yards. In Farcry, the draw distance is measured in miles. You can see the trees blowing in the wind on an island on the horizon, and they are no less detailed than those that right next to you. This game is a visual feast from the lighting to the textures to the models; it's like watching a moving working of art.
CryTek didn't use up all their technical wizardry just making the game look good. The sounds of the jungle are just as important and the views. The bushes shudder as you push through them, your boots clang on metal paneling and crunch shattered glass, you can hear the report of each gunshot, and so can your enemies. While the beautiful foliage may hide you from your foes' eyes, it doesn't hide you from their ears. Enemies will hear you try to sneak past them and swarm over you, yelling out death threats to you. Things along the lines of "I'm gonna shoot you in the face!". Even the binoculars have a directional microphone attached to them, enabling you to hear the sentries talk half way across the island or hear the approach of vehicles. Inside the interiors of the game, sound echoes eerily through the metal labs and stone caves. The sounds are easily on par with the visuals, making this world one of the most engrossing you can find.
At some point, you're probably going to want to actually stop gawking and move around the levels. You'll be amazed at how much fun this game is! You move around by running, walking, sprinting, jumping, swimming, driving vehicles (even a forklift) and occasionally even flying. You move along at a good clip, ensuring that the huge levels don't end up being complete bores. The levels themselves are completely freeform. There is no wrong way to go about getting from point A to point B, in fact, the best route is often not the one that seems the most direct. Playing through the levels becomes almost like puzzle solving. What is the best way to get where I need to go and not get shot? But, there are no worries about getting lost, since your radar has a convenient marker pointing you in the proper direction.
Don't think the locals are going to let you walk around their island fortress freely, though. Squads of mercenaries and…other things…wait between you and your objectives in each level. But, the game doesn't play like a run-and-gun shooter. Sure, there are lots of foes, but not that many foes. You never get the feeling that the enemies are just thrown in your way to make the game more difficult, be it for guard duty or on patrol the bad guys have a reason for being where they are, they don't feel randomly laid out or generated like enemies do in some other games.
When the bullets start flying, you begin to realize how smart the enemy AI is. That realization will turn to sheer astonishment when you realize that the mercenaries are flanking you, making you take cover with suppressing fire, and calling for reinforcements over the radio all at the same time. When I say reinforcements, I don't mean some instantly generated enemies that pop into existence once the alarm gets hit. These enemies already existed somewhere else in the world, and they take time getting to you. More often than not, their mode of transport is a helicopter that swoops down, raking you with minigun fire before unloading its squad on the ground. I can't tell you how I learned to hate the sound of helicopter engines in this game. Not because it kept happening, but because it usually meant my odds of survival just dropped dramatically. The bad guys can also come by water, shelling you with rockets from the patrol boats that are constantly roaming the waters around the islands.
The enemies themselves range from the standard run-of-the-mill mercenary to elite squads of heavily armored commandos. One of the neat things about armor in this game is that it actually works like it does in real life. The shock of the bullet will knock them back, but they won't die. In the beginning levels, only a few mercs will wear armor but toward the end of the game the commando's full body armor will give you fits trying to find a weak spot to put a bullet into them. The brilliance of the AI ensures that no fight will be boring or routine and their ever-advancing arsenal of weapons and armor ensures that you'll never outgun them.
Story-wise, Farcry is surprising because it actually has one. Now, it's as deep as any summer action movie, but its still there and it works. There's really not much more you can ask from a story in this sort of a game. This is an action game, after all, not a RPG. The basic summary is that there's a mad man out there in some tropical paradise who's causing trouble, and you're the unfortunate ex-Special Forces cum-boat captain who gets chartered to take a mysterious woman on a tour of his island. Needless to say, this turns out akin to another tragic 3-hour boat tour. After a few levels the game takes a definite turn and you meet some new friends. Mind you, I'm using the term "friends" as loosely as possible. I won't give away the juicy details, but needless to say, it's a very cool game.
For me, Farcry was one of the most surprising and rewarding game experiences in many years of playing mediocre FPS games. This one had excellent level design, brilliant AI, graphics and sound that will keep you on edge and it just out and out fun to play. That being said, FPS games are my sort of games. I like them even more so when the action is smart and challenges you - and Farcry was challenging without being oppressively hard. This is a twitch game, but it's a very good one - probably the best I've ever played. But, I don't want that to discourage people from playing this game if they consider themselves a strategy or an RPG fan. I have a friend who loathes FPS games and he loved this game. To me this is one of those titles that people will be talking about for years to come, and one that I feel that all players can enjoy. If you don't believe me, go check out the demo. You'll be blown away.
And the TV says to me, "I will eat your children." I look back, and say, "Only if I get to play their games after you're done."
