Unfortunately this quality isn't carried through to the indoor levels. Ships, catacomb, factories, bases... everything indoor sets the par back to average. In fact every time an indoor level interrupted my enjoyment, all I could think about was getting back to the lush jungle in, hopefully, the next level. The indoors are just plain, lacking detail and you really see that the CryEngine doesn't come close to id Tech 4 or Unreal Engine 2+ at close-up visual eye candy. What it does well is huge sprawling levels. But everything does look a little cartoony and unrealistic, not helped by the average CryEngine lighting.

What Far Cry also fails at is a story. You're thrust into a game after an epileptic low quality intro apparently trying to save an oddly clothed women with some random person helping you on the phone. Perhaps I was supposed to read the readme to get an idea of the plot, but as you start the game you have no idea who you're supposed to be or why your trying to save the girl. And none of that really changes throughout the game. Ultimately, the story is an afterthought.

Other weaknesses are the models. The Trigen look like they came from a 90's shooters, even the human models look average.

Now, I played Far Cry on medium difficulty with a quicksave, which in same cases I used enough to make it worthwhile. I imagine this game, in it's later stages, would have become very frustrating with limited checkpoints. A couple times my quicksave corrupted and I had to use checkpoints. One of which took me back almost 10 minutes of gameplay. So playing this game with checkpoints, I repeat, would have been painful. In particular the last level where you'll get obliterated in a couple of seonds by enemies which are too far away for you to shoot if you have the wrong weapons (which I did). So I threw god mode on, ran out into the open where I could actually see the enemy because once they get too far away the engine doesn't render the characters even though they're still shooting at you, which itself is another major flaw in the game. And with god mode on slaughtered everyone as quick as possible and kept notice of how many times I would have died without god mode (a handy feature of this particular cheat). 130 times was the answer, which is ridiculous with no quick save.

So overall the last couple of levels were very poorly done, but overall the gameplay was all standard realistic shooter type action. Not too difficult, in fact quite easy for the first half of the game. Apart from driving sections because Crytek failed miserably at providing a usuable vehicle.

So for 2004, Far Cry is one of the best games and renders non-linear outdoor areas like no other game before it. It's worth playing just for this. In all other aspects (gameplay, indoor levels, story), it's just another shooter. 

yeah agree with this.
the quality of the game always seemed to take a nose dive when you went indoors. also, i recall getting frustrated very early on about not being able to save and got THAT fixed really quickly.

my favourite map is the one where you have to blow up 3 or 4 islands but you're basically just dropped into the ocean on a little rubber dingy and told: do it.
it really showed off the whole non-linear aspect and is probably the reason why i remember that particular one out of the whole game 6 years later.

the ending is totally stupid though. that bit where you sort of get chased through this goofy open terrain where everything is on fire and then that huge open silo type place was just insanely hard. 

Yeah the level with 4 little islands is easily the best. I don't know why they didn't have more levels like this one. 

I like the indoors in Far Cry, gameplay wise, although they remind me more of Tomb Raider (or a number of console games' indoor parts) than Quake. I wish Crysis had more indoor type stuff actually.

It's no Doom 3, true. Brushwork in the Cryengine games is extremely limited, the Solid tool is really crude compared to something like Radiant. But the indoor layouts were between OK and enjoyable. "Bunker" might be my favourite level, actually. "Treehouse" was great, as well as "Rebellion".

Lights are super expensive in Cryengine for some reason, more so than in Doom 3. I guess it was really built for sunlight and atmospheric effects etc. instead of proper indoor lighting.

Vehicles I found adequate.

I like the main character because he is not a super soldier, but a boat rental guy in a Hawaiian shirt with a Die Hard attitude (that was his yacht they blew up in the intro, I find that quite humourous actually). I want more Jack Carver games.

Then again, I seem to have a different taste sometimes. 

that was me btw. Got error 42 and copy pasted around it. 

http://www.celephais.net/board/account.php 

i loved this aspect of the game. it felt like you were john maclain die hardin' it up. really badass. like playing riddick. 

Anyone up for it? Preferably one who hasn't finished the coop campaign yet (as apparently most people in func_group already have).
I also wouldn't mind some L4D again...

necros, are you on Steam btw? Or do you only play WoW. 

I'd like to try but haven't got time until later this week. My special copy is supposed work. 

BetterThanUNIX on steam. 

 

I have an account, I'm just too lazy to log in when it's not required. 

http://kotaku.com/#!5797474/portal-2-basically-on-sale-everywhere-for-at-least-20-off

GO GET IT 

also, it was obvious they weren't even taking themselves serious with the story or the setting or the characters. And i think the cartoony look to the models and lighting is done on purpose and plays well with that. Your playing a douchebag on this clich� tropical island with random bad guys and 08/15 monsters running around.

Also, I really really liked the gameplay :o just the accuracy of some enemies was annoying when they were a few miles away (sniper, rocket ships, etc) 

i'm on steam, but i don't have any of the games you guys are playing like l4d/2 or portal2. the email i use for steam is my old email necros at rogers dot com.

i haven't played wow in a couple of years though. stopped a few months after wotlk and cataclysm didn't manage to convince me to start paying again. 

For those of you complaining that zerg is hard to use, I have some news for you.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/h29u6/starcraft_2_race_win_percentages/

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/h29u6/starcraft_2_race_win_percentages/

They are the weakest race according to these stats. So maybe that's not news, since we all knew this anyway. 

Maybe they did a typical fear-driven over-nerf on them. "Oh no, people always complained about zerg, let's nerf them a little more just to make sure".

-> over-nerf. 

I think I will have to get SC2, though. Or at least reinstall SC1. I feel like zergling rushing. 

Couldn't make it yesterday, but I'll be out of internet from tomorrow on. At least for a couple of days until I've decided which of the UMTS dongle prepaid deals I'll let myself being ripped off by. 

Fuck. 

Enjoy your life! 

yay or nay? 

I say yay. I thoroughly enjoyed it despite its flaws. If you like a strong story driven game and exploring/uncovering a pretty huge world you'll probably like it too. Be warned, that combat can get stale near the end, since they essentially just start throwing larger and larger numbers of fodder your way instead of spicing up the combat, and some classes (mage *cough*) are totally broken at later levels as well.

Took me ~60 hours to get through the game on just ONE class, there are like 6 different openings to play based on what race/sex you pick iirc, so there's a bit of replayability there as well. 

geesh, dont know if I need something that long!

How's combat? 

Ever played Baldur's Gate? Similar to that. It's mostly a top-down style micro-management semi-turnbased affair. Combat happens real time among all your characters, which you control simultaneously, but you can pause combat at any time with spacebar to issue commands or assess the situation. I myself paused a LOT to make sure my rogues were in the right places for back stabbing and that my warrior guy was taking the damage and that my mage was casting the right spells. I think you can configure their behaviors to what you like, but I find that cumbersome.

It's more strategic on your end, but on the enemies' part they just have a ton of weaker bad guys to slay, and every once in a while they'll throw in a giant ogre monster or an enemy mage or something.