Despite being a different game to the PC original, Far Cry Instincts is actually a ‘retelling’ of that said game. You play again as Jack Carver, a retired special-forces soldier. Things begin much the same way as before, at work on a boat trip with a female client in the middle of some tropical paradise. Unfortunately for Jack, his latest client isn’t what she seems. He begrudgingly lets her take a jet-ski for a closer look around the island and takes a nap until she gets back. Time passes and Jack is awoken from his sleep by a loud noise. Suddenly, a helicopter blows the sailboat out of the water, Jack swims to shore, and the fight for survival and answers begins. The cutscenes throughout are presented in first person exclusively, which really adds a greater feel of immersion straight away. Much of the story from them on is fed to Jack by a voice over the radio, giving instructions, directions and encouragement along the way.
Those who played through the original Far Cry will have some clue as to what happens, but things are actually a lot different than you would expect for a game retelling pretty much the same story. For starters, in one big change from the PC version, Jack now has special powers known as ‘Feral’ abilities. The PC version featured various mutated beasts throughout the game; here it is Jack who has been mutated. This gives the player access sub-human abilities. Things such as night vision and an increased sense of smell which means you can see the trail of where an enemy has just been become useful throughout. Other powers include faster running and even super strength allowing you to punch through doors and more importantly, smack enemies 10ft in the air to their death.
Of course, the ‘Feral’ side of the game isn’t all what Far Cry is about. Stealth plays a big part throughout, which comes as no surprise considering the amount of trees and foliage on the island. Staying silent and unseen by crawling slowly through the leaves towards an unsuspecting enemy before sticking a knife in his back of capping him in the head with a silenced pistol is always satisfying. Another aspect of the gameplay that is new to Far Cry Instincts is the ability to set tree traps and claymore mines. By tapping the black button you can equip a tree branch that you attach to pretty much any tree in the game. By simply pulling the trigger the branch wraps itself around the tree. Now all you need to do it sit back, maybe entice the enemy in by throwing a few rocks and enjoy seeing them get snapped in half when they set it off and it springs into their face. It’s not a huge gameplay-altering addition, but it does give the stealth gameplay a bit of variety and also gives the player an extra option, especially in dealing with multiple enemies.
Far Cry Instincts is consistently beautiful
Far Cry Instincts is certainly one of the better controlling FPS’s on the market. Aiming is smooth and adequately precise, while swapping weapons, using binoculars and changing your stances are all mapped intuitively to the Xbox joypad. The vehicles however don’t feel so natural. I suppose you could blame Halo’s double stick control, but accelerating and steering with the single stick is hard to go back to. There’s a nice selection of offer though, from quad-bikes and machine gun mounted jeeps, to speed boats, hovercrafts and even hang gliders; it’s just a shame they all react a little too sensitively and as a result, aren’t as satisfying to control as in Bungie’s games.
Despite the solid control and decent combat mechanics, when compared to the PC original, the game falls short in a few key areas. The game world itself is disappointingly linear as you’re pretty much forced to follow designated pathways from point to point. Things open up in some places, but for the most part you’re on a set path with a bit of room either side to maneuver, and little more. Long gone are the open environments of the PC version where you basically had to find your own way through rivers and up mountains to get to each marked checkpoint. That said, added linearity gives this game a better sense of direction, but as a whole I don’t feel it’s an improvement over the free roaming the player had previously.
Even more dubious is the enemy AI. Occasionally clever, but frequently stupid sums up the enemy intelligence in Far Cry Instincts. At times they’ll impress you by finding cover or dropping back to get support from team mates. But far too often you can be faced with a static enemy or a solider running blindly into a wall for no apparent reason. Also, another thing that bugs me is that when you’re spotted, it’s almost impossible to hide again. No matter how far you run or what you hide yourself behind, if they’ve already seen you previously then it stays that way until you kill them. The fact you’ve run 30ft away from them, hiding behind a tree lying down in thick foliage and they can still somehow see you and shoot you is confusing. One thing that I do like though is the fact they’ll rarely run at you, so the cheapness of just sitting around a corner and capping them as they appear Doom 3 style isn’t an issue, but overall it’s too easy to just go guns blazing and kill everything. In a game that is mostly about stealth it’s worrying that a lot of the time it really isn’t needed.
Hangliding makes a return!
Overall, the single player portion of Far Cry Instincts is nothing special. It’s decent, certainly enjoyable enough to keep me at it through to the end, but will you play it again once it’s finished? Probably not. Thankfully, the excellent multiplayer mode makes up for it. With the multiplayer on the PC version being one of the most horrific online games I’ve ever had the displeasure of playing, I didn’t have must hope for the multiplayer mode of Far Cry Instincts, but how very wrong I was. The modes on offer, for both 16 players online/lan and 4 players split screen, are for the most part what you would expect. With deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture the flag you’ve got solid selection of familiar game modes on offer, along with a wide selection of well designed maps suited for all kinds of amounts of players packed full of vehicles, turret guns and even zip lines to slide down.
But it’s the ‘Predator’ mode that is no doubt the games strongest feature. Here, one player is picked at random to be the predator. As the predator you have access to all the ‘Feral’ abilities of the single player campaign. Super speed, extra strong melee attacks and the incredibly useful sense of smell when you can see the trails left behind by other players as they move. From here it is your job to a) kill everyone on the map, and b) stop the other players from activating the deafening alarm. The alarm is situated on the map at a certain location and it’s then up to the other players to run down a timer by standing next to it. Should they get the timer down to 0, they win. But should the predator eliminate everyone before then, they are the winner. Each time the predator is killed, a player who has been eliminated is brought back into the fray.
Additionally, UbiSoft has included a map editor in the package, and it is by far the best one ever to turn up on a console, destroying those offered in Pariah and Timesplitters Future Perfect.. The tools are simple to use, allowing you to easily create landforms, buildings, spawn points, and more. Impressively, you can drop into the map in progress and see how it works out at any time, so fixing small problems becomes straightforward. The maps can be distributed over Xbox Live, so there should be no shortage of new locations to fight in.
The net code is fairly good considering the size of the maps on offer. A standard 256kb upload seems to hold 6-7 players without any noticeable lag, although as soon as you hit 8 things get messy which is a shame as 4v4 is the ideal size for a lot of the maps should you wish to do team modes. The game supports a voting system, so changing modes and settings on a dedicated server is easy. Commendably, you can even have full voting control if you are on the Friends List of the server, a great addition. Running dedicated servers has proved buggy though with random drop outs and not being able to join the room mid-game for no reason, but hopefully a simple patch will sort this out.
Deadly knife kills from behind are completely silient.
Technically speaking, this is the best looking shooters on the Xbox and easily one the best looking games on the Xbox overall. The Far Cry universe is undoubtedly beautiful to look at and highly detailed. With its impressive draw distance, superb use of lighting and shadows, along with its stunning water effects, it’s easy to spend time just looking around in awe. Of course, things don’t match up to the same level as the PC version, but this is an Xbox with only a fraction of power found in a standard PC today so there’s no point even comparing them. One thing it does have over the original is its variance of locals. Although most of the game is outside, the use of weather and the sun at different times of the day gives a once sun soaked jungle a whole new look and ambience at sun set.
As far as sound goes, the game is less impressive. Music is used sparingly and is hardly memorable to be honest. Voice work however has been improved over the original. Anyone who has played the PC version will remember how enemies would repeatedly announce to you how they are going to ‘shoot you in the face’. Thankfully, the cheesy-ness of such one liners has been greatly reduced and on the whole there are a wider variety of sound bytes this time around (although if I hear ‘come on guys, lets do this by the numbers’ once more I think I’m going to snap the disc). The use of 5.1 is made the most of with appropriate background jungle ambience filling the room and gun fire accurately coming from the appropriate direction to the player.
All in all, Far Cry Instincts is a mixed bag. The single player has its moments and is certainly enjoyable enough for a play through, but there’s no denying its faults, especially where the occasionally dodgy AI is concerned. FPS’s rely a lot on their AI these days, and given the fact that Far Cry Instincts is supposed to be focused on stealth, it’s much too easy to simply run and gun. My guess is that maybe a little too much processing power has been dedicated to the graphics and not enough to the inner workings of the game. The fact that it feels like it’s doing things by the numbers at times doesn’t help either. You can almost see the developers ticking all the standard boxes of modern day FPS’s – Melee attacks? Check! Stealth? Check! Night vision mode? Check! Dual Wielding? Check! Customary exploding barrels placed near enemies for no apparent reason?.....Check!
As a single player game it’s a slightly harsh 6/10 game to be honest, but thankfully, the multiplayer saves it from mediocrity. Offering arguably the first worthwhile FPS investment since Halo 2 nearly a year ago, Far Cry’s unique playing style is a welcome change. For offline gamers I’d strongly suggest waiting for the inevitable price drop before dropping your dough on this, for people with Live, the island awaits your arrival.
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