Far Cry

Played through the demo of the game Far Cry today. This game looks gorgeous. Taking place on an island paradise the graphics are stunning. You can see tropical fish swimming in the water and the horizon reflects in the water. Beautiful.

The AI was good but not great. The AI causes enemies to take cover and try to surround you...usually. There were a couple of times that the AI got stuck, just stood there or stood in front of me and didn't shoot. The AI will call in re-enforcement from land, sea and air.

The game allows you to drive vehicles. The boat and buggy you get to drive are pretty good, and both have a machine gun mounted that can be fired independent of the direction you are driving.

I thought the demo showed off a nice variety of weapons that will be offered in the game. You can use a sniper rifle and silenced MP5 as well as a pistol, M4, and P90. You will also find fragmentation grenades, flash bangs and a rocket launcher. You can also interact with the environment and can take control of some mounted machine guns which are quite devastating.

Overall the game felt a little like Halo (if you have played that) as far as pacing/speed goes but the game ran smoothly on my P4 1.8 GHZ system with a GeForce Ti4400 video card at the game's medium settings.

This is a game I am going to keep my eyes on. My main concerns will be how the multiplayer experience will pan out and whether the single player game will be long enough to warrant spending $60-$70 on. You can get the demo at one of the download sites listed here. But be warned, this game requires you to have a very good 3D video card with the latest drivers installed.