Far Cry

Far Cry will be released sometime in the first quarter. For now developer Crytek Studios was nice enough to release a demo. As soon as you start the level you can see why it was a technological breakthrough at E3 last year. Water has real time reflections and you can distinguish every bit of foliage in the island jungle. Even individual blades of grass. If you have the graphical details turned up the full way you will see something even more remarkable, the lighting and shadowing of the Far Cry engine. When you walk under a palm tree, not only does it cast a shadow on your gun, but you can also see the individual light splotches where the leaves do not shield the sun. The game was played with high details with a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4, 1024MB RAM, and a Radeon 9700XT. Nvidia paid to promote themselves with this game, but it plays just as good with an ATI card.

The demo was just as entertaining on the game play. The island that the demo takes place on is seamless, so do not expect any load times. You can drive a few vehicles including two different types of boats, a buggy, a humvee (with patch), and a hang glider (with patch). There are also several weapons including a pistol, FAMAS, assault rifle, machete, sniper rifle, and bazooka. There are also mounted machine guns scattered about. There are some destructive objects in the demo, but the destructible environment will not be implemented until the final release. Enemy AI in Far Cry is amazing. Enemy soldiers have excellent hearing. If you fire a loud gun and they are within a hundred yard radius then they will run to the source of the sound. If they are overwhelmed then they will call for backup. It would be more interesting if the enemies shoot when you are hiding in brush. They have to see you in order to shoot. Hopefully this will be fixed in the final version.