Original Far Cry, I always heard about this game and how it is loved by some people while hated by others. It's funny really if you started with the FC sequels first, you generally don't like the game very much where if you started with this game first, you don't like the sequels very much.
Where do I fit in? I would sort of be in the middle, while I don't dislike FC1 and I actually do like it, I can sort of see why someone would dislike it.
I'll start with what I liked, I love how wide open the levels and terrain were, it was impressive back in 2004 and still is impressive now especially considering how a lot of FPS nowadays that attempt to be "realistic" either have levels that are too linear or just typical open worlds where there is a lot of empty space and not much to do outside of doing linear missions.
I like how the game can have long range encounters but then off the drop of a hat can switch to close range and switching between the M4 and SMG's burst and rapid fire modes are crucial here and unlike in a game like Call of Duty where rapid fire shooting won't reduce aim and doesn't have heavy recoil, FC does and it gives the alternate weapon fire modes some use.
There is also some fun moments where you have to traverse using vehicles and it helps break up the hitscan shooting gameplay minus the part where the controls will make have me do some awkward turns and getting hit by rocket launcher enemies where they are hard to see and they can hit me 20 feet across the map more on that later.
The Trigens are also decently designed if a little a cheap since their attack telgraphs can be too random and the best thing to do is strafe backwards and shoot them before they can hit you and rip your health to shreds, the rocket launcher Trigens are surprisingly an okay enemy, their rockets at least from long range move slow enough where I can reliably avoid them, but overall they do an okay enough job at breaking up what the pace of what could've been a monotonous combat system and luckily, the game does a good job at switching things up. Sometimes, you'll be in an open level fighting mercenaries, other times you'll be traversing a level while mercenaries and Trigens are fighting each other, and there will also be more more close quarter indoor areas where you need to find keycards to progress, FC1 never does one thing for too long where it feels like the polish and my patience would have to carry the game.
Also, special mention to Jack Carver and his voice acting, all of it so is so hilariously bad that it comes back to being over the top, the guy sounds like an over the top teenager rather a trained soldier but at the same time, it only makes him that much more entertaining, good voice direction would make Carver seem more dull.
This is where my compliants can come in, the game is hard even on easy, this could be because enemies rarely give health drops or how the game only lets you hold one health pack, on top of that, enemies will only drop armor pieces on occasion as a result I lowered the game to easy and I may have dodged any potential frustration due to things I will describe later.
Enemies have great vision and are super accurate, they can see you from very far and they can hit you with pinpoint precision too. Luckily the tagging feature really helped because it this wasn't in the game where if I activated the binoculars and I instantly tagged enemies, the game would be impossible to play.
Speaking of enemies that are accurate did I forget to mention that you will randonly die from long range shots you didn't see coming? That happened to me a lot, these guys are deadly accurate with rocket launchers too and at times I thought the game was bugged when really it was because the enemies are THAT good at hitting me from long range. Mercenaries are better at hitting you from afar than Trigens are.
The OICW also breaks the game balance too since this is a weapon that is very good at close and long range so no need to switch fire modes since you have a scope now and there is plenty of ammo for it. I rarely if ever used any gun besides this one.
If it weren't for the tagging, the really good and forgiving checkpoint system that also lets you choose which checkpoint to spawn from(more games should let you do this), and the ablity to hold one medkit. I wouldn't be able to beat the game at all.
Overall, this Classic version of FC1 is a pretty solid if otherwise weird port of the game, I may have enjoyed the game more than I should because of the anti frustration features in this version of the game, maybe I will give the PC version a whirl someday.
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