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The original Far Cry is a bit of a hard sell, now it no longer has its looksPrimal
Primal
Oh my friends, we have become weak. Feeble little twigs, snapping at the mildest first-person breeze. Let me tell you about a time when we were made of sturdier stuff, way back in the distant fogs of 2004.
This may sound a bit silly, but I feel likeFar Cryhas gone a bit forgotten. Sure, yes, absolutely,they make one every other year. But I meanthisFar Cry, the very first one. People who want to look cool and pretend the entire game wasn’t one enormous clown car of broken AI like to say howFar Cry 2was the best game in the series.
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
Everyone else likes to bemoan the terribad writing of all the variously problematic sequels that have poured forth from the Ubisoft’s Incredibly Complicated And Detailed Sausage Factory ever since. And I feel like the first gets a bit missed. So let’s talk about Far Cry Brackets 2004.
Far Cry was the last game I remember inviting people to my home to see. “You’ve got to come over and see this! You won’t believe it!” And people would visit my flat above the Spar and oooh and coo at the luscious vistas, the green forests against the blue sea and sky, alive with parrots and feral hogs. It was the last time I can remember thinking, “I can’t believe my computer can do this!”
But in 2004, we were nowhere near, and Far Cry was jolly exciting to see running. I showed off one particular moment so many times back then that I was confused to discover today that it’s not the start of the game. It’s the level set at the top of the mountain, with the hang-glider waiting to take you down to the river. Of course you could run down the long path down the hill. Or scramble through the undergrowth and risk big drops. But obviously you hang-glide, and then fight a helicopter as you do so, before landing near a boat to murder its inhabitants. It was spectacular! It still is a bit!
The start of the game is of course the arrival of Jack Growl, professional idiot and gun holder, who hur-dur-durs his way around the collection of islands upon which he finds himself stranded. He’s in a bunker, it’s dark and dingy, and people want to shoot at him. But then he emerges into the light, and the game deserves the forced gloat of the moment. “Ha ha! This isn’t a brown shooter like all the other brown shooters! It’s blue and green! Surprise!” So Jack Knife begins his epic quest to kill absolutely everything that moves.
Thinking about the entire series, blob-monsters feel like something that could only exist in one of those B-game Far Cries, like Primal or Blood Dragon. Putting them in a main FC game now would feel like jumping the shark. It’s most strange to remember the whole thing began with them right there. And, as I thought then I still think now: it would have been a better game without them.
Still, it has the advantage that nothing the game does can feel more stupid than Jack Grimace. He’s so badly written, and so much more badly voiced, that it comes across like a spoof. Fortunately the interruptions are short, leaving its atrocious plot mostly in the background.
What’s certainly changed since then is my familiarity with difficult shooters. I’ve become soft. Gosh it was a shock to the system, retraining myself to fear every bullet, feel every wound. There’s a lot to say for that, and I’d love to see a modern Far Cry embrace this, become less arcadey a bit more threatening. Just with far better AI.
Can I still play Far Cry?
You can, and pretty much out of the digital box if you want to. There are however a collection of patches that can be added to either the GOG or Steam versions to have ittake advantage of 64-bit architectures, then another totweak the game’s code to work with that and improve the textures. There’s also anunofficial 1.41 patchthat undoes some of the widely considered mistakes in the official 1.4 Ubi patch, andthe Silent Patchwhich will fix water reflection issues in post Windows Vista, get vsync working, and also get things working properly in ultrawide resolutions.
Should I still play Far Cry?
It’s an interesting one. It’s nice to play a more structured pre-open world game, that still has a large amount of freedom about how you go about things. But I really think it loses itself halfway. That first half is a fascinating reminder of how much tougher mainstream games used to be, but the terrible AI makes me think it remains an important moment in gaming, but not necessarily one to cling onto today.
