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WE GOT GAME!
Far Cry, a graphically stunning first-person shooter
By James Booth
Welcome to Computing Unplugged Magazine's monthly/biweekly/weekly/pretty-much-whenever-we-feel-like-running-it gaming column. The We Got Game! series will address gaming primarily in the mobile computing setting, with an occasionally desktop title tossed in when we feel it warranted (or, as with this article, we just can't help ourselves). We'll cover gaming on the Palm and Zodiac platform, Pocket PC, laptop, and PSP/Nintendo DS, and possibly even consoles. So sit back, put on your carpal tunnel brace, moisturize those thumb callouses, and get ready to get your game on.
Far Cry, from Crytek and Ubisoft, is just that: a far cry from any other shooter I've played.
Normally, we don't cover strictly desktop applications in Computing Unplugged and this has been out for a while, but David knows I'm a gigantic game freak and has agreed to indulge me from time to time [The begging was a really quite pitiful, but he did ask so very nicely -- DG].
Could Far Cry be played on a notebook? Sure, if you have one of those $3000-4000, top-of-the-line, gaming notebooks like the Area-51m from Alienware.
I won't gild the lily here; Far Cry has some pretty hefty system requirements. I won't quote the manufacturer's minimum and recommended, because those specs can be kind of arbitrary. But I will say that Crytek definitely had hard-core gaming PCs in mind when they designed Far Cry. You're going to need a fast processor, a boatload of RAM, and a fairly recent high-performance video card.
Hey, who cares about the mortgage payment? You want Far Cry to run smoooooth!
The story
In Far Cry, you are Jack Carver, formerly of the Ocean Patrol, whatever that is. Wearing his red and white Hawaiian shirt, Jack ferries passengers and cargo around the South Pacific.
Your most recent fare, attractive journalist Valerie Constantine, has been taken prisoner on a mercenary-laden island in Micronesia. These same mercenaries have seen fit to RPG your boat and leave you for dead. In this case, RPG means Rocket-Powered Grenade, not Role Playing Game! Your boat's toast and your goal is to rescue your passenger, escape the island, and dish out a little payback in between.
Looks like...
Far Cry has some of the most visually stunning graphics I've ever seen, and I've got a low-end video card. Unlike most shooters, a good portion of Far Cry takes place outdoors on the tropical island where you're stranded. The Crytek engine gives a true sense of space and atmospheric immersion with amazing distance clarity in the neighborhood of a kilometer. The water renders better than just about any I've seen in a game. It laps at the shore of the sandy beaches and boats roll with the waves, as you can see in Figure A.
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