Jack will have the opportunity to handle a wide range of real-life vehicles in Far Cry, from the dune buggies in Figure D to HumVees and heavy trucks, to boats and hang gliders.

FIGURE D


Let's go! Roll over picture for a larger image.

Figure E shows a shot of the hang glider.

FIGURE E


The hang glider, a shooter first? Roll over picture for a larger image.

Dewey, Cheatem & Howe
Do you use cheats? I do. A lot of gamers look down their noses at cheats, but I like them. Only for single player games, of course; using them in multiplay would be unethical.

Why use cheats? Well, the point of playing the game in the first place is to have fun, right? It's not fun if you have reload every five minutes because you're getting killed.

Far Cry, like most shooters, has some cheats, or developer codes if you prefer, that are available by accessing the console or editing the devmode.lua file. The codes are out there if you want to use them. If you do, you know where to look for them. It's a good thing too, because you'll need them.

Frankly, there are some portions of the game that I don't think can be completed without cheats. Some of the enemies in Far Cry are brutally strong and determined not to go down. Some of them took three full clips in the head from an assault rifle before they dropped.

Another shortcoming of Far Cry that necessitates using cheats is the lack of a save feature. Your games are saved by checkpoint. The patch updates the frequency of the checkpoint saves, but still, you need to be able to save when you want. How else are you going to try all of those stupid stunts if you can't save first?

All for one, one for all
As popular as it is these days, Far Cry of course has a multiplayer aspect. There are three supported multiplayer options: Free For All, in which the player with the most kills wins, Team Deathmatch, where the team with the most kills wins, and Assault, wherein one team assaults a defensive position held by another team.

In the Assault mode, players can choose to be a Grunt, Sniper, or Support troop. These character classes are only available in the Assault mode.

I must confess, I don't like multiplayer games. Never have, and probably never will, so I didn't actually check out the multiplayer portion of Far Cry. In fact, in all of the game reviews you see me do, multiplayer will be the one aspect that I don't actually try out. Considering the hefty system requirements of Far Cry, I wouldn't recommend trying to tackle multiplayer with a dial-up connection.

If you build it...
Far Cry also comes with its own level-editing program called the CryEngine Sandbox. With Sandbox, you can create your own mission maps, or full-blown adventures for that matter.

I couldn't find direction-one for Sandbox, and it has a pretty complicated-looking interface, as you can see in Figure F.

FIGURE F


Without instructions, the Sandbox looks pretty complicated. Roll over picture for a larger image.

The good news is that plenty of resources are available in the online Far Cry community, where you can also find other player-created maps, both single and multiplayer.