Well I just finished playing FarCry, so I guess it's review time! NOTE: What makes this game review relavant and insitefull is that it is comming from someone who does not get paid to play and review games! I am just a casual long time gamer. So you can be assured that any statment I make in the review comes from the heart, and is the absolute truth! So let's get reviewing shal we...

First Impressions: I first heard about this game while watching an episode of the screensavers. So when I was in walmart picking up a copy of Doom3, and UT2004, I decided to get this game as well.

The environments are lush and heavally populated with trees, plants, and grass, which makes for some stealthy sniping action.

There are also a lot of suddlties in the engine that may go un-noticed, such as proper lighting. For example when you look at the sun as you are walking under a building the suns rays are properly rendered.

Thank god this game does not play like doom 3. There are only a few areas where the map is too black to see anything without your flashlight. And unlike doom 3, you can turn on your flashlight, and still shoot your weapon!

Game Play: Believe it or not I had over 7 paragraphs written down and as usual I go to save my progress and �har har de har har�, the post back fails and I get a error page. My frantic attempts to click the back button in hope of restoring my work failed. Pissed Me Off! So instead of trying to remember and rewrite everthing I lost I am just going to list off the hilights.

What I liked about the game...

1. Vast beautiful outdoor scenes (2km view distance)
2. Many ways to travel, hang glider, boat, forklift, buggy, 4x4, flatdeak transport truck
3. Game play is well ballenced allowing you to choose weather or not to be stealthy or mow down enemies with a 4x4. Many different ways to achieve your objective.
4. A number of different guns in the game but you can only carry 4 at a time.
5. Your characters dialog through the game is quite decent and not too over the top
6. The phisics worked well but were not showcased very often.
7. Decent sound effects/music.
8. The final curscene hints at a possible sequel aka FarCry 2, not that I will ever be playing that game if it comes out.

What I did not like...

1. If I had to grade this game on a scale of 1 to 10 for game play I would give it a -1 or no score at all, (Children avert your eyes!) Fucking Bullshit! I played this game on �Challenging� difficulty, with auto leveling AI turned on. There were times when I spend hours, litterally fucking hours! trying to get past a section of the map. I'd get so far, die and have to restart, die again, restart, die, restart, die, restart, die grrrrraaarrgggggsghd(^$%_kghdlkg!!!!! If you have to keep restarting from your last save point 30 times or more it means those f-ing game testers were not doing there god dam jobs. This is BS! I would be able to understand and let it go if I only died say 5 times or so, at least I could deal with that. Oh and and by the way don't even think about laughing at me, because if you have the above average gaming skills, and over a decade and a half of gamming experience like I do, and you went through the same experience I did, and you know you have/did/or will in this game or other games, then you know just how pissed off I am right now. I play games to have fun not to have the game kick my ass repeatedly, �Please sir, can I have some more.� FUCK! This and this alone ruined my overall experience I had playing this game.
2. Enemies do not swim out into deep water to chase you or get into a boat to chase you out into deep water.
3. Vannila flavored A.I. but sometimes showing a level of intellegence. Many times you can shoot people in the head and they just stand there.
4. Enemy monsters that use there arms to attack can hit you from too far away. Some times they only move there arms slightly and they still hit you from afar.
5. Enemy dialog is not too varied and detracts from the game as the hours of play go by.
6. Besides pushing objects around a room the phisics in this game were not really showcased very well. I would have liked to have seen more in terms of �shoot this chain and watch the logs fall on your enemies�, but alas no such luck.
7. Broken pipes venting steam can kill you in two hits! Just like some enemies! This is of course, Cheap, Lame, and BS!
8. Enemy mutants are too strong, some are even stronger then the final boss!
9. There were times when I became stuck and could not move my character and had to redo the mission over again.
10. Invisible cloaked enemies that are barely visible up close!

Problems: The biggest problem I had at first was with the game not rendering outdoor environments properly. Whole sections of the map were not being rendered or being rendered transparenty. This was ALL fixed when I installed the latest 1.3 patch and I have not had any problems since.

I did encounter some inctances with collision detection when enemy feet would become visable through the platform above me allowing me to shoot at them. And at the same time I discoverd this I was killed by that same enemy slashing at me through that platform.

Also there was a point in the game where 3 enemies became invincible, and stood in one spot staring off into space. Of course I did not realize this until after I had depleted most of my ammo. Hence I was trying to take down a large mutant enemy, that usually takes a number of ammo clips to kill it, little did I know that the game engine had abandoned the enemy I was shooting at. They would just stand there breathing, and you could shoot at them and they would react to the shot but they would not die nore would they respond to me in any way.

Final Thoughts: If I had to give this game a rating out of 10. I would not even rate it, it would not even be worth it. From dying and having to restart repeatedly, to uninspired AI, lame excuse for body armor, bubble wrap protects better then the armor in this game!, all of which lead to this game simply pissing me off. I look back and realize that this game was one of the most unpleasant game experiences I have had in a long time.

The only small things I can say about this game would be that the cutscenes and dialog are good, and that they will not bore you. I even hesitate to suggest that the rendering components of the game engine are worthy of mention. Beautiful graphics do little for me, and are often used to entice gamers to buy the game, that is exactly what this game tries to sell you on, it graphics, and only it's graphics.

I just have nothing good to say about it. And that's my opinion. Take it as you will.

Now if you don't mind I am going to uninstall this game and seriously think about returning it. Or at least putting it somewhere where it will be out of my sight.