Far Cry - Bling and little else.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Amazing graphics, great level design, decent story line.

Cons: Poor AI spoils the whole thing.

The Bottom Line: 
Far Cry is eye candy and little else. Remember how much fun Doom3 was after the first hour? Now you get it.

Author's Review
Let's be honest, you're going to buy this game no matter what peer reviewers have to say. The fact is, it's been a bland season for fps games, and in a dry spell any glass of water is delicious.

Far cry reflects the gaming development concensus that games with lush graphics sell themselves. To this end, Far Cry features the best looking environments I've seen on the Xbox platform. These environments are big, and seemingly open.

But then there's the little matter of actual gameplay, and here's where the Far Cry falters. The AI is terrible. I mean, toss a grenade into a band of bad guys and hear one say "Did you see something?" bad. These guys never heard of the word duck, nor seem capable of working together. They have no issues with reloading their weapons right in front of you. In a sense, you get the feeling that you're playing Far Cry on the easy setting (I should mention the game does not have difficult levels).

The controls are -- what's the opposite of crisp -- soggy. The controller options do little to help. But that's ok, because the auto aiming feature is so aggressive, you can hit guys anywhere in the general direction of where you happen to point your weapon.

The weapons vary in the sense that they make different noises when you fire. Beyond that, they are the same. Well, yes, the rocket launcher and the sniper were different from any of the automatics -- but that's it. Pick a machine gun, any machine gun, and you're all set.

The vehicles ride like Mercury Town Cars -- there is no connection with terrain at all. The good news is that you gain nothing by using them. You can swim and run nearly as fast with the plus side of not being bounced off the road when you encounter a pebble.

In fact running and swimming is so effective, you don't have to fight if you don't want. I've run past entire squadrons of goons to get to the next save point. Yes, I know that renders the game pointless. But with AI this poor, the whole game is more of a screen saver than a game.

I should mention that the game comes with a map editor, which is fantastic feature. You can create your own maps, then share them with other players in XBOX live.