Far Cry- PC

Oh man was Far Cry boring. It was the most "meh" game I have played in awhile. It was a...far cry from being a fun game.  See what I did there?

The game is definitely dated.  But in all fairness, a good game should stand the test of time. I would still go back and play the original PlayStation Metal Gear Solid game. It was awesome. This game, not so much.  The story is told in choppy cut scenes and quiet radio dialogue. The story has a pretty solid footing. It's what would have happened if Charles Darwin went mad with power during his trip to the Galapagos Islands after being inspired by Jurassic Park. Unfortunately, the voice acting is shit.  Especially the main character, he is awful. The voice acting may have single-handedly made the player character one of the worst in history. He was so unlikable that I kind of just wanted him to die. But that would have made the game really, really long if I just died over and over again. As a side note, I'm pretty sure he is the same actor that did the voice of Duke in Duke Nukem Forever (see said review).

The game is also stupidly long, which is bad when the story sucks and the gameplay is mediocre.  There were two spots where I thought yes, its finally over, only to be smacked in the face by another level loading screen.  The story gets exponentially worse--they stop caring about it almost completely.  At the end, they bring in some terrible plot devices, queue guy in your ear betrays you and you save the hot girl.  They also left it vaguely open ended with the hint of some larger omnipresent organization that goes beyond the government (to my knowledge none of the other Far Cry games pick this storyline up, thank you God).

Luckily the gameplay worked. It had standard FPS mechanics, nothing too special. The guns were all pretty standard. There was a secondary grenade launcher on an assault rifle that did almost no damage. Besides that everything was pretty vanilla. The "Trogen" (or whatever they where called) were super boring looking.  They were the worst mutants/monster models I have ever seen and I'd say they were completely uninspired.  There where some pretty sharp spikes in difficulty. But for the most part, if you moved slowly and corner camped it was a cake walk. One of the spikes occur right after you're thrown from a helicopter with nothing but a gun and 10 rounds in it. This part of the game was actually kind of cool. It completely changed the pacing of the game and added a real sense of survival. Unfortunately, it was a little too difficult and just became trial and error to find which path to take. The enemy awareness was way too good and sneaking through wasn't an option. You just had to run and hope you didn't encounter any of the enemies that could one or two shot you.

Now that all that is out of the way, I can tell you about my favorite part: the hang gliders. They were soooo cool. I have no idea why a research facility on a chain of islands has hang gliders. I guess the Mercenaries needed something to do on their lunch breaks. But for whatever reason, they are there. The first one is the best; the first time is always the best. You get to fight a fucking HELICOPTER with a hang glider. I felt BA taking out that helicopter from my hang glider. Too bad there is only one other hang glider opportunity. They really had something there. I mean, honestly, if they made a game called  Helicopter Hitman: Glider Team Alpha, I would play the shit out of it. For some reason this game wasn't Helicopter Hitman: Glider Team Alpha. It was Far Cry, and it was boring.