Far Cry®

This is still one of the best shooters of all time and I've been playing it since its original release.

I really love this game! I’ve played it both on a modern system and on a retro setup with Windows XP, and the experience was great on both. Far Cry 1 is definitely one of those shooters you should start with if you want to get into the genre. Its gameplay, atmosphere, and levels remain engaging even after all these years. Highly recommended for all shooter fans!

Still superb game. Funny how time flies. Blowing barrels still rulez.

Far Cry remains a technical marvel of its era. Its lush, expansive tropical environments and cutting-edge physics were nothing short of revolutionary at the time. Even now, the visual fidelity and environmental interaction evoke a sense of awe in retrospect. The graphics were groundbreaking: expansive vistas, detailed foliage, dynamic water surfaces, and sun-drenched cliffs—all executed with remarkable artistry and technical finesse. Physics interactions—like destructible barriers, vehicles tumbling realistically, and reactive environmental elements—felt remarkably immersive, raising the bar for first-person shooters of its generation. The gameplay retains a solid core: stealth, exploration, and assorted tactical approaches keep engagement high, even though arenas themselves feel more linear than the open-world freedom of later Far Cry titles. Still, the pacing and mission design convincingly serve the narrative and level variety. Dated enemy AI betrays the game's age: adversaries often rely on hitscanning and seem to detect the player through walls—limitations which, though defensible at release, now jar the immersive experience. The narrative leans heavily on genre clichés: a madman on an island, an amnesiac operative, a pet gorilla—it's entertainingly familiar, but lacks nuance or originality. Still, the plot provides enough motivation to push forward. Far Cry is far from flawless—and indeed, its aging mechanics and clichés diminish its modern-day immersion. Yet, it remains a solid historical marker of what was possible in early 2000s FPS design. Its graphical ambition and physics systems make it a worthwhile, if occasionally uneven, journey. For enthusiasts interested in the evolution of the genre, Far Cry is undoubtedly still worthy of play, as a foundational and influential experience in the history of shooters.

I bought this game the year it was released to keep me waiting for Half-Life 2 and Doom 3, and was pleasantly surprised. The gameplay is fun, the levels are open ended to a degree - you get a base full of goons on your path and it's your choice whether you'll try to snipe all of them from a hiding place or sneak in and try for silent kills. There are vehicles, used both by you and against you. There are some 'horror' levels and they are genuinely atmospheric. The things that keep me from awarding a bigger score are the story, which seems like a random mix of cliches (it's one of the few games I skipped cutscenes in without watching, enough said), and a few gameplay problems - the "radar" makes it too easy to hide in the bushes and snipe every incoming enemy, and there are some boring enemies that have too much hitpoints.