FAR CRYing out loud!

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Performance and Gaming Reality Check
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I am going to trash THG review of Far Cry, so brace yourself. I will also further ponder the meaning of “system performance”. I hope that this will put minds of many at ease. Let’s start from the beginning.

<font color=green>About the reviewer:</font color=green>

I’ve been a gamer (and a computer professional) for the last 14 years. I bought my first game with my first 286 PC in 1990 and since then, I suppose, I’ve been buying 6-20 games per year depending on the year. Some years there are lots of good games and some years there aren’t. Between the games I own and the games lent to me by friends I would guesstimate that I’ve played and/or own 250+ games. That’s a lot of games, friends. In other words I know a thing or two about what makes games good or not so good.

<font color=green>About the system:</font color=green>

Acer Open full tower case, 350W PSU, 2 intake and 2 exhaust fans
ASUS P4T-E Slot 478 AGP4x motherboard
512Mb PC-800 RDRAM
Intel Pentium 4A/2.4GHz @ 2.8GHz
Currently o/c via BIOS, FSB 115, VCore 1.57, Stock cooling
eVGA GeForce FX5700 Ultra 128 Mb GDDR2
Currently o/c 535MHz Clock 1.00GHz VRAM, Stock cooling
Sound Blaster Live X-Gamer
3Com 10/100 Fast Ethernet
CD-ROM
24x CD-RW
Floppy
Microsoft Multimedia keyboard + Optical mouse combo
ViewSonic G200fb Graphics Series 21” CRT monitor
5.1 Sound system with 5 speakers and as sub-woofer
LinkSys router
Current Aquamark3 Score: 36,863

As you can see, the <font color=green>system used to test the game does not look very impressive: </font color=green>

Old AGP4x motherboard, mid-range CPU, lower mid-range video card, no aftermarket cooling or liquid cooling which could allow for further o/c, no hardware o/c via jumpers (resulting in PCI and AGP bus to be overclocked potentially leading to system instability), mid-range PSU, old sound card, etc.

INTRO

Everyone should do what they are good at. THG game reviews have disappointed me in the past and the Far Cry review is yet another disappointment. Do what you do best, Tom and Co. Hardware is your thing. Leave game reviews to those who do it best.

I am writing this as a warning to those poor gullible souls who, having read the THG review of Far Cry, are now saving up to buy this game. Hold on a second. You need to know the whole truth before you buy it.

Far Cry was conceived as a technology demonstrator for a graphics engine. It should have stayed exactly that – a technology demonstrator. Oh, wait. It actually did stay this way because while the game is extraordinarily gorgeous and succeeds in many other aspects, it is not a fun game to play.


PERFORMANCE

The game config detected my machine as “High”. (The possibilities are “Low”, “Medium”, “High” and “Very High”.)

The config suggested that

- The resolution be set at 1024x768
- All graphics and music be set as “High” (“Very High is the max possible”)
- Antialiasing OFF
- Anisotropic filtering OFF
- Texture Filter Quality Bilinear
- V-Sync OFF
- EAX/hardware sound mixing OFF
- Bodies stay 30 seconds

However, I decided to change some of the settings:

- Particle Count “Medium” instead of “High” (smoke/fog/explosions, etc. still look totally real)
- Shadows - Medium (Shadows look better at High)
- Special Effects - Medium (I did not notice any difference compared to High)
- Water - Medium (I did not notice any difference compared to High)
- AA to Low (=AA 2x) instead of none
- AF to 4x instead of none (4x AF is the maximum supported by the game BTW)
- Texture Filter Quality - Trilinear (instead of Bilinear)
- V-Sync ON instead of OFF.
- EAX/hardware sound mixing ON 5.1 Dolby Surround
- Bodies Stay 600 seconds (10 minutes) – this option typically increases complexity of the scenery, makes the system store extra information and reduces performance but I wanted the bodies of dead enemies to stay there long enough to make it is easier for me to find and loot them for weapons and ammunition).

As you can see, I turned up the visual settings quite a bit compared to the ones recommended for my system but at the same time I balanced them a bit by lowering some of the graphics settings to "Medium" as long as visually it made no difference. This effectively put my machine somewhere in the middle between “High” and the “Very high”. Hey, this is not too bad! But . . . how did it perform?

At these settings the game looks almost perfect and my frame rate dropped to around 18-22 only <font color=green>once</font color=green> in a brightly lit lab. This is weird and it looks like a code bug because the scenery in this location is not complex at all compared to other locations, like the Temple. Other than that I consistently get 40+ FPS even in the Temple where the textures are incredibly complex and life-like. In the jungle I get 40-80 FPS and over 80FPS on water. Initially, I made a mistake of turning mouse acceleration ON and that caused some very uneven frame rates and difficulty aiming on the move, but once I turned it off and reduced mouse sensitivity, the frame rate became smooth and even.

As always, I decided to see if the quality of the visuals would be drastically different if I turned it all to the maximum. I switched to 1280x1024 resolution and I set all graphics options to “Very High” (1600-1200 is out of the question unless all options are set to “Low”). He-he. My average frame rate dropped to around 12 FPS but this is irrelevant because the point was to see if the picture would look significantly better than with playable settings. The outcome? Yes, the game looked better, but not THAT much better.

So, hypothetically, if you ran this game at 1600x1200 at maximum graphics settings with playable FPS (read nVIDIA 6800 Ultra on a P4EE) and you assumed that *what you see* is 100% of the quality the game’s graphics engine is capable of then what *I* see with playable setting on my machine is about only 15-20% worse. Yet, everything is smooth, no jaggy staircase outlines even with only 2x AA.

The verdict is that if I can get 80%+ of possible Far Cry visual quality on *my* machine most of you guys with AGP 8x motherboards, nV5900XTs, nV5959s, R9800XTs or R9800PROs should relax. You can get 90% of the total visual quality with the same settings as mine, plus you can probably get good FPS (50+) at 1280x1024. I am confident that you and I can play DOOM3 and HL2 with excellent quality after balancing some graphic settings and compromising just a little bit.


THE GAME

<font color=red>Ratings</font color=red> (on a 1-10 scale – the greater the number, the better):

<font color=green>Graphics</font color=green> overall – 9.75

- Visual realism – 9.90 – it IS a game after all
- Animations – 10.00 - Breathtaking. You’ve never seen anything quite like this, wait, no, you did. In real life that is.
- Lighting – 10.00 - Breathtaking. You’ve never seen anything quite like this, wait, no, you did. In real life that is.
- Shadows – 10.00 . . . .
- Water – 10.00 . . . .
- Sky – <font color=red>6.00</font color=red> (Clouds don’t move. Period. And while the rest of the world looks alive and dynamic, the Sky looks totally static and lifeless. But the sun/sunlight and the moon/moonlight redeem the sky so I give it a 6.00, instead of 2.00).
- Artifacts – 9.00 (Would give it 10.0 but there are some artifacts and texture clipping in two missions immediately preceding the last mission. No, they are not the result of overclocking. My system is rock-solid and stable. A 14-day stress test at HIGHER o/c values has proven this but I since down-clocked the CPU and the GPU just a little to be on the safe side).

<font color=green>Sound</font color=green> overall – 5.25

- Aural realism/Dolby surround execution 5.00 (Sound panning is poorly done. It is often unclear, especially if you turn, where the sound is really coming from. This does not happen in other games, such as NOLF, for example.)
- Music – 4.00 (Musical score is primitive)
- Ambient Sounds – 8.00 (feels almost like you are there with bird, insect, leaves, water, etc. sounds)
- Sound effects – 4.00 (some are right on, others are muffled or exaggerated, it is impossible to tell how far the sound is, like you hear a monster growl, but it could be 5 or 50 feet away – you have no clue)
- Weapon sounds – 5.00 (play NOLF to find out what I mean)

<font color=green>Story</font color=green> – 2.00 (LAME! Primitive, unimaginative, annoying)

- Dialogue and Voice acting – 3.00 (most of the dialogue/conversation text is unimaginative and simply lame. The voice over for all the [talking] enemies is done by THE SAME GUY! And he is not even trying to sound differently. This is too lame for my taste!)

<font color=green>Fun factor</font color=green> – 2.00 (THE GAME IS NOT FUN! – see explanation below in game size. I give it 2.00 instead of 0.00 because the amazing beauty of this game does compensate for lack of playability)

<font color=red>Annoyance factor</font color=red> – 9.75 there is no save or quick save as such and each time you die you have to restart the whole level (see more below). Otherwise you have to use cheat codes. If you are like me at all <font color=red>you hate cheating (and cheaters) even in games</font color=red>. You play games at Normal difficulty because Easy means you are a cheater while “Masochistic”, or in the case of Far Cry “Realistic”, means the computer is cheating.

The game auto saves console-style at checkpoints. There is an undocumented cheat to save game via ~ console command but it is inconvenient at best.

<font color=green>Size of the game</font color=green> – <font color=red>VERY SMALL</font color=red> - total playtime for a an average player is 20 hours <font color=red>maximum</font color=red> INCLUDING the time wasted on endless reloads of failed missions.

*This game is not difficult. It is not challenging. <font color=red>IT IS STUPID.</font color=red>*

I don’t know about the “Easy” difficulty setting since I played at Medium (which is usually called “Normal”) but at this “Normal” difficulty you will have to reload many missions up to 30, 40, 50 times or more before you manage to get through.

<font color=green>Example:</font color=green> you start one of the missions in a dead end corridor against a “tank” armed with a rocket launcher. IF you are VERY lucky, at the start of this mission you will have full weapons, armor and health. But chances are you won’t . . . UNLESS you

1. Tried the “tank” mission, realized you NEED full everything;
2. Reloaded the previous mission, replayed it at least half a dozen times to make sure you DO have full weapons, armor and health for the next mission.

Now, the game saves the checkpoint about 3-4 minutes away from that “tank” encounter which means that if you die you have to reload, swim/crawl/climb for 3 minutes again before the tank kills you again. Reload. Repeat. Do this 20 times.

Finally, you get lucky and kill the “tank” but the fight leaves you with almost no health, no armor and, likely, no heavy weapon ammo. No biggie, you think, BUT there are four very fast, very tough enemies in the next room each of which can kill you in one hit even if you are at full health. The only way to deal with them is

1. To know that they are there in advance (which you will <font color=red>NOT</font color=red> know until you have dealt with the tank having reloaded the mission some 20 times).
2. To know how many of the enemies there are. (If you hold your breath and listen you may hear that there is something there in that room but not how many enemies)
3. To know that you need lots of grenades to toss into that room blindly.

Why? Because there are four of them. Shooting them is impossible. If you have few or no grenades – there is no way you are getting through this room even if you have full everything else which will not be the case after the “tank” encounter.

So, you figure, damn! I have no grenades. You reload the previous mission and go looking for grenades, but, in case you have not guessed it yet, – it is not easy to finish the previous mission with full armor and health, so you re-try it another half a dozen times. Phew! Great. You now have full everything AND you got grenades! 10 in the launcher and 5 frags! You are a tank (you think).

Not so fast, friend. You have to deal with the enemy “tank” again. YES! YOU GUESSED IT! You WILL have to reload the “tank” mission yet another 10+ times! This time it takes fewer reloads because your tank killing skill has been honed and polished to the extreme! Go-Go super soldier!

Oh, but how about the room after the “tank”? Chances are you will toss the grenades in there and one of the enemies will survive. . . it HAPPENED TO ME and it is likely to happen to you. And I got killed and so will you. And you start at the top of this post and redo the whole routine anew. Exciting, isn’t it? But this is not all.

Next in this beautifully designed mission you need to enter yet another room (the last one) to save Valerie. You open the door and you see her shooting at two or three monsters. Being a good gamer and a true hero you don’t want to toss grenades into this room because Valerie is there but at this point you have no idea that she is indestructible and cannot be killed. Well she CAN if you try very hard but if you kill her you instantly die yourself – GAME OVER! So you try to shoot the monsters and guess what? They go straight for you and you die instantly just like you did in the previous room before you figured out that instead of shooting you need to toss grenades. GOTCHA!!! Okay, here we go again: Restart the “tank” encounter and HAVE FUN!

I am not even going to go into the details of the mission where you are dropped from the helicopter into the middle of the jungle crawling with approximately 40+ various mutants most of which you cannot see while you have no armor and just one rifle with ten rounds in it. (It takes 20-200 rifle rounds to kill a single mutant unless you have a godly aim and every round you fire hits straight between the eyes.

Suffice it to say, that after 3+ hours of reloading this mission and trying this and that (including luring the monsters in the water since they cannot swim and drown while pursuing you) I got MAD, BROKE MY $300 high-back black leather office chair, gave up and restarted the game with the

-devmode

command line switch, and pressed “O” which gives you 999 rounds. Ha-ha! You would think that this solved the problem? Think again. I sniped as many monsters as I could from the cliff (maybe a dozen), then rode the waterfall down to the river since this is the only way to get off that cliff . . . and yes, you are a genius, you guessed it: I died soon after that. Anyhow, restarting the game with 999 rounds only took 3 or 4 attempts and I finally advanced to the next save/checkpoint which, by the way, is even stupider than the ones I’ve described above. The final boss mission is beyond stupid. The people who designed these missions deserve to be shot on sight or at least fired without severance. Sadists.

<font color=green>Game play and realism</font color=green> – an abysmal ONE, as in 1.00!

1. You can hide but you can’t hide. 85% of the time while you are prone, behind a tree with a huge boulder covering your back, deep down on the ground buried in 6-foot tall grass and cannot see $hit the enemies see you just fine . . . from up to 500 yards away . . . even without binoculars . . . and shoot you . . . from multiple directions . . .with inhuman precision. This is not enemy AI. This is bull$hit.

<font color=red>I have to give it to the game though, AI tactics and teamwork are incredibly realistic and even entertaining;</font color=red>

2. You can run but you can’t run away. You, the trained special forces super commando are a weakling. You walk like a cow, you run like an old fat 500lbs lady, you sprint like an old 300lbs lady and you cannot sprint for longer than 5-7 seconds. How many packs a day do you smoke, chump?

3. You can jump but you can’t really jump as you will kill yourself. Jumping off what looks in the game world like a 3-6-foot elevation will ALWAYS reduce your life bar by 40%+. Some commando YOU are! My Diablo 2 zero vitality sorceress has more red in her life orb than you and she can take 50 times more punishment!

4. Enemy mercs are suicidal. Yes, once I heard the last guy left alive yell “I will get help” and run away. But only once (well, maybe twice). The rest of the time mercs fight to the last man even if they have no chance (like if you are sniping them from a mile away they don’t panic and don’t run). They never give up. Say a group of six is advancing on your position you manage to kill 5 of them without taking damage yourself. The last guy does not run away, does not retreat or regroup. He keeps coming/maneuvering, hiding (tactician, my butt!) till you shoot him too.

5. You are strong, yet you are a wuss. You cannot carry anything, except weapons and ammo. You cannot pick up and carry any health packs which means that once you take damage you have to back-track to a location a mile away to pick up that med kit you saw earlier when you could not use it since you were at full health then. I suppose the game designers wanted to extend the total play time this way since it may take you up to 5 minutes to perform this feat. If you could only stock up on med kits and use them when needed, sort of Tomb Raider style, this would make the game SO MUCH MORE TOLERABLE!

Anyhow, there is a lot more to say about Far Cry, but <font color=green>the bottom line is</font color=green> that it is an outstanding technology demonstrator for out of this world, jaw-dropping graphics and animations. Nothing else. It should sell for $10.00 to cover the cost of the 5 CDs and packing to promote the graphics engine.

My gaming Hall of Fame

Privateer (the original one)
The entire Wing Commander series
Falcon 3.0Gold
Fleet Defender
Warcraft 2 +expansion
Starcraft + expansion
Master of Orion 2
Fallout
Fallout 2
European Air War (since I beta-tested it for Microprose for LAN playability and I am in the Credits! brag-brag)
System Shock (the original)
System Shock 2
Half-Life
Diablo
Diablo 2
Baldur’s Gate 1, 2 + Throne of Baal expansion (this game is perfection defined)
Total Annihilation
Unreal Tournament (the original only)
No One Lives Forever (the original only) NOLF 2 sucks
DeusEx
Neverwinter Nights (the original only)
Grand Theft Auto III
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Icewind Dale 2
Shogun Total War
Medieval Total War
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (this game is perfection defined)

These are some of the best games ever made if you haven’t yet, check them out. Many of them can be found for $9.99.

<font color=green>Stingy people end up paying double. One kick-ass rig that will go strong for three years or one half-decent one every year?</font color=green>

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Slava on 04/22/04 01:25 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

A couple counterpoints:

1. That system looks plenty impressive to me. A 2.8 Ghz with a GeforceFX 5700? You put that video card in a 3.4Ghz monster and you might get a 5 fps increase in framerate. No big deal... that's a fine box you got there.

2. Agreed on the graphics, I have the luxury of owning a radeon 9500 PRO and being able to use PS 2.0 with the lighting model set to very high quality... wow. What a huge difference! And still super-playable (except in that lab - you're right, somethings up with that).

3. I'm a wuss, so I play the game on "easy"... it's plenty tough, but I don't have to reload a particularly tough checkpoint more than once or twice at worst. Game's plenty enjoyable this way though, you're far from indestructible. I suggest you give it a shot, might increase the enjoyment factor for you. Either that, or wait for the save game patch.

3. I disagree about the running. Who can run full-bore all the time? You might be tainted by half-life or UT where you can run 45 MPH at all times. I find the characters ability to run more than acceptable.

4. I totally agree about the jumping part, I should be able to slide down a mild 15 foot slope without taking 50% damage.

________________
<b>Radeon <font color=red>9500 PRO</b></font color=red> <i>(hardmodded 9500, o/c 340/310)</i>
<b>AthlonXP <font color=red>~2750+</b></font color=red> <i>(2400+ @2.2Ghz)</i>
<b>3dMark03: <font color=red>4,055</b>

He-he No, I did not mean to say that the player should be able to sprint all the time, but there is a WALK key (default is Z) try to run normally and then press Z and walk. I dare you to see any noticeable difference. There is even less difference between running and sprinting. At least I don’t really see any difference there except that my stamina bar runs out. No, really, I often times have no idea that I stopped sprinting and keep holding Shift until I notice that I have no more stamina left. Running is done badly and you cannot convince me otherwise. This would not be such a huge problem if you did not have to often resort to sprinting into the water with mutants on your six because God forbid you dive for just a second with your stamina depleted you immediately take irreversible “health” damage which can only be repaired with a med kit . . . At the very least, since you are such a secret weapon, stamina recovery rate should be doubled. This way you will not be able to run all the time like a nuclear- powered terminator but you won’t find yourself completely helpless as often as you do.

You know, it would be much better if the game felt sort of like Rambo movies. Now THAT guy was capable of some feats while you in Far Cry are not.

I will try the game at the “Easy” difficulty setting, as you suggest, simply because I can’t get enough of its graphics (I am a sucker for good graphics).


<font color=green>Stingy people end up paying double. One kick-ass rig that will go strong for three years or one half-decent one every year?</font color=green>

Don't get offended by me saying this, but I've heard enough of this bull$hit from gamespot, if you suck at a game don't blame it for being hard. I didn't find the problem you were talking about, especially on easy, i'm currently going through the game on normal, currently on the cooler map, and AI doesn't really piss me off. I'm sure if you play on vetern or realistic it'll be insane, since the AI would probably have heat seeking bullets, and matrix bullet dodging skills. But that's because you want to challenge the almost impossible, but if you're playing on normal, the AI's not bull$hit, snipers will nail you if you don't kill them first, so I'm not sure what specific map or part you're talking about that the AI's insane.

<A HREF="http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/myrig.php?do=view&id=17301" target="_new">My PC</A>

I agree with everytthing but the KOTOR part...

A long long time ago, but I can still remember, how that music used to make me smile... <A HREF="http://www.nexus.hu/zonix/DIGGER.MID" target="_new"><b><font color=blue>Digger rulz</font color=blue></b></A>

And the pun in the post title.


A long long time ago, but I can still remember, how that music used to make me smile... <A HREF="http://www.nexus.hu/zonix/DIGGER.MID" target="_new"><b><font color=blue>Digger rulz</font color=blue></b></A>

I totally agree with the guy... this game has some serious problems...

hmmmmm i totally prefer the mind-less pain killer and x2

Athlon 2700xp+ (oc: 3200xp+ with 200fsb) , Radeon 9800pro (oc: 410/370) , 512mb pc3200 (3-3-3-2), Asus A7N8X-X

Scottchen,

I could give you many examples, but how about the mission after that helicopter drop (the “survival of the fittest” one)? I mean when you navigate around molten lava.

There are mutant gunners everywhere (I counted five). You can more or less easily see one on the road to the right. To see others you need to first get past the rocket tanks or kill them. Funny thing is that the gunners see and engage you when you are fighting tanks even though YOU cannot see them even with your scope. I mean you look at the right spot but they don’t draw cuz you are too far away. Yet they see and shoot you with ease.

Again we have a SOUND problem here. If you look at the numbers in your scopes and binoculars you will see that they indicate the distance in meters to the target. All firefights in this particular areas take place at ranges of 300 meters or less. You know? If someone fired a machine gun at me from 300 meters away I would hear where it is coming from. Yet you get pounded from every direction, you look and you look and you look and you look and you look more and you see nothing. The only way I could effectively figure out where the mofo is would be to stand up and try to see from where the tracers are coming.

Also there are mercs here. But funny thing is that mercs being attacked by rocket tanks drop everything they are doing and start shooting you once they see you. Oh, wait, the tanks do the same! It is like their firefight was just for fun, but now that YOU are here let’s do it for real. You call this AI?

Anyhow, I am not about to argue with you or anyone else for that matter, nor will I stoop to your level and trade insults with you regarding who sucks and who does not. But I will say this: everything is measured by comparison. Compared to challenging yet fun games with great stories and many hours of game play and a great replay value Far Cry loses miserably.




<font color=green>Stingy people end up paying double. One kick-ass rig that will go strong for three years or one half-decent one every year?</font color=green>

I only messed with the demo a couple of times. I liked it over all as a game :-) no quick save kind of sucked.

But what convinced me not to buy was no joy stick support. That just bites... I hate keyboard games too cumbersome for my liking.

If I glanced at a spilt box of tooth picks on the floor, could I tell you how many are in the pile. Not a chance, But then again I don't have to buy my underware at Kmart.

interesting


i really enjoyed Toms review of that game, it was really written well to be entertaining and interesting


but then again, an artist can describe a pile of sh!t with detail and creativity as well

good to hear the other side of far cry, i almost bought it because of the review, but perhaps ill read a little more before i do ^^

-------
<A HREF="http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/you.html" target="_new">please dont click here! </A>
<A HREF="http://www.subhi.com/keyboard.jpg" target="_new">This is you, interweb junky</A>

A couple strategies:

1- When mercs and trigens are fighting, wait & hide until they finish as many as each other off as possible before venturing forth. It makes life alot easier.

2- Stealth, stealth, stealth. Keep a close eye on your stealth meter, stay in the bushes. Stay prone and find EVERYONE with your binoculars before engaging, so they'll show up on your radar for the rest of the game even when you're not paying attention to them. LOOK HARD for a way around the enemy to get a better position... there is almost always a way to do that.
This isn't UT2004. Rushing in + shooting = death.

3- Whenever possible, pick off enemies one at a time using the silent SMG. If you can kill them before they get a shot off, none of their allies will be alerted.

________________
<b>Radeon <font color=red>9500 PRO</b></font color=red> <i>(hardmodded 9500, o/c 340/310)</i>
<b>AthlonXP <font color=red>~2750+</b></font color=red> <i>(2400+ @2.2Ghz)</i>
<b>3dMark03: <font color=red>4,055</b>