Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 4151
Joined: June 2003
Posted: Oct. 18 2005,23:41
Tested Systems:
A. Athlon64 3200+ 1G DDR X800XT and 6800 GT
B. AthlonXP 3000+ @ 2.4ghz 1 DDR 6800GT and 9800 pro.
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I played it first on the 9800 pro. And it was decent. But I tell you there is no ending to this engine. It will eat whatever you throw at it and look even more beautiful. When I got my Athlon64 3200 and 6800GT and just chew it up like an appetizer. The graphics looked a lot better, and what not... But then I turn up the details and it brought the *NEW* (at the time) to a crawl.
I recently up it to 2Gs ram, and X800XT and same thing. It looks better plays more smooth, UNTIL I increase the resolution and up the details further. Brought it to its knees. There is no bottom to the belly of this beast I tell you.
As a comparison, I was able to play Doom3 with my nvidia 6800 GT at ultra details at 1280x1024 (after tweaking the video cache size). Try playing farcry @ max details at the same resolution? it didnt go as smooth.
As for graphics... I'd say after doom3, farcry is the best I played. It's stunning gorgeos with a 6800GT/X800XT at atleast 1024x768 at max details. It's EVEN better on Windows x64 running 64bit! I would say doom3 is slightly better, but you can barely tell and it would be a matter of opinion.
Is it fun?
I have not got a chance to really play multiplayer... so I wouldnt know the multiplayer aspect.
As far as single player... it starts of pretty good! Till towards the ending. It got reptitive and feels flat. The ending wasnt all that great. 80% of the single player story mode was really good... i mean pretty darn good. Then it just sucked.
I dont really know why the developers did that.
In the beginning you had unlimited ways to clear the level. You can go rambo, steath assasin sniper, or go in like a navy seal. You can play the same map different ways and get different experience. The whole map is open... so you get limited feel like grand theft auto. You can go back and forth in the whole map until you accomplish the task.
In fact a lot of time I replayed this game just to replay the first levels.
Now later on into the game after they introduce those damn mutants... it sucked. They know where you are hiding you cant escape... and it turns the game into 1 way of playing... and often made it feel generic. What happened?
Another thing that suck a bit is the A.I. dont get me wrong they are the most vicious, smartest AI I've played against... but darn it they are too hard to be realistic.
For example, in 1 later map... the enemy AI spoted me from like 2 miles away and sniping me with a rocket launcher. I cant even see him unless I zoom in with my binoculors and he's still barely a spec. I understand the concept of if you can see it, it can see you. But that's unrealistically ridiculous! It killed the realism factor of it. I found setting the difficulty at medium offers the msot realistic game play. The "realistic" is not realistic at all -- I can shoot them point blank 3 times in the face and they just dont die!
3.5/5 stars. Debating on whether it should get 4... because at medium and the first 80% of the game is really fun. I once played it through as a sniper... then the second time as an assasin type (with stealth and a silent gun)....
