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Far Cry: Instincts Predator - Hands On Mini Preview
Chris Leyton
23/02/2006
Jack Carver steps up from the Xbox, but will it be enough with CryEngine 2 still fresh in our mind...
With Xbox to 360 crossovers still occurring at a concerning rate, TVG recently had the chance to check out the latest in the shape of Ubisoft's mouthful of a FPS, Far Cry: Instincts Predator.
Before we stick the knives in however it's worth bearing in mind Predator offers a little more to 360 owners then many other titles we could mention, containing everything from last year's Xbox adaptation of the 2004 PC hit and the forthcoming Evolution Xbox stand-alone expansion to boot. From the onset players can select between the Instincts Story or the Evolution Story, along with Multiplayer modes and the Map Editor. Regrettably we can't tell you about any of that because the build that we've received only contains 3 levels taken from the original Far Cry: Instincts, so all we can do is take a look at how it's shaping as a next-gen title.
Anybody who has seen the videos released by Ubisoft within the last few weeks will realise their urgency to differentiate Far Cry on the 360, not only from the Xbox version but the PC original as well. Throughout the last few years water effects have become a governing visual factor within videogames, and there's little denying Far Cry: Instincts Predator is set to... ahem... blow these out of the water, with sumptuous shader effects and the illusion of real waves lapping up onto the shore.
Far Cry has remained a stunning looking title to the present day, the antithesis to the many dark and moody shooters that populate the genre, so it's unsurprising to find Far Cry: Instincts Predator carries on the tradition. Rich vegetation and vivid colours look fantastic on a HD screen at this stage, however look closer and you'll notice the typical issues suffered by many 360 titles, such as questionable textures, character models and physics that feel distinctly last-gen. More significantly it seems Ubisoft Montreal have missed an opportunity to really expand upon Far Cry's Micronesia setting, with the use of HDR lighting witnessed to great effect in the likes of Need for Speed: Most Wanted and the forthcoming Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. The stencil shadows also look crude within the game, far removed from the soft-shadowing effects we should be expecting on the 360. Naturally it's a question of getting 360 titles to the market, and as such starting from the beginning would have likely put Far Cry: Instincts Predator well into 2007, but surely the next-gen should all be about the points we've listed above - we're not even complaining about our traditional creativity and innovation gripes here!
Admittedly it's still early days so there's hope that aspects such as the iffy rag-doll animations and the occasional visual glitch will be ironed out. Whether or not that will be enough time to improve the AI, which still has a habit of feeling unnatural however remains to be seen. Often enemies will become alerted to your presence and track you down as though you've got a homing beacon sticking out of your arse, whilst the trap system still remains largely ineffective when trying to lure militants to their unsuspecting demise. On the plus side the game runs smoothly on the 360, very smoothly; it's evident that the extra horsepower has provided the team the scope to run at 60FPS, which we're certainly not going to complain about.
The biggest problem facing the debut of Far Cry on the 360 has to be the timing of CryTek's recent demonstration of what a true next-gen Far Cry experience should look like, unfortunately the 360 debut looks to fall far short of this mark.
Looking past the inevitable disappointments that follow titles being "worked up" as opposed to created from the ground up, Far Cry still manages to present an engrossing FPS experience and it will be exciting to see what Evolution has to offer. Sadly the 3 stages from the preview build prevent us from telling you about this at all, so perhaps too much time to sit and ponder - I wonder why Far Cry: Instincts is one of the many titles not to feature in the backwards compatibility list???
