Remember 16 Years Ago When The Original Far Cry Launched?

Source: Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN Remember 16 Years Ago When The Original Far Cry Launched?

Totally Forgot About The Weird Mutant Ending

The original Far Cry was created by Crytek and lead directly to Crysis, released three years later and in many ways was unique to what has become a huge series.  At release it was utterly gorgeous and featured a real open world with driveable cars and hang gliders to soar above the landscape, once you figured out the controls anyways.

As you look at the Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN post reminiscing about the game you might wonder why it sounds like this game offers the same things as almost every current game and you would be correct.   Far Cry began the whole idea of freeing your FPS from rails and giving you an open world where you were free to wander around and do whatever you felt like.  Vehicles were mostly scripted events, there were no games letting you simply hop into a jeep and start roaming the world, stopping occasionally to bash the hood with a wrench. 

They also recall just what games expected from you back then, when enemy bullets were not an annoyance which you could quickly get over by hiding behind a bush for a few minutes.  A single enemy shot could take you out and even if you survived you did not heal until you could track down some of the sparse medical kits hidden around the island.   Check out this post, whether you were around for this games release or are wondering why some people get teary eyed when they talk about it.

This may sound a bit silly, but I feel like Far Cry has gone a bit forgotten. Sure, yes, absolutely, they make one every other year. But I mean this Far Cry, the very first one. People who want to look cool and pretend the entire game wasn’t one enormous clown car of broken AI like to say how Far Cry 2 was the best game in the series.

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Jeremy Hellstrom

Call it K7M.com, AMDMB.com, or PC Perspective, Jeremy has been hanging out and then working with the gang here for years. Apart from the front page you might find him on the BOINC Forums or possibly the Fraggin' Frogs if he has the time.

10 Comments

  1. serpico

    I dont know the exact history, but I feel even before farcry there were already games that, while not technically fps, already achieved similar open world concepts in large 3d environments. RPG games like morrowind which released earlier already had a first person perspective and allowed you to explore your world as you unraveled the story. GTA3 had already released a few years earlier and had a city you could explore as you wanted while getting in and out of vehicles while unravelling the storyline (although 3rd person instead of 1st person perspective).

    Reply
    • Jeremy Hellstrom

      Yup, why I mentioned FPS.

      System Shock had similar characteristics but wasn’t really the beginning of the era of the sandbox. Don’t know much about GTA3 … only played the first one which resembled the original Postal.

      Reply
      • Sidismr

        It was one of ancestors of modern sandbox games, far cry series was one of best open world games even story was phenomenal but its losing its charm

        Reply
      • Josef

        M8 you even good

        Reply
  2. Chris Hayward

    Shame it was only on pc,played it,loved played again and again,would love them to bring it out again

    Reply
    • Eric Potter

      16 years ago, console machines were to slow to play farcry. They have improved a lot 😁

      Reply
  3. Alexander Tait

    I love all far cry games, but for me far cry 4 is the best so far, you can take apart any game and say why did they not do this or this, just play and enjoy…

    Reply
  4. Eric Potter

    Farcry made me upgrade my vidio card. It was an amazing experience and a lot of eye candy with settings on high.

    Reply
  5. PostToaster

    Far Cry was a revelation, and no they don’t make one very year. It had QUICKSAVE so you could revisit every tactical encounter as many times and as many different ways as you wanted. Besides playing it at your own pace; not having to repeat levels etc.

    Crysis was about 5x better and also had quicksave so is endlessly replayable even today.

    Far Cry 2 was a bad joke which I foolishly bought on release because of a lunatic PC Gamer review.

    Reply
  6. caleb cooley

    So you are telling me the first Far Cry had a great story? I’m going to have to take your word for it because I refuse to play another Far Cry game after completing Far Cry 5. It was the first in the series I have ever played and now the last. What an incredibly beautiful pile of garbage. I couldn’t wait for that game to be over so I didn’t have to endure endless procession of uninspired zombies. In fact, the game was nothing more than a mindless zombie game. Shoot redneck in green salvation army sweater on 4wheeler, shoot redneck with green salvation army sweater in truck, shoot redneck with green salvation army sweater on road… get force captured to be preached at by main character I care nothing about repeat repeat repeat. Boy did it look good though.

    Reply

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