Far Cry Instincts (Xbox)

Voice

Jack Carver is voiced by none other than Deacon Frost, or should I say: Stephen Dorff who lends his vocal talents to the gruff, take-no-prisoners ex-tour guide and mean-merc himself. The rest of the voice cast stand up nicely to Dorff’s work and the whole game’s vocal cast provide good quality performances that are right up to scratch, bringing to life the various characters.

Level Design

With a game like FC: I you can’t really talk in terms of levels, the environments are expansive and extremely well modelled, allowing you to walk, run, jump, climb, swim and fly around to your hearts content. There is a linear story and as you move from A->B you will discover that there is level loading, but its fairly quick and the segments are usually extremely large taking quite a while to ferret out all the routes and secrets.

Multiplayer

LIVE, System Link, Split Screen – it’s all there and all accessible. There is the usual mix of game types, akin to deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag (steal the sample) and so forth.

One of my favourite modes however is the Predator mode, where one player is kitted out with a small arsenal of weapons and Feral Abilities. The other players have to team up and try and take them down, guns versus super speed and bestial strength. Those are my kind of odds.

Multiplayer is great fun and setup is quick/easy.

There’s one more addition that elevates this game to the heights of greatness.

Level Editor

To put it bluntly the level editor that allows you to make FC: I levels for death-matching etc, is stunning. It allows for some truly insane heights and twisted maps, tailored to take advantage of the game engine, complete with vehicles and all the game types. It’s extremely powerful and takes quite a while to get the best out of, once you’re used to it you can export your maps to system link/split-screen or share them over LIVE. Pariah had a similar editor, but this editor leaves that one in the dust. It’s a true WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor and with a tap of a button you can hit the level, explore it, see where it needs a touch-up or and swap out into the editor again.

Final Thoughts

There are a few irks with the AI, when it does commit a blooper or you can sometimes (very rare) get stuck somewhere on the map. Some of the sections are a bit repetitious and tend to be an all-out blast-fest, but if that’s what you want then you’re going to love the game.

The vehicle controls are a little twitchy, and it might help if they didn’t switch to 3rd person when you were driving them. A toggle between 1st and 3rd would have been nice. But these are teeny-tiny gripes and they do nothing to spoil the game.

Oh and ladders, I forgot ladders…I live for a game where they’re done properly.