Brilliant Gameplay, Flawed Package
When Far Cry asks players to duke it out with an army of gun-toting mercenaries in the middle of a jungle, it is just about the perfect FPS. Thinking tactically is the name of the game when sight lines, cover, and topography must be taken into account to have any chance at success. So what is the problem? It is that this is just a fraction of the experience, and the endless string of monsters in the middle of the campaign is neither challenging to fight, nor terrifying to behold. Combine this with characters that nobody cares about, and a shallow narrative that could have rivaled the BioShock story if it had been done correctly, and you wind up with a product that cannot compare to more recent shooters.
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