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IGN Review of Far Cry: Vengeance
The Crytek Studios-developed first-person shooter Far Cry was released for the PC format in early 2004 and the game instantly blew players away with state of the art graphics and a wide open tropical battlefield to explore. Since that time, new iterations of the Far Cry franchise have shown up on major home consoles, from PlayStation 2 and Xbox to, more recently, Xbox 360. And now Ubisoft has readied a Wii incarnation of the series, Far Cry Vengeance, as a first wave title. The Wii build successfully capitalizes on Nintendo's innovative remote, enabling a comfortably high level of control speed and accuracy as gamers run and gun down opponents in the jungles and in the surrounding waters. But just as Far Cry initially set a new graphic high on PC, so does it set a new graphic low on Wii, with visuals so blurry, smeary, sluggish and ugly that you'll question whether the title could realistically run on Nintendo 64.
Far Cry Vengeance for Wii is a mishmash of Instincts and Evolution with new additions, such as a modified storyline, exclusive maps and weapons, and Wii controller functionality. The title follows ex-military guru Jack Carver, whose mysterious past has somehow familiarized him with a variety of dangerous weapons and allowed him to unexplainably use feral powers to become part man-massacring beast when the situation calls for it. The Far Cry franchise will probably not be remembered for its compelling storytelling, but previous games did use real-time graphics well to set a mood. However, the Wii version begins with a jarringly compressed and blurry cinematic that should be running in real-time, but isn't. The first time we laid eyes on it, we thought that our test television had malfunctioned and we checked the settings, but alas, it's a software shortcoming. Sadly, the in-engine visuals don't look much better, if at all, which is Vengeance's biggest disappointment.
Carver meets with a voluptuous arms dealer and travels with her to a tropical location when some mercenaries attack, and the action rarely relents from that point forward. Wii owners can take solace in the fact that Ubisoft has really utilized Nintendo's controller. The standard configuration is too slow for our liking, but the sensitivity settings can be increased so that you can turn and aim quickly; and you can press and hold the A button to lock the screen so that you can aim GoldenEye style. Within a matter of minutes, you will find yourself easily navigating the vegetation-filled environments while effortlessly disposing of enemies with one-hit headshots.
As we played through the title, we often wondered why the Far Cry team didn't communicate with the Red Steel one, because had Ubisoft's exclusive shooter had Far Cry's control accuracy and speed it would have been a much better game. That being true, not all is well with the Wii functionality. Oddly, you'll have to flip the nunchuk up to make your character jump and in our experience the process feels clumsy and forced. Worse is that you'll have to thrust the controller forward as it's done in Red Steel to zoom in on enemies with the sniper rifle or any other weapon. We didn't like the option in Red Steel and it's considerably less intuitive in Far Cry.
Even with these control gripes, moving about the environments and gunning down mercenaries feels quick and responsive. Vengeance is, like its predecessors, an action-filled first-person shooter so if you favor FPSs like Doom or even Halo to efforts like Rainbow Six then you will undoubtedly also enjoy this undertaking. The game world is enormous and it's filled with enemies to shoot, weapons to pick up, and vehicles to ride in. You've got everything from a machete (you simply shake the Wii remote forward to slice and dice at any time, even if you're already holding a gun), a 9mm, Bull44, shotgun, G18, AM9, MP5, Auto45, Carbine, assault rifle, BC-74, sniper rifle, grenades, and yes, even rocket launcher. The sheer variety is commendable and the ability to drive everything from an RMV to a patrol boat breaks up the monotony of running through foliage and shotgun-blasting foes.
But how much fun you ultimately have with the game will be directly related to how forgiving you are of its many technical and content related inadequacies. Easily the biggest offender is the visual presentation, which we only touched upon earlier in the review. The awful graphics unfortunately do not stop with the cut sequences. Upon booting Vengeance, one truth becomes immediately visible: this game was rushed. Wii is theoretically more powerful than Xbox, but it doesn't have the pixel shading benefits of Microsoft's first generation hardware. Despite the fact that it has released more than a year after Instincts, Vengeance doesn't even look half as good -- and we're not exaggerating.
The game world is overrun with textures so blurry and low-res that they would have been laughable had they appeared on GameCube, let alone Wii. Pop-up and draw-in deficiencies are everywhere. You will see grass sprouting up 10 feet in front of you as you walk about. You will see entire trees popping into existence close by. The lighting effects in previous games are gone. We're not suggesting that we can't live without HDR lighting, but some real-time sources would have been nice. Fire off a rifle in a darkened hallway and it won't even light up the area. The widespread foliage in previous incarnations has been dumbed down and looks hideously pixelated as you walk through it. The franchise's trademark outside bloom effects are nearly nonexistent and extremely subtle when they are used. The particle effects for blood and fire are primitively implemented. And what of the gorgeous shimmering waters from Vengeance's predecessors? It's all been replaced by crummy looking liquid - and if you actually dive underneath, it's all so foggy that you may as well be playing the original Turok.
Amazingly, despite all of these technical drawbacks, Far Cry Vengeance cannot even cling to a smooth framerate. The title runs sporadically at 30 frames and usually well below. There are times, especially during big explosions, where the fluidity will chug to a slide-show crawl. And that is simply inexcusable given all the shortcuts Ubisoft has already taken to get the franchise on Wii for the first wave. On one positive note, the game does at least support both 480p and 16:9 display modes.
The rush-job unfortunately transcends the title's graphics and journeys into some of the logic, too. For example, the enemy artificial intelligence - an area commonly praised in Far Cry games of old - is borderline stupid in Vengeance. Foes will completely ignore nearby gunfights and explosions. You'll be able to repeatedly walk up behind enemies and cap them in the head. And during intense fights, some gunmen will stop in their tracks and simply stare in your direction. More troublesome, however, is that on several occasions we managed to run through the perimeter of a level and then found our character hovering between this world and the next… or maybe it was the Matrix.
Other Far Cry staples, including a robust multiplayer mode and a map editor, have both been sacrificed, if not slashed completely from the Wii version. Vengeance features only a two-player split-screen mode that is as fundamentally flawed as the single-player experience. And the map editor - an option that would have helped extend replay value, just as it has for Konami's Elebits - is altogether gone. Shame, as WiiConnect24 is practically designed for such an addition.
©2006-12-14, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Far Cry Vengeance for Wii is a mishmash of Instincts and Evolution with new additions, such as a modified storyline, exclusive maps and weapons, and Wii controller functionality. The title follows ex-military guru Jack Carver, whose mysterious past has somehow familiarized him with a variety of dangerous weapons and allowed him to unexplainably use feral powers to become part man-massacring beast when the situation calls for it. The Far Cry franchise will probably not be remembered for its compelling storytelling, but previous games did use real-time graphics well to set a mood. However, the Wii version begins with a jarringly compressed and blurry cinematic that should be running in real-time, but isn't. The first time we laid eyes on it, we thought that our test television had malfunctioned and we checked the settings, but alas, it's a software shortcoming. Sadly, the in-engine visuals don't look much better, if at all, which is Vengeance's biggest disappointment.
Carver meets with a voluptuous arms dealer and travels with her to a tropical location when some mercenaries attack, and the action rarely relents from that point forward. Wii owners can take solace in the fact that Ubisoft has really utilized Nintendo's controller. The standard configuration is too slow for our liking, but the sensitivity settings can be increased so that you can turn and aim quickly; and you can press and hold the A button to lock the screen so that you can aim GoldenEye style. Within a matter of minutes, you will find yourself easily navigating the vegetation-filled environments while effortlessly disposing of enemies with one-hit headshots.
As we played through the title, we often wondered why the Far Cry team didn't communicate with the Red Steel one, because had Ubisoft's exclusive shooter had Far Cry's control accuracy and speed it would have been a much better game. That being true, not all is well with the Wii functionality. Oddly, you'll have to flip the nunchuk up to make your character jump and in our experience the process feels clumsy and forced. Worse is that you'll have to thrust the controller forward as it's done in Red Steel to zoom in on enemies with the sniper rifle or any other weapon. We didn't like the option in Red Steel and it's considerably less intuitive in Far Cry.
Even with these control gripes, moving about the environments and gunning down mercenaries feels quick and responsive. Vengeance is, like its predecessors, an action-filled first-person shooter so if you favor FPSs like Doom or even Halo to efforts like Rainbow Six then you will undoubtedly also enjoy this undertaking. The game world is enormous and it's filled with enemies to shoot, weapons to pick up, and vehicles to ride in. You've got everything from a machete (you simply shake the Wii remote forward to slice and dice at any time, even if you're already holding a gun), a 9mm, Bull44, shotgun, G18, AM9, MP5, Auto45, Carbine, assault rifle, BC-74, sniper rifle, grenades, and yes, even rocket launcher. The sheer variety is commendable and the ability to drive everything from an RMV to a patrol boat breaks up the monotony of running through foliage and shotgun-blasting foes.
But how much fun you ultimately have with the game will be directly related to how forgiving you are of its many technical and content related inadequacies. Easily the biggest offender is the visual presentation, which we only touched upon earlier in the review. The awful graphics unfortunately do not stop with the cut sequences. Upon booting Vengeance, one truth becomes immediately visible: this game was rushed. Wii is theoretically more powerful than Xbox, but it doesn't have the pixel shading benefits of Microsoft's first generation hardware. Despite the fact that it has released more than a year after Instincts, Vengeance doesn't even look half as good -- and we're not exaggerating.
The game world is overrun with textures so blurry and low-res that they would have been laughable had they appeared on GameCube, let alone Wii. Pop-up and draw-in deficiencies are everywhere. You will see grass sprouting up 10 feet in front of you as you walk about. You will see entire trees popping into existence close by. The lighting effects in previous games are gone. We're not suggesting that we can't live without HDR lighting, but some real-time sources would have been nice. Fire off a rifle in a darkened hallway and it won't even light up the area. The widespread foliage in previous incarnations has been dumbed down and looks hideously pixelated as you walk through it. The franchise's trademark outside bloom effects are nearly nonexistent and extremely subtle when they are used. The particle effects for blood and fire are primitively implemented. And what of the gorgeous shimmering waters from Vengeance's predecessors? It's all been replaced by crummy looking liquid - and if you actually dive underneath, it's all so foggy that you may as well be playing the original Turok.
Amazingly, despite all of these technical drawbacks, Far Cry Vengeance cannot even cling to a smooth framerate. The title runs sporadically at 30 frames and usually well below. There are times, especially during big explosions, where the fluidity will chug to a slide-show crawl. And that is simply inexcusable given all the shortcuts Ubisoft has already taken to get the franchise on Wii for the first wave. On one positive note, the game does at least support both 480p and 16:9 display modes.
The rush-job unfortunately transcends the title's graphics and journeys into some of the logic, too. For example, the enemy artificial intelligence - an area commonly praised in Far Cry games of old - is borderline stupid in Vengeance. Foes will completely ignore nearby gunfights and explosions. You'll be able to repeatedly walk up behind enemies and cap them in the head. And during intense fights, some gunmen will stop in their tracks and simply stare in your direction. More troublesome, however, is that on several occasions we managed to run through the perimeter of a level and then found our character hovering between this world and the next… or maybe it was the Matrix.
Other Far Cry staples, including a robust multiplayer mode and a map editor, have both been sacrificed, if not slashed completely from the Wii version. Vengeance features only a two-player split-screen mode that is as fundamentally flawed as the single-player experience. And the map editor - an option that would have helped extend replay value, just as it has for Konami's Elebits - is altogether gone. Shame, as WiiConnect24 is practically designed for such an addition.
©2006-12-14, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved