I recently finished this game to. Horribly awful end sequence, and the pre-rendered parts through the game were pretty bad too, but other than that, it's amazing. I hear some people have complained that it goes indoors for some of it, but I liked those parts. I didn't like the way the final two levels were just like 'throw a million totally unrealisticly strong enemies at you'. I mean a man who doesn't die after 100 machine gun bullets? I don't care how uberised you are (not to give away any of the plot), that's just crazy. And the blue guys who took 2 touch grenades... and I was only playing it on 'challenging'. But better that than have a game that's too easy :smile:
The 'only four weapons' thing was pretty good, but I thought their could have been a little more weapon variation (come on, it's an FPS, you have to have some kind of high tech weapon). Also, it was really really annoying not having a lock or homing dot on the rocket launcher, especially since the choppers (except the twin-rotor ones) are pretty good at dodging and moving in a way that makes aiming difficult. A system like the avril rocket in UT2k4 would have been better. The binoculars were a good idea, but they sort of allowed you to cheat since they are basically a wallhack. I could use the binoculars to find someone, then zoom to maximum, before switching to a gun and killing a guy I couldn't even see... I'm pretty sure I did some parts in an unintended way, but that is a very good aspect of the game - most levels have multiple routes and places you don't ever need to go, but might if you chose to go that way.
The drivable stuff was all great. Not sure why they put the glider in as it didn't seem all that useful, and the explanation of why it was there wasn't very believeable at all, but the trucks, boats, shooting and the running over were all really well done I thought. It gives a good insight into what will be possible in HL2, though from the looks of it, the ragdoll stuff in HL2 is better somehow. I think HL2 has a different constraints models for dead vs alive enemies, whereas corpses in FarCry were kind of stiff (you can have a dead guy wierdly propped up by his own arms). Also I didn't like the way everything except the player could interact with dead enemies - a guy dying and falling onto another dead guy would look decent, then the player could just walk straight through both of them.
Still, the enemy interaction was overall very good. A number of times I was distracted by a couple of enemies who had sent their friend round to kill me from the side. Shooting an enemy running accross your view gave some very nice effects due to the physics, and some of the helicopter parts were pretty dam good as well, with a helicopter flying across a gap in the scenery or something, it looked very realistic.
I was ready to be heavily annoyed when I saw the woman (the stupid cut scenes trying to show her as being attractive were just a joke btw, I don't know why they bother), because normally when you have somebody helping you in a game, all they do is either run out and die, blow your cover, or just generally be lame. But overall, the woman stayed out of trouble. Not that she needed to, being invulnerable to any bullets except those fired by the player. At one point, I couldn't understand why I could hear a load of soldiers shouting and ordering, then I came back to where she was 'hacking', and one of them was just firing at her over and over while she stood there looking at a wall
Overall A-. They could have spent a little extra time making a better end sequence (or even allowing the player to do it themself, I'm not sure why they made most of the ending into a cutscene at all), and another choice of weapon, or improvement to the rocket launcher wouldn't have gone amiss.
