Full Review for Far Cry Instincts Predator by zubzero8

Introduction

Jack Carver, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Well thats for sure. On an island filled with lush vegetation and humble wild life comes a more sinister, uglyness coming from deep within the bowels of the island. A team full of failed scientists and mercenaries try to defy the laws of humanity by researching an ancient tribe being able to bestow it's members with animal like insticts and who better to try it on, an innocent passer-by in his boat, never to be the same again, this is YOU, Jack Carver. Out of ammo, running low on health, nowhere to hide, well, regenerate it, rip apart your enemies and spped around the area at leopard speed. Sounds cool doesn't it and it is, well, for the most part!

Graphics

The graphics are sheer brilliance, with a beautiful island to explore and many other areas such as underground mines, bunkers and research facilities, you can actually feel the heat from the sun while playing the game. They really have gone all the way with this outstanding reproduction of a stereotypical island in the middle of the ocean. Water effects are stunning, with blurred vision as you swim and rippling effects being seen on the surface. The people could do with a little redisign as some seem a little obscure and inhumane but nevertheless the graphics are good.

Sound

Well sound, not a highlight in the game but it's bearable. You see when a man in your ear is telling you what to do in the level, you really want to know what he is actually saying and in this case, Doyle, you guide to the island is not so helpful and bearly audible.
Other SFX are ok but not brilliant and the music does not really go with the action at the time, a bit of a downfall when a bit of fast-paced rock music can really add a chaotic and frantic feel to the gameplay.

Gameplay

Well at first you arrive at the island to drop off a CIA agent, can't be a hard job can it?
Well this is where the story comes in (and a confusing one at that) but the basic concept is that Jack is attacked on his boat after the drop off and needs to survive on the island, simple really when put like that. Anyway the first levels consist of a mix between stealth, vehicle sections and frantic battle sections, well you are just an ordinary man at the moment. Traps are a pretty worthless feature and really hard to pull off with a simple pull back branch and "TWANG" effect. The only highlight really are the battle sections and the vehicle sections where, altough terribly hard, get your heart pumping.
After a few levels however, the mercenaries capture you and inject you with a sirum that will eventually turn you into a feral warrior, although it's just an experiment. This is where it gets good but also bad. You now have access to feral abilities like super strength, health regeneration, sight and smell functions and super speed and all are pretty fun to play around with in the early parts of the levels, still on the island. But soon the story begins to over complicate, the levels get too linear and repetitive, they introduce other harder enemies like feral warriors, aliens and huge fat monsters and the feral abilities soon become worthless.

Lastability

Well it is nice that the game came with the expansion pack but the game becomes way too linear and will leave you with fond memories of open ended earlier levels, but with horrible memories of the later levels, too linear, not much fun. The only real reason to come back to the game is with the multiplayer mode which is quite fun with plenty of game modes. The usuals such as deathmatch, capture the flag etc are there but others including predator mode which all players have to kill the predator.
ALso a map editor is available where maps can be made and swapped online which is a neat concept.

Overall

If the game could have just kept to the same open-ended tropical sections and not moved over to the close quarters mine or building sections then this game maybe would have got a better score, also more vehicle sections are needed to show off the shear scale of the maps and also give it more of a feel to half-life 2, nevertheless it's still fun especially multiplayer but single player really isn't returnable.

Final Score: 70%