...but the game has to be one of the most frustrating first person shooters ever created.

First things first: The graphics engine is awesome. This is easily the most beautiful game world ever created. This is true for indoor scenarios, but the engine is especially good with tropical outdoor scenarios.

Unfortunately, the save-game system is the worst I have encountered in a long time. Not only is your only option to auto-save at check points (which are few and far between and also inconsistant), but the game sometimes even ends up saving just before you get hit by a bullet. And you guessed it: Once you load the game, the bullet is right there again, hitting you in the face. Argh! (I read that there is a bug that fixes this problem, but I have not seen that available anywhere... V1.1 seems to have the same problem...)

Can it be so hard to create a FPS game that is fun to play, simply by allowing me to progress through the game smoothly? This is now the second game within a very short period of time that I bought an UbiSoft game that was truely fantastic, but was made completely frustrating and useless by its save-game feature (XIII being the other).

But perhaps I am asking too much if I expect some fun to come in the same box as great graphics...

PS: I have now modified the game myself, adding a quick-save key (which can be done using configuration files and some minor scripting). This makes the game a little better. However, once I did this, I realized that there are many other things wrong with this game. I can not count the number of times where I entered a room and was immediately killed without even knowing what hit me. I often had to enter the same room 4 or 5 times before I could even figure out what was going on!

At other times, I would have to approach the same enemy multiple times and even though I knew what was coming and already aimed at the right spot before things happened, I was still killed again and again. How one would get through these scenes without a save game feature is completely beyond me. Sure, I did not play on the easiest setting, but still! I have played through all of Doom 3 without having been killed once where I thought it wasn't my own fault. In Far Cry, this happend all the time!

And then there were times where the level design was just so sloppy that I could not move on. A few times I tried to swim through a pond, just to realize that I could not get out of it because the banks were to steep. At other times, I set off a huge explosion that threw crates around so they would block the next door, and I could not move them out of the way. Now just imagine you die because of that kind of nosense and there is no save feature!

At other times, I tried to shoot mosters with a clear line of sight, but the collision detection is so sloppy that I kept firing into an invisible wall. As soon as I moved a few pixels though, the monster would kill me before I was able to fire off another shot (and it takes several shots to kill those monsters). I am not sure why this is such a problem?!? It seems that the FarCry developers can do perfect per-pixel lighting, but on the other hand, they can not even do rough per-vertex collision detection and instead use a bounding box? Hard to believe, but for a good number of on-screen objects, this seems to be the case.

This game is a good example for a game that sells because of its graphics. The graphics are awesome, but the rest of the game is a disaster! Put a different/average graphics front end on this, and people would hate this game! Game design wise, this is completely unacceptable. Still, the graphics are worth seeing, especially outdoor scenarios. You can see that in the free demos though.
... but the game has to be one of the most frustrating first person shooters ever created. First things first: The graphics engine is awesome. This is easily the most beautiful game world ever created. This is true for indoor scenarios, but the engine is especially good with tropical outdoor scenarios. Unfortunately, the save-game system is the worst I have encountered in a long time. Not only is your only option to auto-save at check points (which are few and far between and also inconsistant), but the game sometimes even ends up saving just before you get hit by a bullet. And you guessed it: Once you load the game, the bullet is right there again, hitting you in the face. Argh! (I read that there is a bug that fixes this problem, but I have not seen that available anywhere... V1. 1 seems to have the same problem... )

Can it be so hard to create a FPS game that is fun to play, simply by allowing me to progress through the game smoothly? This is now the second game within a very short period of time that I bought an UbiSoft game that was truely fantastic, but was made completely frustrating and useless by its save-game feature (XIII being the other). But perhaps I am asking too much if I expect some fun to come in the same box as great graphics... PS: I have now modified the game myself, adding a quick-save key (which can be done using configuration files and some minor scripting). This makes the game a little better. However, once I did this, I realized that there are many other things wrong with this game. I can not count the number of times where I entered a room and was immediately killed without even knowing what hit me. I often had to enter the same room 4 or 5 times before I could even figure out what was going on! At other times, I would have to approach the same enemy multiple times and even though I knew what was coming and already aimed at the right spot before things happened, I was still killed again and again. How one would get through these scenes without a save game feature is completely beyond me. Sure, I did not play on the easiest setting, but still! I have played through all of Doom 3 without having been killed once where I thought it wasn't my own fault. In Far Cry, this happend all the time! And then there were times where the level design was just so sloppy that I could not move on. A few times I tried to swim through a pond, just to realize that I could not get out of it because the banks were to steep. At other times, I set off a huge explosion that threw crates around so they would block the next door, and I could not move them out of the way. Now just imagine you die because of that kind of nosense and there is no save feature! At other times, I tried to shoot mosters with a clear line of sight, but the collision detection is so sloppy that I kept firing into an invisible wall. As soon as I moved a few pixels though, the monster would kill me before I was able to fire off another shot (and it takes several shots to kill those monsters). I am not sure why this is such a problem?! ? It seems that the FarCry developers can do perfect per-pixel lighting, but on the other hand, they can not even do rough per-vertex collision detection and instead use a bounding box? Hard to believe, but for a good number of on-screen objects, this seems to be the case. This game is a good example for a game that sells because of its graphics. The graphics are awesome, but the rest of the game is a disaster! Put a different/average graphics front end on this, and people would hate this game! Game design wise, this is completely unacceptable. Still, the graphics are worth seeing, especially outdoor scenarios. You can see that in the free demos though.