In a nutshell:
Far Cry: Instincts sees you stuck on a gloriously rendered tropical island filled with lush jungle, limpid pools and heavily tooled-up mercenaries. Open-ended encounters offer far more cerebral exercise than your average run-and-gun, as well as the requisite trigger-pumping action. And then you start to discover the islands nasty little secrets???

The lowdown:
Although the full story mode is not in place yet, the environments, their contents and the sparse but important vehicles point to an exceptionally interesting console conversion of the PC classic. Graphics remain tantalisingly sharp and an underwater swim in one of the island???s many lagoons is exceptionally refreshing.

Most exciting moment:
So it???s you versus the mercenaries in a straightforward shooting match, right? Wrong. Far Cry has quite a few more tricks up its sleeve???

Since you ask:
Along with guns, explosives and vehicles, you can also set, bait and quietly observe traps in the undergrowth.

The bottom line:
If looks could kill, this would be lethal at 10 paces--how the rest fits together, time will tell.
Nick Gillett

I played the Xbox demo and when it was the right price I thought I'd give it a go,It's equal parts genius and cobblers,why?
As like so many Ubisoft games,I don't know why they're just the publishers,the control options are pathetic,this Ghost Recon,XIII and other FPS's are woefully short on control options,I think you can invert the Y axis on this and that's it!
What's at fault?,the goddamn save system!!,there almost isn't one,imagine the map is triangular and you enter at the bottom left 'corner',the save point may be on your 'left' as you enter the map but if you don't pass through it and stick to the right along the imaginary triangle you won't set it off until you're practically back where you entered.
The game sets up all these encounters but without an adequate save system to fall back on you inevitably follow the most obvious 'signposted' route.
The targeting is typically 'Ubisoft',headshots seem to be the only effective target as you can empty entire clips into enemies extremities with no hint of injury.
Item placement is quite dubious as well,why are all the medikits in places you won't need them/can't use them?,there's a bit over some small islands joined by decking and all the kits are on the other side of map or places that you'll take more damage trying to get to?!
Snipers seem to be psychic as well as having the vision of Steve Austin and this is another place the save system falters,want that sniper ammo up that guard tower?,you'd better like restarts as the chance of you falling off the ladder is immense,all for about 3 bullets!
Vehicles are atrocious,trying to jump in first person is bad enough,but driving!,Pariah,Snowblind and Halo do this so much better.
I can only say this much,I've only just awakened the Feral abilities,this might make the game at least playable,I had to endure the worst set piece to get them though,a bit with you sniping off goons after Val in a shack,it took me 11 attempts,it should have been a cut-scene.
Whether I continue with it is debatable,it takes about 5 minutes,like Doom 3, to cycle through the intro by which time you've probably thought of something better to do!

If there were any First-Person-Shooter, which is extremely difficult and challenging to complete, I would say it would be Far-Cry Instincts. I thought at first Half-Life was challenging, but Far-Cry Instincts really packs in a good old punch!

My brother already owned this game as he got it for a bundle price, but while we went for our little holiday in August 2006, I saw this game on offer for about ??15, so I thought I'd give it a bash and see what it's like! It's a long off game but overall, it took me a whopping 5 months (January-May 2007) to complete 1 profile of the game!

Far-Cry was originally released in 2004 for the PC, but because of it's success, Ubisoft (Producer) wanted to create a Far-Cry game for the Microsoft XBox! Plans and creations were done in 2004, but the game was never released until late September in 2005! To prevent confusion, the game was then called Far-Cry Instincts!

In Far-Cry Instincts you play as Jack Carver. A man in the wrong place at the wrong time! Using you're boat, you take a trip for safety around a tropical paradise, but after a quick nap you notice that choppers are flying around you're boat. Without notice, one of them shoots a missile, which puts your boat in flames. Jack makes a great leap and heads for the sea. But that's not the end of the story; this is where it all begins...

From there, you must let Jack swim to safety, into the jungle and travel through the tropical arming yourself with all the gear and weapons you can find. You're enemies are tough but eventually you will put them to second nature when you are turned into a Predator. When predator, you can run at the speed of light, attack enemies, items and gateways with fearsome power and you can sense danger and threat using you're Feral Sense! Obviously, you won't be going around the jungle by foot all the time as vehicles such as the Dirt Bike, Hovercraft, Speedboat & Trucks are supplied and are placed for the users takings!

Far-Cry Instincts also supplies settings where you can challenge you're friends in a multiplayer predator match, or you can go with or against the world on XBox Live! But if you're not one which likes to travel online, you can always sit back and create brand new multiplayer maps using the editor supplied with Far-Cry Instincts, and when the map is done, you can send it via XBox Live and let friends play you're map, or just keep it on you're console and let friends experience a battle in you're designed map!

My Personal Game Score: 9/10: Smashing, Groovy, Wonderful

My Wish: Sometimes I wish the game was a little bit easier to do, and I'm wondering to myself, can Jack really only hold a maximum of 3 weapons? Surely he can carry maybe 2 more weapons that would help us of course!

Final Comments: Overall, if you're after a First-Person-Shooter other than Half-Life which puts players up to a challenge, I recommend you take Far-Cry Instincts and place this in you're fearsome predator collection!

Review By Captain Chris Kipper!

I completed this game on the xbox and PC and will eventually play again......and complete it again. Other than C&C this has to be one of the best games created. The graphics and gameplay are very good. Would recommend to have in your games collection forever.

This is a beautiful game. Just look at the water. It looks REAL !!! I have great respect for the people who made this hugely entertaining game. The story is not very original, but the sense of danger from the enemies & the sheer size of the island are what makes this game so very playable. For me, the 2nd best game of 2005 ( after GTA San Andreas naturally !!).

On first sight the game looks good but there are a few flaws to it. The first thing I noticed, is when I was crawling from the undergrowth, the vegitation looks like it is made of cardboard. Looking at the water, we know the producers are more than capable of creating stunning scenery and this seems a bit of a cop out. However, I persevered. The first enemy I encountered was one guy and immediately you think "shoot him". So I did. Either I missed him about seven times or he was super human or something like that. I emptied half a mag or ammo on his arse before dropping him. The whole game is like that unfortunately. One last point, you can't play skirmish games at all. You have to have one other human player in a non-mission game, which sorely disappointed me as I was hoping to make an island that I could play AI enemies on. It's ok-ish but it'll leave you wanting more. In a bad way