Review machine specification
CPU: Pentium 4 (Northwood) 2.8GHz
RAM: One gigabyte PC3200 DDR
HDD: Seagate 120GB SATA
VID: Nvidia Geforce FX5800
The surfing definition of a local is “anyone who has been there a day longer than you”. It’s like that with game players, also. One thing that bugs the living daylights out of ‘recent’ hardcore gameaholics is when some grizzled oldster gamer tells them about the good old days. You know, when real men played Epyx’ Summer Games 2 on their commodore 64s, and the preferred mode of file copying was using a tape-to-tape recorder.
Online gaming is even worse. After all, things have happened relatively quickly when it comes to PC gaming over the internet. A decade ago, there was no online gaming, except for online text-based role playing games, and they were largely the domain of academics, hackers and freaks (usually a combination of all of the above).
Oldbies love to view the past through rose coloured glasses. A few years back, they’ll tell you, gameplay was king, and none of these new fandangled 5 gajillion gigahertz video cards and RAM that comes in fancy containers matter one little bit.
And this is true. But gameplay was king because you needed a lot more imagination to think an 8-bit sprite with 16 colours to its name was meant to be a human being, as opposed to today’s dynamically lit, real time shaded efforts. What gaming grandpa also won’t tell you is that games used to also be ferociously difficult (as a way of extending playing time) and a lot less of an art form than they are nowadays, not to mention one game would come out every 4 months, as opposed to four games coming out every month.
However, I digress. The point is that the proportion of games wrenching players out of reality and making them immerse themselves to the point of obsession is minimal. That’s not a reflection on the sophistication of game programmers, rather on gamers themselves. It takes a lot to move hardened players nowadays. That said, if there ever was a game that takes you to the extremes of emotion – often for the wrong reasons, it’s Ubisoft’s Far Cry. At its best, it deftly manages to mix some of the best visuals to feature in a first person shooter with AI so smart at times it seems it could take your exams/work through your inbox. At its worst, it’s infuriatingly inconsistent, technically a mixed bag, and online, at least at the time of writing, guaranteed to make you tear your hair out.
It didn’t have to be this way. The positive vibes start with the install process. 3GB off a DVD is a lot less painless than say, a game that uses
six CDs to install. As your PC grinds those 1’s and 0’s into your hard drive, you have enough time to peruse the manual. Positioned on page 3 is a detailed breakdown of system specifications, which proves very amusing reading.
The first chortle comes when you read the minimum specifications, although at this stage low spec PC owners won’t realise the laugh is on them. Just like the back of the box says, the minimum spec is 1Ghz CPU, 256MB RAM, and a Geforce 2 card. However, these minimum specifications offer minimal enjoyment, unless you’re the kind of person who likes low resolution, pixellated action at single digit frames per second. To really get the best out of Far Cry and have smooth, detailed gameplay, head straight for the upper end of Ubisoft’s recommendations: 3Ghz CPU, a gigabyte of RAM, and a top end (as in Radeon 9800 Pro/Geforce FX5950) video card. When tested on this setup, Far Cry was a thing of beauty. The bulk of the testing however, was performed on the testbed 2.8GHz P4 with a Geforce FX5800, and even with a gigabyte of RAM, compromises had to be made with resolution and detail level – which for smooth play had to be shifted to medium across the board.
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