Fry Cry & Halo

[Grim/Don]

Halo and Far Cry for the PC

Circuit City had the jewel case of Fry Cry on sale for $12.99. When they rang it up, it was only $8.99 though. It's the jewel case, so no box or manual (it's there, but you have to print it out). I've loaded it and started and it's great. Kinda has a Dues Ex feel to it. It's tough, but no so hard as to be frustrating. Highly recommeded.

Got Halo for Christmas. It was... okay... Kept locking up my computer when I was loading it. I downloaded the patch and it worked after that, but I conquered the game right after, so I didn't really need it. My son loaded it on our second computer, and it's worked fine for him. I didn't see what all the hoopla was about though. Maybe it's better on Playstation or Nintendo, but on the PC it was only average. The driving/flying sequences were fun, but the hallways repeating got boring quickly. Add in that you can only carry two weapons; that was a pain. The story was great, the graphics were good, but the actual gameplay wasn't very good, IMO. My son likes to giggle at the little guys who run like oompa-loompas! I don't know anything about the sequal, but I doubt if I'll pick it up.

Pick up Fry Cry and you won't be dissappointed. Next I'd like to get F.E.A.R, but I'm going to wait until I finish Fry Cry first, or catch a sweet deal like I just got.

 

[mwerner]

I had understood that Far Cry was a real system hog. How's it run on your rig?

I got a copy of Halo as well, and it's enjoyable, but not up to the standards of say, Half-life 2. It does have some nice touches, and the varieties of enemies are pretty cool. I wonder if they credited Larry Niven for the rip-off of the "Ringworld" idea?

I'm currently fooling with Call of Duty 2. (PC version). I have a bunch of online WWII games (Red Orchestra, Battlefield 2, Forgotten Hope (mod for BF1942), but I wanted a decent single-player job.
This one is not bad; there are some "arcade" features, to be sure. The tank battles in the British part are really rather silly.... There are a bunch of "realism" mods available for this one as well, and I may try a couple after I work through it.

 

[Rat Finkenstein]

Far Cry was insanely tough, IMO(once you get far into the game). I ended up using some cheat codes once I got frustrated. Pretty decent game, though.

 

[Grim/Don]

I had understood that Far Cry was a real system hog. How's it run on your rig?

I haven't had a bit of trouble, but I'm running a computer less than 6 months old, so...

I got a copy of Halo as well, and it's enjoyable, but not up to the standards of say, Half-life 2. It does have some nice touches, and the varieties of enemies are pretty cool. I wonder if they credited Larry Niven for the rip-off of the "Ringworld" idea?

heh... I was wondering that same thing myself. The only thing I saw that was different was that Halo was around a planet and Ring World WAS a planet (or used to be) and around a sun.

Far Cry was insanely tough, IMO(once you get far into the game). I ended up using some cheat codes once I got frustrated. Pretty decent game, though.

Hmmm... I hope I don't have to use cheat codes. l always hate it if I do; but I've found some games are impossible unless you use them, or unless you devote your life to the perfect key-combo/strategy and can do it 100 times, perfectly. I'm playing at the default diffuculty level (2 out of 5, iirc).

 

[Simon Yu]

Halo was remarkable for all the small things it did that added together, but some of what was new and innovative at the time is now more common. The key things I liked about it were:

1) The regenerating shield. The concept has since been adopted by many fps games, but it was nice to not have to go around hunting for health after a nasty fight, not to mention the occasional bit of tension when fighting another enemy with a regenerating shield and having to balance keeping your own skin with not letting the alien heal back up himself.

2) Vehicles. Not so new at the time, but certainly so for a game with single player.

3) Not having to swap out weapons to use grenades or melee attacks. Being able to toss a grenade or smack something with a rifle butt between firing without missing a beat just made some fights more fun. Especially when fighting the aliens with regenerating shields. Since they would try to run away and heal up if wounded and a full clip from many guns wasn't enough to take down their shield AND finish them off and reloading or swapping weapons took time, I found myself throwing a grenade at their cover to flush them back out or cut them off or making sure I charged in as I was firing so I could smack them to death as they were about to turn tail. Having those options easily accessible just made gameplay flow more smoothly.

Of course, the Flood levels got annoying. Far less interesting enemies and the architecture repeats a lot during those levels, especially the library/archive :barf:

 

[maximus otter]

I bought Far Cry for my 9modern, great spec) PC and the system doesn't even recognise that there's a disc in the tray when I try to play it.

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=410726&highlight=cry+maximus

£20 for a coaster...

:grumpy:

maximus otter

 

[rebeltf]

Grim/Don

Next I'd like to get F.E.A.R, but I'm going to wait until I finish Fry Cry first, or catch a sweet deal like I just got.

I've been watching FEAR too, the game is supposed to be intense , I d/l the demo but had my old card at the time , speaking of which I need to post my new card here. Anyway what I played of the demo it reminded me of the usual HL/HL2 scenario about containing outbreaks and killing rogue soldiers, right up my alley

mwerner

I have a bunch of online WWII games (Red Orchestra, Battlefield 2, Forgotten Hope (mod for BF1942), but I wanted a decent single-player job.

What did you think of Red Orchestra ? I tried if free for a weekend and could not get used to the HUD enough to enjoy it , maybe I play too much DoD.


I also bought myself NWN2 (neverwinter nights 2) for Christmas , what a graphically beautiful game so far.....

 

[Grim/Don]

I bought Far Cry for my 9modern, great spec) PC and the system doesn't even recognise that there's a disc in the tray when I try to play it.

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=410726&highlight=cry+maximus

£20 for a coaster...

maximus otter

My copy doesn't even need a disk in the drive to play. (Which I thought was really, really odd...) Can you navigate to the disk at all? If not, I'd be returning it in a hurry! Most stores will let you do a swap...

 

[mwerner]

I find Red Orchestra to be a very intense, very realistic game. Infantry combat is about all you'd want in a game, with realistic weapons, ammo loadouts, iron sights, and so forth.
To be seen is to die... Hehe. None of the silly "run and gun" stuff you see in many games.
The armor is very good as well, but you really need teamwork. There is a driver/machinegunner position, and a gunner/commander position. Those of us who are used to one-operator tank warfare from WWII online may have trouble coordinating with another player, it takes a bit of work.
It's not set up like the simplified tanks in the Battlefield series.
Realistic turret speed, realistic reload times, that sort of thing.

 

[Azis]

far cry is great one of the best, though I still have not gotten past the guy in the helicopter after you blow up the ship.

halo is very good but got a little tired of the tree things beat the game in two days

fear is frustrating

what kicks them all out is PAIN KILLER fighting demons down to fight Satan in hell and there is no easy mode

by the way did you find cheat codes for far cry PC?

 

[Carl64]

Far Cry rules. It's not just great graphics and large maps, it's well-planned maps with interesting designs and more than one workable route (play it more than once). Sure the cut-scenes are corny, but it' still a decent plot. Also, all of the maps are DIFFERENT, not endless mazes of cut and pasted hallways.

If anyone hasn't played Far Cry yet, it would be a total waste to pay $50 for the latest PC game on the market when this one is only $10 and better. It's LONG too, but never boring.

There are even a few servers out there still for online multiplayer, but the single-player campaign alone is worth it.

far cry is great one of the best, though I still have not gotten past the guy in the helicopter after you blow up the ship.

That's one of the toughest parts of the game, and the only one I thought was dumb. Any other time you can down a blackhawk with 2 or 3 rockets max. Other parts can be challenging, but this is the only one that is hard for no logical reason.

Just keep shooting rockets (and hitting). It takes more than it ought to, and you will probably lose count. I think hitting Crowe directly works better. The chopper smokes, and flies off. You aren't blowing up the chopper, you are just hitting Crowe until he pusses out and leaves.

It gets better again after that silly little scene. So much more good stuff to come.

 

[Azis]

I tried the ~ for far cry but it does not appear to work i type in the comand hit enter and nothing happens.

 

[Rat Finkenstein]

I think you have to add some kind of "devmode" parameter to properties of the game icon, I forget exactly how.

 

[Carl64]

There are a few methods for cheating. I did one a while back that only required the right -dev...(plus a bunch of other stuff) or whatever at the end of the exe, but it only gave weapons and not health or something like that.

I can't find that one anywhere and I lost the instructions. Maybe one of the many updates made it not work

The only one I could find last time required replacing a file in the FarCry folder somewhere, although it worked better.

Some websites list the cheat commands but fail to mention they don't work until you do the other stuff.

This looks like complete instructions:
http://cheats.ign.com/ob2/068/482/482383.html

Tips:

Don't forget to add the -devmode to the shortcut path (target) after you modify the file. Right-click on the icon for the game, select Properties, etc. *This goes OUTSIDE of the quotes Windows already added to the path. i.e.,
"C:\Program Files\Ubisoft\Crytek\Far Cry\Bin32\FarCry.exe" -DEVMODE
(not sure why)

If you run the exe with the cheater extension, you can't join online games (even if you don't turn on any cheats), so make sure you back up any modified files and also keep an un-altered startup shortcut. I just did a copy&paste of the shortcut icon before altering it, and labeled the cheat-enabled version.

When you give yourself all weapons, you still only get 4 weapon slots, but you can switch weapons with the scroll wheel or drop all weapons one at a time and pick them up in whatever order you want quick keys for.

 

[jstewart16701]

far cry is great one of the best, though I still have not gotten past the guy in the helicopter after you blow up the ship.

halo is very good but got a little tired of the tree things beat the game in two days

fear is frustrating

what kicks them all out is PAIN KILLER fighting demons down to fight Satan in hell and there is no easy mode

by the way did you find cheat codes for far cry PC?

I'm a big Far Cry fan myself, haven't finished it yet either. I'm on the river level right now. I found that the helicopter guy is pretty easy if you jump off the boat as soon as the bomb goes off and swim to the shore were there is a couple of trees. Keep a tree between you and the copter, it's enough to keep from getting hit. Then you can just lean out between his shooting and blast him with the rocket launcher.

Jamie

 

[mauiblue]

I'm still trying to get to meet that chick on FarCry. I played it a few days last year and gave up. I'll give it a whirl again. HalfLife2 is also an interesting game.

 

[enderwiggin]

Halo was remarkable for all the small things it did that added together, but some of what was new and innovative at the time is now more common. The key things I liked about it were:

1) The regenerating shield. The concept has since been adopted by many fps games, but it was nice to not have to go around hunting for health after a nasty fight, not to mention the occasional bit of tension when fighting another enemy with a regenerating shield and having to balance keeping your own skin with not letting the alien heal back up himself.

2) Vehicles. Not so new at the time, but certainly so for a game with single player.

3) Not having to swap out weapons to use grenades or melee attacks. Being able to toss a grenade or smack something with a rifle butt between firing without missing a beat just made some fights more fun. Especially when fighting the aliens with regenerating shields. Since they would try to run away and heal up if wounded and a full clip from many guns wasn't enough to take down their shield AND finish them off and reloading or swapping weapons took time, I found myself throwing a grenade at their cover to flush them back out or cut them off or making sure I charged in as I was firing so I could smack them to death as they were about to turn tail. Having those options easily accessible just made gameplay flow more smoothly.

Of course, the Flood levels got annoying. Far less interesting enemies and the architecture repeats a lot during those levels, especially the library/archive :barf:

I played Halo because it was from Bungie, the company that did the phenominal Marathon trilogy for the Mac platform back in the day. The first game came out around the time Doom did, and was far better executed, better drawn, and a more ambitious game. It was so successful that Bungie started developing/porting to the PC as well. Surprisingly, the game is still not widely known, and more of a 'cult classic.' It was a little sad to see Bungie bought out by Microsoft, especially since Microsoft immediately pulled all of their Mac projects, and set back any development for the Mac platform by 3 or so years.

Overall, Halo is a great game, but not fantastic. The multiplayer is thoroughly playable, and it has some great replay value. It also has a pretty good story line, although nowhere near as nice as the legendary story line of the Marathon trilogy. Going back to that, the rumor was that Halo was originally intended to be a continuation of the Marathon trilogy, but Bungie ran out of funds, and shelved the project. Later, when bought by Microsoft, they continued the project with no ties to Marathon, and marketed it as Halo. However, if you've played the other three games, it's fun to see some of the various tie-ins and homages made in Halo. "They're everywhere!"

 

[Grim/Don]

*Whew*

Just finished the game! :thumbup:

It's was great! One of my top ten, easily. It does have some tough sections, but I played 'em and played 'em until I got through them.

Spoilers below, highlight to see:
The part, right after you blow up the nuke and lose all your weapons, then have to fight all the ferals/monsters... DAMN, that was tough! I finally figured out that you can drown them in the river. That area took forever to get through.
The area right near the end, with the huge satellite dish in the center, and all the ferals/monsters around was one of the most frustrating in the game. I couldn't see what was killing me most of the time, so I didn't know where to fight back. I ended up taking a couple hour break, after trying it for a couple hours. I ended up crawling around most of it and got real, REAL lucky there.

I was hoping to see a butterfly knife in the game, but it turns out that it's in the sequel.