It's a fair bet that most FPS fans have their hearts set on obtaining the perpetually delayed Doom III and Half-Life 2 but whilst the release dates of these games is anyone's guess a recent demo release has reminded gamers that 2004 has other great FPS titles to look forward to. The single player demo of Far Cry that was released a few weeks ago has impressed many gamers and plenty of the forums that I visit have been full of comments about how great the game looks. We were fortunate to have the opportunity to take a look at a single player preview of this graphically gorgeous FPS game.

The game places you in the role of Jack Carver, a man with his own boat charter business in the tropical Micronesia. Jack has to escort a journalist named Valerie Cortez to the island Cabatu of course it all goes wrong and it's not long before they come under attack. Soon after Val has gone missing a militia group are hunting for Jack. Armed with nothing but a gun Jack has to find out what's going on and what's happened to Val. Throughout the game Jack will have an impressive arsenal at his disposal. The weapons range from the simple, but effective, machete to frag grenades, rocket launcher and the AW50 Sniper rifle. He'll also have various types of equipment to assist him such as the radio, binoculars and the Cryvision goggles which allow Jack to have night vision. Whilst Jack is certainly up against it he'll have the weapons and equipment to help him deal with any problems that may occur.

From what we've played of Far Cry it really comes across as something special. Like Halo you'll have moments where you'll have to deal with enemies whilst driving but where Halo let you either drive or man the guns in Far Cry you have to do both. Whilst the Rambo method is always an option it's certainly not the preferred method of dealing with a lot of situations in the game and you'll have an easier time of it if you decide to use stealth whenever possible. The game has three difficulty settings and also offers the option to have an AI auto balance to really test you.

Of course the quality of the game play aside, what will be instantly noticeable to gamers is the look of the game which is absolutely first class. The game really has a graphical wow factor and not only does everything look great but thanks to the superb Far Cry game engine you can see for miles and miles across detailed landscapes. Whilst you may be worried that the game is going to require a monster PC specification to run properly you'll be pleased to learn that the graphical details in the game are very scalable so even if you have a 'run of the mill' PC, with a fairly old graphics card, you should be able to turn most details down to enable the game to run smoothly. We looked at the game with our AMD Athlon XP2800+/GeForce 4 Ti4200/1GB RAM system and were able to run the game nicely at 1024x768 on medium details.

Whilst you may think the game wouldn't look too good whilst set at medium details you'd be pleasantly surprised by just how good it does look. Of course if you have a good CPU along with a graphics card such as a GeForce FX5950 Ultra or a Radeon 9800Pro then you're in for a real graphical treat and will probably be able to turn all the settings up to the very high setting. With the graphical detail turned up the game looks nothing short of amazing. There is also an auto-detect feature in the graphical options section that attempts to choose the optimum settings for your system. This appears to work well although it's a little conservative and after running it we were able to increase some details without loosing too many frames per second.

What you really need to know though is how deaf gamer friendly Far Cry is. Sadly if this five-level preview is anything to go by (and it probably is as we are not very far away from release date now) then it's not going to be good news for deaf gamers. The comments your character makes are not subtitled. The comments that your enemies make are not subtitled. The conversations in the game are also not subtitled. In fact apart from tutorial messages and your objectives (which can be shown by pressing the Tab key) very little else is shown in text. The words 'New Objective' appear on the lower left of the screen when a new objective has been added. There isn't even an option to enable subtitles so unless they are added at the last minute it doesn't look like Far Cry is going to be very deaf gamer friendly.

Who knows whether Doom III or Half-Life 2 are going to show this year? However with the quality of Far Cry and it's release date not being very far away I for one aren't that bothered how long they take to be released. In terms of both graphics and gameplay Far Cry really feels like it's going to hit the spot and be a game to look forward to. The only fly in the ointment at this stage is the apparent lack of subtitles which could really harm the appeal of the game for deaf gamers. Should the final version of the game have subtitles then we could be in for one of the games of 2004, of that there is little doubt. Far Cry is due to be released 26th March 2004.