Far Cry Instincts
Author: Electronic Gaming Monthly

Good: Huge environments, lots of vehicles

Bad: Brain-dead enemies

Do It Yourself: User-friendly map editor included

Shoe: Ubisoft needs to send its game enemies to game-enemy college. Lessons learned there include how not to stare blankly at walls with your back turned toward the rest of the world, why you shouldn’t run straight into machine-gun fire, and (sigh) why you shouldn’t hang out near explosive barrels. So Far Cry Instincts’ A.I. won’t revolutionize the first-person-shooter genre, but the rest of the game is still pretty damn cool. You really feel like you can go anywhere you want, any way you want (walk or swim or swipe a jeep, ATV, jet ski, hang glider, gun boat) in these supersized environments, yet you won’t get lost as often as you ought to, thanks to clever level design. Some of the stages do tend to drag on, but then the story line picks up the slack by drip-feeding you supernatural powers (like night vision or superjumping) that slowly turn you into more animal than man—a dual-machine-gun-wielding, rocket-launcher-using, ass-kicking animal, that is.

Multiplayer, although only four modes deep, is a lot more fun than you’d expect. It’s not as smooth or pretty as Halo 2’s, but I couldn’t get enough of Predator mode, in which a few superpowered players try to take out a team of mercenaries before they can power up a transmitter.