I whole-heartedly believe that Shambler should donate his computer to me so I can play the demo. 

but it's reallife game with boring setting, which forces me to run away in disgust... 

If games could exhume scents FarCry would be very very stinky. 

but exhume is actually pretty amusing 

on the Far Cry site and it does look incredible. I didn't d/l the demo as I wasn't sure if it would run well on my machine. The scalability of the world and the physics are impressive. Those long range sniper and missile shots seem very sweet and they claim to have a pretty independant AI.

Despite the awesome technical achievements seen in Painkiller and Far Cry, I don't know if I could have as much fun as I did in Vondur's latest release. I still like to come back to the reassuring Q1 environment.

But Far Cry does look very interesting and I really should try the demo if it's meaty enough. 

exude: verb
1) to discharge slowly through pores or cuts:OOZE
2)to give off or out conspicouosly or abundantly

exhume: verb
1) out of

this is what my really old dictionary says, but as long as I get my point across that FarCry is a very very stinky game.
Now why did I go through all the trouble to get the definitions and type them up and such?

Because I have no life. And I need a girlfriend. Or maybe like an elastic glove wrapped in a towel. Hmm that might work...

But anyway, FarCry is stinky, end of story. 

I actually quite liked the demo, which surpised me. I normally view stealthy realistic shooter games as a form of masturbation practiced only by 14-year old boys with self-esteem problems.

The main thing is that it's not really an fps - it's a puzzle game that happens to revolve around shooting people. Chess problems with blood, kinda thing. The game mechanic is basically finding the correct sequence of actions to get by a bunch of guys without losing too much health. Of course, Quake and co. are all like this to some extent, but it's much more obvious and less forgiving in Far Cry.

This is potentially very interesting - it brings up the concept of really out-witting enemies rather than just out-fighting them, and allowing all sorts of emergent gameplay type stuff.

However, the AI just isn't good enough to make it happen. It does try hard to hide the underlying mechanics, but I still ended up feeling I was fighting the game designer and AI coder rather than a bunch of bad guys. It was also frustrating trial and error at times - I felt I was finding the solution by brute force rather than intelligence.

All the same, taken at face value it was still mildly entertaining. I just can't see it stretching to a full game. 

Good - engine is impressive, maps are vast, can see for miles, the whole thing looks good, water is 1337, foliage is 1337er (and enhances atmosphere), gameplay gives you various options, weapons are decent.

Bad - so far, only fighting humans in semi-realistic settings, damage feedback can be shoddy, AI alternates between decent and shite, can be frustrating, lighting is haphazard (e.g. no shadows under some things), some glitches.

Most prominent aspects - although I'm a sucker for a pretty engine, I'm surprised I enjoyed this as much as I did. The first attempts were tedious disasters. Then I left it, tried the Research map, got through that okay, learnt what the gameplay is about, and had a lot of fun on the first map. Stealing boats, ambushing people, driving the jeep up the stairs, getting lost in the jungle. I found the engine really does enhance the game, the jungle is very atmospheric and provides useful cover, the size and scale gives a good sense of where you are and where you've been. On Easy skill the gameplay is quite reasonable, once you feel how it works (e.g. headshots, sneaking up on people). The enemy AI can be somewhat tedious though, sometimes you're shot from miles away, sometime you only noticed an enemy as he walks into your crouching body. Most of all, it gave me a feel of playing a mixture of Half-Life and the Codename Outbreak demo but in a flashy engine.

To buy or not to buy?? - Probably. It should make a nice contrast to other games, the engine is enticing, and despite the realistic enemy and other tedia, I definitely had fun eventually. 

what kind of rig would everyone recommend for this to have a enjoyable experience? It looks like that game is pretty heavy duty. Any ideas? 

I have an athlon 2500+ xp barton, 500 megs of ddr pc2700 ram, a radeon 9500 pro and it was crap on my machine. of course i didn't configure anything but the game was ugly and was very choppy on my machine. 

of course i didn't configure anything

**SLAP**

Just go to options and hit the auto detect graphics settings, it seems to work very well.

With 512mb ram, I did get a few jerks and loading pauses, but only at very specific points in the map (at the very start, and tiny ones at each objective). I upgraded to 1024mb ram and its smooth as silk now. Err well that might be cos I have a 9800XT 256mb on the hand.... </dick waving> 

...stop trying to sneak your upgrading questions onto this thread in disguise :P. 

You paid the extra money for the XT?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! 

Turned options down, worked fine. 

and the extra 2fps in doom3 makes it worth while!