Stunning presentation, great graphics, system killing bugs.
You can go on and on about just how great this game is, but there is still just one massive problem. It's buggy. Even after patch upon patch upon patch. I can't play the game the whole way through. It still fully crashes out on one level. And thats after a YEAR of release time.
The fact is, this game far to early. Worse games from the same publisher seem to have the same trend of get it out and if people like it, we'll address most of the bugs.
Far Cry in great to look at, it's fun to play. The gameplay is varied and the ai is clever. This game would easily be in the top 10 of my collection and would be one of those rare games that you'd reload on to the next computer I built just so I could play it again with an even better graphics setting.
The game engine could easily be the starting point for a great third party shooter. The problem is trust though. If users can't play the whole game through and known problems aren't addressed in a timely manner, what developer would want to trust the engine for their game.
If the developer can't fix their bugs, you can't trust it to build your vision either.
But it's also a violation of trust for the user. If you spend money on a game, you should be able to play it all the way through. Maybe you can forgive the occassional crash to the desktop, but it's harder to forgive a bugs that are so bad, that you have to use a cheat code to skip to the next level just so you can continue playing.
FarCry is a great looking, great sounding, unreliably playing game. Perhaps now that it's nearly two years later, they'll get those last bugs fixed.