You know how Outposts are the most entertaining part of Ubisoft’s Far Cry games? A huge area but a specific enemy-occupied building to take on? Imagine a game based around these encounters, getting steadily more epic as the game moves on, with vehicles, clever soldiers, and even hideous monsters. With both Far Cry and Crysis, Crytek pioneered story-based FPSs with massive open environments which weren’t completely open-world. As Crytek went off to work on Crysis for EA, the studio sold the Far Cry name to Ubisoft, who has developed it internally ever since… as an open-world series.īut Far Cry 1 wasn’t an open-world game. It’s also the only game in the series to be developed by Crysis and Hunt: Showdown developer Crytek, which is how the series got its name, since the developer used to like to work its name into its game titles (see also Ryse: Son of Rome). Other than guns, greenery, and being stuck in a hostile environment a far cry from civilization, there’s not much to connect Far Cry 1 to Far Cry New Dawn. Even the series’ iconic hang-glider has been ditched by this point, in favor of the admittedly-better wingsuit.

Going back to it now, it’s almost unrecognizable as a Far Cry game. The first game in the series to go open-world was the flawed but compelling Far Cry 2 in 2008, and while there were other console-based spin-offs such as Instincts and Evolution, if we’re talking non-open-world we really mean 2004’s Far Cry 1.

Far cry 1 gameplay