[Necromancer]

Weapons and Items

Weapons

Machete

Although Far Cry has pretensions towards allowing the player to adopt a stealthy mode of play, in truth, the distances involved and the acuity of your opponents’ senses makes sneaking up on anyone a good way to get a face full of lead, or perhaps a face full of rockets, depending on whom you’re Garretting up towards. The machete’s really here as the token melee weapon; you’ll probably never use it throughout the entire game.

Falcon .357

Slow, possessing a smallish clip, and woefully inaccurate at anything but extremely close range, the Falcon is useful only for taking down a few enemies in the first level before you finally acquire the M4. Early in the game, before you manage to find four actually decent weapons, you can also carry it around for the increased movement speed that it affords you, or to conserve the ammo of your other weapons when you’re attempting to do things like destroy propane tanks and the like.

M4 Assault Rifle

The M4 is going to be your all-purpose killing device for almost half of the game, so you’d better cozy up to it early on and get used to how it handles. It’s the only weapon in the early part of the game that has dual-firing mechanisms, aside from the MP5. The automatic firing method sprays bullets at your target, and although it may not seem like it when you first pick it up, the M4 is among the most accurate automatic weapons in the game when you need to unload a clip. In small bursts, the AG36 or the OICW is the preferred choice, but the M4 acquits itself well until you grab one of those guns. The alternate firing mode is semi-automatic, and offers even better accuracy at medium range, allowing you to conserve your sniper ammo for the occasions when you’re shooting at someone a kilometer away.

Regrettably, the M4 doesn’t have a scope, but the zoom view is usually enough to pop in enemies that are too far away to be rendered, at least over medium distances. Using it while lying prone will make your single-fire mode the next best thing to a sniper rifle during the first few levels of the game.

P90 SMG

There are few weapons that retain their usefulness throughout the entire game, but the P90 may indeed be one of them. The differences between the P90 and the M4 become apparent as soon as you pick one up; the P90 has a greater rate of fire, but a much greater spread, making it accurate only at short range. When you’re inside a structure, however, where this is less of a liability, the P90 becomes the preferable weapon due to its ability to drop almost any opponent within seconds. The main drawback, besides accuracy, is that you burn through your 50-round clip very quickly. As such, the P90 is best used as a way to weaken enemy forces at the beginning of a firefight before switching over to an M4 or another assault weapon.

MP5 SMG

Although Jack is generally well and able to take on multiple opponents, occasionally discretion actually is the better part of valor, and not attracting the attention of a dozen mercs may be desirable. The MP5 is useful in these situations, as its silenced muzzle makes only a soft clicking sound when fired, thus letting you shoot away without having every soldier in the area immediately homing in on your location. Like the M4, it can switch between automatic fire and single-shot for greater accuracy, with the latter being an excellent way of nabbing stealthy headshots. There’s a drawback, of course, and in this instance it’s the weapon’s power: the MP5 possesses the least stopping power of any automatic weapon. Still, it’s a fairly handy tool for most of the game, but when you start to run into armored mercs and mutants, you’re better off dropping it for a P90 or other more powerful weapon.

Sniper Rifle

Given Far Cry’s vaunted 1.2 kilometer draw distance, you can expect to have plenty of opportunities to use the sniper rifle; and even with a 12x scope, you may run across a few instances where your target is far enough away to make even a body shot a matter of luck. This is due to the fact that even though the sniper rifle possesses pinpoint accuracy, you’ll still have to overcome scope drift, which renders headshots all but unobtainable at extremely long range.

To minimize the effects of scope drift, you’ll want to lie prone, but still retain a clear line to your target. Kneeling reduces the effects of drift, but not enough to make sniping reliable, while firing while standing is essentially impossible, given the way your viewpoint shakes. So, lie prone, and zoom in as close as you can get to the target. If you’ve obtained a set of CryVision goggles, you can activate them while your scope is fully zoomed; this can help you more easily distinguish living targets from their background.

Of course, most targets that you’d actually want to snipe will be too far away to see with your naked eye, and since target-hunting with your scope is incredibly time-consuming, you’ll want to use your binoculars to hunt down radar signals before selecting your prospective targets.

Rocket Launcher

The Rocket Launcher is overkill in most combat situations, and since you won’t be able to carry more than 14 rounds of ammo at any given time, you’ll want to hold back on using this weapon until you absolutely have to. When your back’s against the wall, though, there’s nothing that can clear you a path to daylight quite like the Rocket Launcher.

The basic mechanics should be familiar to anyone who’s ever played an action game: you point, you fire, rocket flies along a straight path to your target, where it destroys anything caught in the blast. What’s great about the rocket launcher in Far Cry is that there’s no scope drift whatsoever (and yes, the RL has a scope for some reason); since the rocket will always fly precisely where you aim it, this means that the launcher can act as something of a poor man’s sniper rifle in a tight spot. This really only works at extremely long distances, however; rockets tend to be noisy, so when you fire one, you can expect every hostile in the area to start looking around. If one of these was your prospective target, he’ll probably move out of the way before the rocket actually reaches him.

Where the launcher really shines, however, is when you’re dealing with multiple "soft" targets, things like mercenaries and the weaker varieties of mutants. A single well-placed rocket will usually kill anything near the impact point, so if you fire into a crowd, you’ll find that things get less crowded quickly. And, for real newbies, here’s a little tidbit from rocketry 101: Aim at your enemy’s feet, not at his body. A rocket that misses high will likely impact something well behind your target, but if you aim at their feet, the rocket will detonate next to your opponent every time.

Jackhammer Shotgun

As with the P90, the Jackhammer chews through its ammo with a vengeance, but it also manages to drop close-range targets very quickly. Even though it’s an automatic weapon, the recoil on the Jackhammer is severe enough to make it wiser to click off shots individually, rather than just hold the button down; this will also help prevent wasted shots on foes who are in the process of falling to the ground, which is an important issue when you’re discussing a weapon with only ten rounds in a clip. Even though it has more potential killing power in a single shot than any other weapon, save perhaps the rocket launcher, the ten-round clip severely hinders the usefulness of the Jackhammer. You can use it like the P90, and attempt to take down a target or two before switching weapons, but the delay between rounds is great enough to open yourself up to return fire, whereas the P90 will generally hit an enemy often enough to stun them until they die. Choosing between the two is a matter of taste and available ammo, but either one is an excellent choice for close-range combat until you run into a machinegun late in the game.

AG36

The AG36 is the second of the three main assault rifles in the game, and acquits itself well until the OICW comes along. Unlike the M4, it has no single-fire mode, but it makes up for this with the inclusion of a two-level scope, with a maximum zoom of 4x, which will generally take you past its usable range anyway. Sniping is possible, but you’ll have to snap off only two or three bullets at a time if you wish to retain any semblance of accurate fire.

The underslung grenade launcher is a decent enough weapon, although it doesn’t possess quite enough firepower to kill even a mercenary unless you manage a direct shot (and even then it’s not a sure thing). You should come across plenty of grenade rounds, though, so feel free to use them when you’re in a tight spot.

OICW Assault Weapon

The last and definitely the best assault weapon, the OICW will serve you well for the last seven missions of the game. Although it only possesses a 3x zoom, compared to the AG36’s 4x, it makes up for this with vastly improved accuracy when you’re snapping off rounds, which renders the OICW something of a short-range sniper rifle so long as you don’t attempt to spray bullets everywhere; your accuracy degrades immeasurably when you’re forced to hold the fire button down. Given all of the tools you have at your disposal to detect and eliminate enemies before they’re anywhere near you, though, this shouldn’t be an issue.

As with the sniper rifle, though, the OICW is markedly more accurate when you’re lying prone; if you do find yourself in a short-range firefight, a good tactic is to simply dive forward onto your chest before snapping off rounds at your opponent’s head. When you’re out of doors, this should reduce your profile, thus making it more difficult for your opponent to actually hit you, while giving you a tighter grouping on your shots.

The OICW’s alt-fire opens up an HE munitions launcher, which shoots out projectiles with less of an arc than does the AG36’s grenade launcher, thus making long-range accuracy a bit easier to obtain. It’s still not a very powerful weapon, at least when you’re up against armored mercs, but it fires much more rapidly than does the AG36’s launcher.

Machinegun

When you absolutely have to kill everyone in a room, the machinegun is going to be your weapon of choice. The fact that it’s usable only in three of the game’s 20 levels belies its obvious power; although it’s probably the least accurate automatic weapon in the game, this shouldn’t matter much, as you’d be crazy to use it in anything but short-range combat situations, which is where it excels.

Even though it uses the same ammo as the various assault rifles, the machinegun packs a much greater punch than any of them, being able to drop even fully-armored foes with relative ease. What’s more, the 100-round clip is sizable enough to let you take down a five or six enemies at a go without needing to pause for reloading, which is fortune, since the reloading animation for the MG is fairly lengthy. The power of the weapon also pays dividends in its ability to lock enemies into their stun animation, preventing them from returning fire.

Grenades

You’ll run across three different varieties of grenades in Far Cry:

Frag: Your standard explosive grenade, good for bouncing off of walls into rooms where you suspect enemies await. Not terrifically powerful, but good for wounding enemies before you finish them off.

Flashbang: "I can’t see!" You can expect to hear this quite a bit when you acquire the ability to accurately place flashbangs; any enemy within a short radius of the blast will be temporarily blinded, letting you saunter up to them and get a headshot with impunity. Flashbangs don’t actually wound your opponent, though, so be sure you wait for the shouts that indicate that the grenade has had its intended effect before exposing yourself to fire.

Smoke: If you’re desperately attempting to fend off a horde of mercenaries, a smoke grenade can generally throw them off your scent long enough for you to regroup and reload your ammo. Smoke is especially useful in interior fighting, where they can help you cover your approach down a long corridor, or allow you to pierce the fog with your night vision goggles so that you can open fire unperturbed.

Stationary Weapons

Stationary weapons are found in most every level; all you need to do to use them is kill off any defenders, step behind the weapon, and use it like you would a vehicle. These weapons have infinite ammo, so feel free to fire until nothing moves.

Mortar: Stationary mortars are capable of firing shells over incredibly long distances, although you’ll mostly be using them to take down mercs and vehicles in relatively close proximity to your position. The interface is about as user-friendly as they come: simply click on the desired target, hold the button down when the red target pops up, move your aiming reticule to the center of the target, and release the button to let loose your round. At short range, you can aim manually if you compensate for the dip in the shell’s trajectory due to gravity.

Minigun: The minigun is essentially an even higher-speed machinegun; it puts a whole mess of lead into the air, and will take down most any target with two seconds or so of sustained fire. The rate of fire leads to somewhat poor accuracy, but since you have infinite ammo, hitting your target only once for every ten bullets shouldn’t matter overmuch.

Items

Binoculars

Even if the binoculars did no more than help you deal with FarCry’s immense draw distance, they’d be pretty handy, but as it is, that’s only part of their functionality. Whenever you spot a merc or a mutant with your Binoculars, they’ll read the target’s locater tag and enter the data into your radar, thus letting you track the position of an enemy even when you can’t see him. This has some fairly obvious applications, given the copious amounts of foliage on the island, but it doesn’t pay to depend too heavily on this feature, especially when attempting to infiltrate a set of buildings; if you see a blank spot on your radar and assume that no one’s there, you’ll occasionally wind up with a back full of lead. This isn’t due to any failure on the part of the binoculars, but many of the enemies in FarCry are positioned so that they’re out of sight of the binoculars when you scan an enemy encampment from a distance away. Your radar will always be your primary method of tracking enemies when you’re out of doors, but always be alert for audio cues as well.

In addition to its tracking capabilities, the binoculars also possess a directional mike that will let you pick up sounds and conversations. There aren’t any critical Splinter Cell applications here, but some of the merc conversations can be amusing, and the mike can somehow penetrate most of the physical obstacles in a level, thus occasionally clueing you into the position of enemies that are on the other side of a mountain, for instance.

Flashlight

If you’ve got your gamma set extremely low, then you may find the flashlight to be useful, but for the most part, the game’s environs are well-lit enough so that you shouldn’t have to resort to it very often.

CryVision Goggles

In terms of realism, the CryVision goggles probably aren’t exactly brimming with verisimilitude (how exactly it can pick up the body heat of a mutant that’s standing next to a river of lava is beyond us), but it’s nonetheless an extremely handy tool. Since your life can usually be snuffed out by any given enemy with just a few seconds' worth of gunfire, you’re going to need every advantage that you can get, and the combined heatvision and night vision effects of the CryVision goggles will give you that in spades. In the often-dim interiors of buildings, soldiers can sometimes blend into the background and become difficult to distinguish quickly, but when your CryVision goggles are activated, the night vision renders everything in gray, while the heatvision turns your enemies a bright red color, thus providing instant contrast. This is especially important when dealing with enemies that are approaching from around a corner; the enemy AI will generally react quite quickly after they first spot you, so you’ll want to use every advantage in your toolkit.

What gives the CryVision goggles that extra kick is their universal applicability; you can use them in conjunction with binoculars, scopes, or even while driving in a vehicle. Although they’re of perhaps the most use in interiors, your goggles retain full functionality in the open areas of the game, so if it’s dark outside, the heatvision attachment will make it much easier for you to distinguish between a target’s body and head when attempting to snipe. Heck, this is true even when it’s not dark outside; since we’re talking about a computer game, the goggles don’t get washed out, except in the brightest daylight.