You can't ratchet down view distance, but you can tone down things like dynamic lighting, water effects, and shadows.
However, the many graphical options provide plenty of flexibility. The deciding factor seems to be the extra RAM and CPU horsepower, as I can run everything on Very High on this machine, but the home rig has to do Medium and High on most options.
FAR CRY 1 RATING FULL
I need the full power of the Alienware rig at work, a 3.0GHz P4 with a gigabyte of RAM and a 9800 Pro. My home system is a 2.4GHz P4 with 512MB of RAM and a 9700 Pro, and while this has been more than enough for 99% of the games I've played on, with all the details cranked up, it's not the case here. It's important to keep in mind that this game is meant to push your rig to its limit. And finally someone has answered the call and the creatures here are actually smart. I've always wondered why no one apparently tried to license the AI of the Marines in Half-Life, because after that, I was always a little bit disappointed with the FPSs that came after. In almost all major areas, Far Cry manages to walk the tightrope of game design over a chasm of Things Gone Wrong. The load times could have been constant and distracting. The AI could easily have been blindly aggressive or stone deaf. With Far Cry, however, you can see so many places where things could have gone wrong, but didn't. A new graphical innovation here, a good sense of humor there, but something just doesn't gel.
Even games with the best of intentions come and go, if they fall short in a couple key areas, to be eventually shuffled off to the graveyard of industry footnotes.