Level 1: Training

As with any good first-person game, you’re going to be given a short obstacle course to run through before you can get to the real fun. If you’re at all familiar with the basic movements of an FPS, none of this should be difficult for you; just follow the prompts on the screen to learn when to kneel, when to lie prone, etc., and you should get through the sewers just fine.

Eventually, you’ll come across a ladder which leads up to a semi-open area. After the cutscene, you’ll be tasked with dashing across the room without the soldier outside detecting you. This shouldn’t be difficult; you can just use your sprint key to run across. If you want to make sure that he doesn’t see you, throw a rock (G is the default key for this) to distract him, then dash across. The roof will cave in behind you as soon as you enter the passage nearby.

After you reach the nearby room, you’ll encounter a rather suspiciously convenient video phone, apparently placed there by Doyle, a scientist elsewhere on the island. He’ll be your plot propellant from here on in, telling you where to go and what to do, which is helpful, considering the large size of the levels in Far Cry. Listen to his advice whenever his voice pops up. For now, he’s got some fairly obvious words of wisdom: grab the nearby gun and armor and get ready to shoot some folk.

Search the Huts for Ammo
When you reach the island’s exterior, you’re going to be faced with a few buildings, around which cluster four or five guards. With your paltry amount of ammo, you’ll be at a disadvantage in a firefight, so your first objective here should be to grab a new weapon. Luckily for you, there’s an M4 Assault Rifle nearby. Unluckily for you, it’s in the building that you’re farthest from. If you walk along the mountain to your left, and keep an eye on your stealth meter, you should be able to walk behind one of the other buildings and get to it unmolested, but keep your gun handy. Enter the building from the southwest side, near the Explosives sign, and your new weapon will be waiting for you on a shelf. Grab it and the ammo on the crate nearby, and you should be ready to take down the mercenaries elsewhere in the makeshift village.

Said mercenaries may or may not have been alerted to your presence already; it depends on the amount of noise that you’ve made. Regardless, you should probably go ahead and kill them, since they’ll see you on your way out of the village anyway. The M4 on auto-fire can make short work of any of these guys, but try to aim at their heads for one-shot kills. If you just start firing wildly, you may find yourself taking bullets through the wall; you are in a wooden hut, after all. At any rate, kill everyone and take the ammo from their weapons. If you’ve taken damage to your health, you can find another health kit on one of the shelves in the same hut where you found the M4. Check the other huts for a machete and other assorted items, then head on.

Go to the Hut on the Hill to find binoculars
Move out from the huts towards the objective on your radar. The hut on the hill is fairly close by, so it’s represented by a solid dot; objectives that are farther away are usually represented by blue arrows on the outside edge of your radar display. While you’re on your way, flip between the pistol and the rifle to gauge their effects on your walking speed. The pistol is a light weapon, meaning that it has a negligible effect on how quickly you can walk, while the M4 is a bit heavier, and will slow you down while you have it activated.

After these mercs get marked by your binoculars, they’ll appear on your radar until you kill them.

After grabbing the binoculars from the hut, Doyle will radio in, letting you know that the camp on the far side of the nearby water is where you need to be. Before you head out, though, flip on your binoculars and zoom in on the camp. This will mark each of its inhabitants into your radar, so that you’ll know where they are relative to you when the shooting starts. Be sure to pan to the right to pick up the signal of the marksman in the tower set into the hill a few hundred yards from the base. This guy will be your first target.