Topic: Far Cry 2

[Stogi]

I've been playing this old game for about 7 hours now and I think it's the best FPS I have on my PS3.

Far Cry isn't without its faults and there are a lot of them. Hit detection is atrocious. The animation in most accounts is sub par. Matter-of-fact, most of the game's elements are sub par. So why do I like it so much? Because I can go about any mission in any way I choose.

For instance, there are three very memorable segments that I've had so far.

The first one, my mission was to destroy a convoy of vehicles. It was night and it was pouring rain. I tracked the convoy and decided exactly where I wanted to make my confrontation; this small road that runs through a small canyon and is densely populate with trees and shrubs. I pull up my jeep sideways to block the road and then shot the **** out of it till it was smoking. I went a few meters up the to road to a sign and planted an IED parallel to it in the middle of the road. I then ran back and climbed a tree and waited. I heard the roars of their engines before I saw them, but soon there they were. Just a bit closer -- almost to the sign. Bingo. I triggered the IED and everything blew sky high. A huge "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner filled the top of the screen. That was awesome.

The second one, my mission was to blow up a specific car full of cargo on a train. Now I could have waited till the train left, planted an IED on the tracks, and blew it sky high, but I decided it would be more fun this other way. Looking at my map, I noticed that there was a significant hill or mountain that was adjacent to the rail yard. Searching it with my dune buggy, I found an amazing vantage point of the entire yard. Looking through the scope, I located the cargo as well as dozens of enemies. I thought to myself. Should I simply kill everyone from this vantage point? There is no way they could retaliate; not when I'm this high and this far. But then I thought, no, let's just see if I can hit the car with my RPG. First try from damn near 300 yards away -- KABLAAM! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! I dipped down the other side of the mountain before anyone had a clue.

The third and my all time favorite memory, my mission was to assassinate a rival faction leader. I put so much planning into this, I felt like a real commando. This leader was on top of a small mountain that was right next to a waterfall. There was a river at the base of falls and at the river was a camp full of guards. Now there were two ways in and both were carefully covered. One way was from the river. Once you get passed the base on the bottom, you can climb up the adjacent side of the mountain cross the bridge that overlooked the waterfall and make it into the camp. The other way was to follow the main road into the camp. Which one did I choose? The bridge of course. I took a boat up the river and stopped it a 100 yards short of the camp. Through my sniper scope I saw two guards at the base. A couple rounds into them and they were down. I pull up my boat to the adjacent mountain and climbed up. At the entrance to the bridge was a guard looking over the edge with a sniper. I crept through the bushes and with a single shot from my silenced pistol, he was down. I then took my sniper and scoped out the other side. There was a building, the only building. My target most be in there. Taking at least 5 minutes just sitting and scoping everyone's movements, I found my perfect time to strike. In an instance, I sprinted over the bridge and slid for cover on the back of the house. Quickly, I went around to the side, looked, then sprinted into the house. My target was watching TV. I came in splattered his head with another silent bullet. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. But something was wrong, my new mission was to escape the camp. ****, they must of heard me. Guards came into the next room wondering where I was. I threw a grenade in there and a molotov cocktail in my room. After the explostion, I ran out, ducking and sliding, across the bridge, down the mountain and to my boat. And just like that, I was gone.

And that's why I love this game.

[Enner]

Far Cry 2 has some neat things going for it. However, its annoyances sticked with me more than its pleasures. The empty open world is the worst offender. The game has a lot of driving in it, but there is hardly anything interesting to see or interact. A close second offender are the numerous enemy checkpoints that dot the map that respawn quickly. They're all enemies too since you get next to no allies in the game. The boring open world and the repetitious enemy checkpoint encounters really detract from the game.

That said, I do like how effective sniping is in this game. Given the low starting ammo counts for all weapons, picking a good spot and clearing an area from far away is usually the best way to go. The Dunia engine that powers the game is quite nice and lets you seamlessly travel across miles of African terrain.

A memorable moment for me was when one the few allies you get in this game got in to some trouble while helping me on a mission. I drove frantically to her location and I could hear the firefight breaking out. As I drove nearer, it started to rain heavily. As soon as I was in sight, I got out and started to fight back the aggressors. In the chaos of the battle, my ally became critically wounded. Once I finished off the last enemy, I ran to my ally in hopes of reviving her. "No problem, one syrette and a downed ally is always good as new." I used syrette, after syrette, after syrette until my ally couldn't hold on and died. As I solemnly closed her eyes, the rain poured and thunder rang.

This was a pretty cool moment that was dimmed when I figured this is what the scripting does whenever there's a mission that an ally cooperates with you. If you are quick enough or have a finger on the quick save and load, then you can save your ally by making sure he or she doesn't get shot so much.

[oohhboy]

More annoyances to toss into this fire. All the guns have ridiculous rates of degradation rendering them painful to use after 2-3 mags from inaccuracy, jams and damage reduction. Small vehicle choices. Enemy cars you cannot out run no matter how fast you drive before they destroy your car with gunfire meaning besides the re-spawning checkpoints, you have to deal with the car from them and any cars that happen to arrive. The weapon selection is ok, but the restrictions on what you can carry in any of the slots make no sense. Diamond hunting is a pain since you have to have your PDA/GPS out to look for it. They didn't take the whole fire spreading thing far enough. A way too empty world filled with people just out to kill you. Stealth is a bit halfass.

Some of the good is that there isn't really any time limit for any of the missions, so if you want to waste the time you can set up some elaborate ambushes oppose to say T-Boning the first car then pulling out a rocket launcher. Some of the missions had some nice set pieces like that castle on the cliffs. The allied buddy system is neat way to give you a second chance.

If you have backwards compatibility, I would suggest Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction or its sequel on current gen consoles. they are 3rd person shooters though. It is by far a superior game to Farcry 2, hell Farcry 1 is a more enjoyable game.

[Stogi]

This game can be extremely frustrating. Don't get me wrong. But I see past it to it's true potential. Yes, as a game, there are several major annoyances. But I feel like I'm actually this guy killing fools. And it's because of the freedom (as well as some pretty nifty touches, e.g. healing yourself).

I really hope they make a sequel to deal with all the annoyances.

[oohhboy]

If they put more game in a sequel than say, "I am stuck in Africa with malaria the moment I get off the plane and no matter how many people I shoot more keep coming every time I take a drive" then yeah maybe.

The real problem with the game was it wasn't really gamey at all. It all tries to be realistic but fails to notice why no one else used a lot of the mechanics that this game used.

The game world is realistically large and empty. Weapons do degrade, but inorder to make such degradation noticeable over an entire play through, they crank it up by 100 to 1000 times over what the real gun would have suffered without giving you the in-field ability to clean them. AI can give good car chases, but when you have no way of retaliating during such chases by AI ally mounting the gun or the ability to remote control the gun or out run in an effective manner, you got issues. Nothing but civilian vehicles or technicals, where is the soviet surplus?. No matter how many people you kill, what missions you undertake, nothing changes. Lack of destruction of any kind, I mean invincble shacks.

They basically needed to take realism out of the picture. They didn't have the technical ability or vision to take it all the way to "Real" or realise that they were making a game, not Africa with the only source material being the Times magazine. Given Ubi is in decline quality wise especially with anything outside of their core stuido, I don't think they have it in them to make another good Far Cry game.

[Enner]

A good article on how to play the game for its strengths:

http://majorslack.com/pc-games-strategy/having-fun-playing-far-cry-2/

The basic gist: take it (very) slow, go sniper, and always recon before engaging. Thinking back, I had the best moments playing in this manner. I wish I did more of it.