The key to Far Cry 2's appeal isn't the vast open landscapes. It isn't the forward thinking technology that powers the striking, adaptive storyline, nor is it the truly extraordinary visuals.
It's not the violent slapstick and chain-splodes of the hysterically volatile camps, filled to the brim with ammo dumps and fuel tanks. It's not the moments of pure adrenalised catharsis, where, rifle in hand, you power through smoke and machinegun fire, enemies to the left and right. It's not even when you stride through the ruins, calmly putting down survivors by plunging a machete into their chests.
No. Its appeal is in the moments beforehand - when, from some lofty perch, you think of what's to come. You check your ammo. You reload your weapons. You heal up. You anticipate. It is the calm before the storm. You are the match before the flame. In the most player-centric world yet created, in a game that you know is about to surprise, delight and enthral you, standing still, waiting to strike, is one of the finest pleasures you can experience.
For a genre so firmly rooted in the most base of thrills - blowing stuff up and putting holes through skulls with sharpened metal from long range - Far Cry 2 is weirdly smart. The headline pitch: an open world first-person shooter set in Africa, where you're tasked with tracking down, and eventually killing, an arms dealer named The Jackal. On first glance, you expect it to be simple: a series of gorgeous but carefully walled jungle and desert corridors, filled with angry men. But it's not. It's open, it's free-roaming. You can walk or drive wherever you feel like going. Within an hour, after a very brief series of tutorials and introductions, you're released with a note. Find The Jackal. Kill him. Go.
The cliché goes "...is up to you." For so many years, so many games have promised that, and failed to deliver. What happens next is never up to you. What happens next is what the game designer wants you to experience. Far Cry 2 breaks new ground. While there is a script and a story, the details of who does what, who lives, who dies, who's left standing at the end, really do lie in your hands. Far Cry 2 comes closer than any commercial game yet to a truly dynamic narrative.
Given that the action is so freeform, it may seem odd to warn you about spoilers ahead. But: these are situations I found myself in. They may happen to you, too. If you're worried, skip ahead a few pages or something. When it starts, you wake up in a slaughterhouse. You meet your first buddy, a guy called Warren Clyde, a smart-talking American with a fun smile. He gives you a weapon, and lets you know the UFLL, the United Front for Liberation and Labour, are holding another foreign mercenary hostage to the south. You should go and rescue them.
So you do. The mercenary turns out to be Nasreen Davar, a hottie. She is totally fanciable, and you totally would. She is eternally grateful for her rescue. She promises that if you're in trouble, she'll come and help out. Except, in your game, it won't turn out like that.
The above was my first experience with Far Cry 2. Then I started a new game. This time around. I woke up in a different place. My saviour and first friend turned out to be Andre, a Haitian. He's a taciturn chap with neat dreads and big guns. I rescue Quarbani Singh from where he's being held by the APR (Alliance for Popular Resistance), an experienced, almost elderly gentleman. He promises that if I'm ever in trouble, he'll come and help out.
This is the basis of Far Cry 2's storytelling: characters and situations are swapped via a software author, itself responding to choices made by the player. It's something that's been on the cards for some time - mostly in research projects - but this is the first high-profile game to use it.
It's nothing less than a revelation. What makes this procedural storytelling cool isn't that you get to play the game lots of times, and see new things happen, or do things in new ways. It's not even that it gives you stories to share: situations to compare with your friends.
It's that the game just works and responds to your successes, failures and fuckups. If you don't like what a guy is asking you to do, then don't do it. If you really like one of your buddies, you stick with him. When the situations force choices on you... By God, it's incredible.
You're down to your last clip. You're surrounded. The bastards are closing in. You're panicking. Bullets are clipping the treeline, folding branches around you. A critical hit. You duck behind a stump to pull the wound out of your leg. Too late. You're down.
But it's not Game Over. The screen flashes red. It's Nasreen. She's an avenging angel with a Desert Eagle. She puts you over her shoulder and drags you to safety. You're up. You're safe. But a grenade lands at Nasreen's feet. It goes off. Now it's her turn to need saving. You take out the final stragglers, and rush to her aide. But you don't have any syrettes left. There's no way to heal her. She's in agony.
Nasreen, you think, is the best character in the game. She's funny, smart and has saved you again and again. You've helped her out. And she's helped you out. But now she's going to die. You have two options. You can leave her to die in pain. Or you can euthanize her. You put a gun to her mouth. She's in so much pain she practically swallows it whole. She wants you to kill her. So you do. And Far Cry 2's world continues without her.
Now, the story isn't perfect. You might find the cast of characters - particularly the motley assortment of generals, lieutenants and hangers-on that offer missions and define your and the country's path slightly too bland. There are no truly outstanding personalities. Bland, too, are the two factions that provide you with missions, and eventually come to dominate the game. The AFFP seem slightly communisty, the AFP have a taste for zebra-skin rugs. I went with the AFFP. No one likes a poacher.
The after-effects of what happens in your play-through seem trivial to begin with. It's only as the game reaches its climax that the true nature of the choices you're making becomes clear. For you, that might well be 40 hours in - this is a big, big game. If you work on all the side paths, it could be double that. Ethics in games is rarely done well; prescribed moral choices rarely feel natural. Far Cry 2 follows in the lineage of Deus Ex and BioShock, where you make choices based on your own judgements. But in this world, everyone is corrupt, and everyone has an interest in continuing the war, and almost everyone wants to maintain the balance of power.
Far Cry 2 practically removes ethical considerations, by promoting near perfect self-interest. The two factions vie for power. The mercenaries make the cash. You build up your own abilities. The Jackal plays them all off against each other. Who you choose to help comes down to who you like and medical needs. And you thought you were just going to hear about guns and rocket launchers and stuff?
The good news: Far Cry 2 isn't all theorising on the fringes of narrative technology. There are really, really big explosions, backed up by some of the most visceral gunplay in gaming. It is easily the match of, and clearly influenced by, Halo's 30 seconds of fun. The AI enemies can be intelligent, attempting some tactical thought - they'll get in close, and try to flank - but they're also dumb enough for you to manipulate. They can be coaxed out into the open. Revealing yourself, then hotfooting it to a sniper point, pays dividends. So does causing a ruckus, maybe by sniping the top off a petrol pump, letting all the goons gather, and taking them out with a single bazooka round.
Best of all, fights are as varied as you want them to be. In one mission, I was asked to kill a radio censor, and then to intimidate the local DJ into reading prepared statements, before taking his station permanently off the air. The censor was holed up in a safari resort. I swam in, taking a silenced pistol and dart-rifle. I avoided all the guards, sneaking underneath raised wooden platforms, doing the hit, and then sneaking back out. No-one spotted me.
En route to the DJ's village, I picked up a grenade launcher, shell launcher, and mortar. I levelled the place, leaving nothing but wreckage, setting fires (see 'Let it Burn') beforehand. Both attacks were exhilarating. Both went as planned. Both felt right. It's also uniquely absorbing - it's a game you'll find very, very hard to stop playing. Once you're in, you'll not leave until forced, for a number of reasons.
The first: it is extraordinarily beautiful. Let's not kid about here; given the right hardware, this is an astonishingly good-looking game. Remember that bit at the start of Oblivion, when you escape the sewers, and the view just blows you away? Far Cry 2 does that every 15 minutes or so. In quiet moments, when you're tootling along in a jeep, gazelles running alongside, driving into the sunset, the sheer sensation of place is palpable. Second: Far Cry 2's commitment to first-person is total. Once you're playing, the game simply refuses to break your viewpoint.
There's nothing to disturb your absorption. No barrier to concentration. No flipping to a map screen to see where you are - here the map is a physical item held like a gun. If you want to work out where you are or where you're going, you'll have to pull it out while driving - glancing down at your lap like a lost tourist.
To heal, you don't magically gain more health - your view shifts to watch yourself tear shrapnel from your muscles, jab yourself with a syrette, relocate your wrist or cauterise wounds with a bunch of lit matches. When you order new weapons from the arms dealer you don't flip onto his computer - you sit, and the view zooms in, the edges of the screen still visible. When you enter a faction's safe-house, you're patted down and searched by a lackey, their faces right up to yours. And you only see a loading screen when you fast travel from one side of the map to the other. Compare that to other 'complete first-person' games like BioShock, and Half-Life 2, both punctuated by pauses as you pass from one level to another. Far Cry 2 rarely reminds you that you're playing a game.
And the third reason it will hook you from start to finish: it has a hypnotic pace, oscillating between high violence and relaxing exploration. Between fights you'll collect diamonds, which are spent on new weapons. Or you'll travel to a new safe house location, taking down goons. Or you'll just drive - rumbling along into the landscape because you can.
As you tire of travel, you're interrupted by shouty men with guns in the back of a pick-up, and the cycle begins again. And lastly: the unfolding of the day, and imperceptible changes in weather and lighting lull you into an almost complete acceptance of Far Cry 2 as a place. Games have simulated the weather in the past, but none better than this. Bright sunlight is glorious. Dawn is astonishing. Sunset add drama to an already dramatic landscape. Storms send chills. The moon fills the sky.
But the changes don't rush at you. The transition is so, so slow, that it registers first as a shift in your mood, a change in tension, rather than "ooh, look, pretty clouds." It's only when the transition is complete that you realise just how dramatic the weather systems can be.
This isn't a perfect game. I have criticisms. I think the buddies are under-used. You can't, for instance, invite them to help you on tough tasks, nor do they appear outside of their carefully choreographed cameos at the end of a mission.
It takes a special kind of sadist to equip the vehicles in a game with a machinegun, but not give you a friend to use it. Instead you have to swap between the driver's and the back seat. Worse: I wish I could fire a pistol or drop grenades out of the windows of my car. Combat between vehicles is probably the weakest point. More often than not, you'll just have to stop, get out and fight on foot, and risk being run over.
The story-heavy sections of the game - very early on, at the mid-point, and towards the end - are weak. The missions and situations they put you in often dissolve into quick-save attrition. The defence of a barge proves to be just a mounted cannon mission. An escape from a town under fire comes down to simply tearing through an army of men. There are issues with Far Cry 2's dramatic development: as the game appears to be drawing to a close, it opens up again, asking you to repeat the same style of missions and tasks over a similar sized area.
Essentially, you play two games of Far Cry 2, doing the same tasks on a different continent. Great value for money. But draining. I think, too, that the developers haven't done enough to flesh out the backstory. It was only on reading my journal that I discovered the name of the country I was in, for instance. Think of Liberty City, or Vice City, or Cyrodiil, and you think of a place with a rich history and vibrant culture. In Far Cry 2, there are a few radio broadcasts exhorting you to stay in the country and fight, or to join one of the factions. But little else. I think that's a missed opportunity. I love the look and feel of Far Cry 2, and want to absorb myself in its culture. But it just doesn't seem to have one.
Some will simply reject this game because it's hooked up to Massive's in-game ads system, where roadside billboards advertise real-world products. As I was playing before release, that tech wasn't hooked up. I worry that ads insensitive to the setting will break the spell.
Some will avoid the game out of worry that their PC won't run it at sufficient detail levels. Don't. Before the game is out, the developers will release a benchmarking tool that will let you see how the game will look, and what framerate you'll get.
And some will feel frustrated that the AI baddies respawn after you've taken them down. Checkpoints are refilled with men perhaps a little too quickly. It frustrated me, too, but I stopped caring after the first couple of hours. Some will feel frustrated at the repetition: every mission boils down to killing a lot of men in a single area. Again, that frustrated me to begin with. But again, I stopped caring after the first couple of hours. Because, make no mistake, this is an absolutely superb game. At its core is combat that just works. It is consistently surprising. Consistently hilarious.
Time for a metaphor, then. After one assault had ended, I was clearing house: picking up ammo, searching the ruins for health syrettes. Without warning, I was fired upon - a red line cutting across my vision. It scared the life out of me.
I turned to discover one last soldier. He was dying, but with his last gasps, he'd dragged himself to a tin shack and was sitting, propped up against a wall. He had just enough energy to raise his pistol and take a few final pot-shots at me. As I approached, he continued to fire. The rounds went wild, to the left and right. I could hear them zipping by my ears.
In this metaphor, I am Far Cry 2. And the soldier counts for all other FPS games. I pulled out my own silenced pistol, stood right next to him, and shot him right between the eyes. Calm, deliberate, badass.
After playing Far Cry 2, I'm simply unable to go back to straight and simple first-person shooters. This game has executed my expectations. Would you, could you, go back to games with similar gunfights as this, but along a more rigid axis? I think your own expectations are going to rise dramatically. And I think you really should play this game.
Sounds promising. Not sure if I should get the PC or 360 version but either way it'll have to wait until next year. Far too many games higher up in the pecking order being released right now to worry about this.
wow, i don't think it could have had a better review. i've been looking forward to this for a while and was just waiting to see what type of score it would get, i'll try to get it as soon as i can after all this praise :D
Shame that it under uses the buddies, i wanted a game where you could take a small team around with you, like mass effect, but other than that, hot bananas! Should make up for the disappointment of clear sky.
Not saying it's a bad game - but hate that the reviewer makes it seem this is the first open-world shooter and IT'S going to change all shooters, because, surely, this game is the way it is because of STALKER. Let's hope history doesn't get changed to show the big publisher title was the forerunner to open world shooters when that came from a small publisher called GSC Gameworld with the game STALKER.
"Far Cry 2's commitment to first-person is total. Once you're playing, the game simply refuses to break your viewpoint."
I can't begin to describe how important that statement is. The fact that the developers have realised this key element of gameworld immersion makes my heart sing and my wallet open.
And - as far as STALKER being the influence for this main game is concerned - poppycock. There have been open world shooter games for years before that came along.
If anything, I'd say Far Cry 2 looks to be more influenced by Boiling Point, Just Cause and the original game itself - just untethered by the technical limitations that Crytek developers faced at the time (both in terms of hardware and those imposed by the original Cry Engine).
It's not the open world factor, it's the fact that the story-line is dynamic. Yes there have been open world games before but the story-lines have always been set in stone regardless of the choices made by the player during the game. There have been multiple endings (STALKER, Deus Ex) but these are still predetermined outcomes decided for the player. Far Cry 2's originality lies, it seems, in the fact that the player decides the events of the story throughout.
I can't wait to play this game. I want to take my time, and let the atmosphere of the game wash over me. In fact, if it's at all possible, I would prefer to walk to my destinations. I've never been a big fan of vehicles in FPS games.
I'm afraid that the online activation and limited installs means this is a no sale for me. Not being able to get the Internet @ home for a single player game is kind og ironic and annoying!
Thanks so much for the review, Tim. That review is one of the best descriptions for a game that I have ever read. I have already referred several gamer friends to this article. I have been building up my new system setup for games like this and I am filled with anticipation for FC2 as well as a sudden urge to call in sick for the next few days.....
This is an absolute must buy for pc it plays amazingly well on mid range pcs and it looks stunning. The best part of this game for me is the way you decide how you want to attack a camp or base. You can either go in all guns blazing, take the enemy out from a far with a sniper, or even set the bush alight with your flamethrower and let nature do the rest. There is so many features to explain how awesome this game is. Just Get It Now!
I concur, Bobscrap. Ubisoft's decision to implement the same lame legged DRM SecuROM with limited activations that EA used for Spore makes this a "No Buy" for me which is why I cancelled my pre-order and I have no regrets about that. Sure, there's a revoke tool but even then there are risks and I simply refuse to have to ask a company permission to play a game I purchased as a grown man! To add insult to injury the damn DRM SecuROM doesn't even stop the pirates which is the official excuse used to justify it. Ubisoft is now on my blacklist along with EA and Sony. Thankfully the game I eagerly anticipate and consider my GoTY for 2008 - Fallout 3 - won't be ladden with that DRM crap. I'm so glad companies like Bethesda and Starforge still understand how to treat a *customer* (i.e. they don't treat me like a kid nor a criminal). DRM SecuROM does it again: -1 sale!
I'm sorry Tim but you missed the mark on this one IMHO.
I've written my remarks more extensivly elsewhere but essentially it boils down to.....
- Buddy system is not only underused but actually worse than pointless. The "Rescues" just amount to extra lives, the buddy missions give you no reward at all, and the buddy "help" on the main missions always involves you doing twice as much work for the same outcome and no extra reward.
- Every mission is identikit go here do X
- Your whole line on "Emergent Storytelling" is a fallacy, it doesen't matter if the buddies can be switched round or whether they can die if they arouse no feelings in you and are generally pointless. Additionally to that you have no choice in what missions you take, no matter how much you may abhor one side or the other you have to take their missions (even after one side tried to waste you ffs). Your actions really have bugger all impact on the world.
- Respawning is far far OTT.
- Everyone is hostile. They've made a massive world and filled it only with bad guys. Feels more like a Deathmatch than a "world"
- No real "world" to involve yourself in and very little story.
I have more, but overall this is a low to mid 80s game at most. 94% is just ludicrous IMHO.
I completely and totally agree, there is no 'world' to become immersed in. I was inspired by the nice slow build up, thinking I'd get to try and fool my way past check points in pursuit of the Jackal. No chance.
I am very disappointed, this is not a bad game but no way is it a great game. I have to say I almost prefer the alien section in crysis to this, because at least it gave you a reason why you were doing what you were doing.
What annoys me most is that there very obviously IS a truly great game inside Far Cry 2. Its just been smothered with bad design decisions and emphasis in the wrong areas.
I was frustrated at the lack of true geographical openness - it's "bounded off" my mountain-ranges making it feel like I'm being shepherded towards the next encounter, unable to *really* do what I want.
However, there are often options, and after I played for a while, and got my hands on an old bolt-action sniper rifle, I'm absolutely in love. WOW, it's satisfying to use.
The balance of weapon choices is brilliant. I can't have the weapons I want. And I hate it so much that I love it. I want my sniper, AND an assault rifle. Or atleast an MP5. Nope.
I love that the game forces me to compromise - it makes my decisions matter. I have to *choose* a load-out, not just stack up on what I would like to slaughter every living being with.
It has it's flaws, but - just like STALKER - desparately deserves to be bought and played. You'll love it even more for the times you hate it.
I have to say I am disapointed in the PC Gamer rave-review of Far Cry 2 which suckered me into buying the game. As an open-world FPS it is no where near the same league as Stalker which it is so blatantly borrowing from. It also reeks of console port and there are way too many immersion-breaking gameplay elements for me to even bother listing.
I dont see this game as breaking any new ground and it is not innovative in any way. Its just made up of elements from Stalker and GTA like many people have already commented in this thread. Another game it is borrowing from is Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (a great game deserving of more recogniton, in my opinion). I am referring to the general first-person interaction with visible limbs, the bandaging of wounds, the distortion of the PoV during malaria sickness, etc. There is nothing wrong with borrowing good design elements from other games, but Far Cry 2 just does a bad job of it, in my opinion.
I dont think I have ever disagreed more with a PC Gamer review than I do on this one. 201 users at Metacritics rate this game at 63% and I agree.
I pre ordered this game and paid for it. When it arrived, like 99% of my latest legal game collection it wouldnt pass securom. So I had to go and find a crack to play a game I paid for. Harumph. :roll:
At first I did not like it. I have to be honest there. The graphics were the only thing that kept me going.. Then I began setting fire to things, stalking people and using vantage points with the sniper dart gun (completely silent..) and realised how many childhood fantasies this game had the ability to fill. You can hide, taking aholes out from distance with total stealth, you can A team camps by storming in and running people down before jumping out and putting the smack down with the super shotgun, and you can hunt for diamonds. And that's when it hit me how many things there are, passtimes, that can grab your attention and take you away from the things you're supposed to be doing.
For a while I began to worry that the whole game was going to be about visiting the guy in the gun shop, him telling me to take out *another* friggin convoy and then doing as he says. But as mentioned I decided to say 'hell to that' and started doing more of my own thing. And then I realised how many other things there are to do.
I've played stalker, and I am one of the people that think it's just a bloody mess. So much of a mess that I couldn't be bothered playing it.
Sure, I do agree that this game lends from stalker, but why not do the idea properly? and as has been mentioned, stalker wasn't the first game to do it.
Far Cry 2 makes me think of a gigantic lego set. You can sit around whining about what it doesnt do, or you can make something with it and get on with it. *sigh* naysayers, I think the world has become too spoilt for most people to actually enjoy something.
Oh, one other thing I wanted to mention was the way this game feels so damn real. The first time I saw the lake it reminded me of being in the apalachians in the US. I actually breathed in expecting to smell the algae type smell that standing by a lake provides.
And the rain? absolutely astounding. The skies misted, a clear sign of unbearable humidity and the winds picked up.. I could almost smell the Ozone. And then, just as I was expecting it absolutely pissed down.. The miniscule splashes in the water from the raindrops took my breath away.
Sometimes I wonder what professional reviewers are smoking when they play these games. First of all, I don't want to poop on Farcry 2, it is a decent game. But nothing more than decent, certainly not 94% or 10/10. The environment graphics are nice, but not better or more immersive than they were in Crysis or COD4. The AI is just stupid and unfair, the latter being a major problem. Missions are repetetive. The UI clearly was made for the console and makes for a tedious experience. The character animations are sub-par and the voice acting....oh my god. Seriously, no emphasis on the lines, no pauses (that feels like a bug actually), no acting whatsoever. Just bad. The game physics - like other said, driving the car feels like driving a go-kart. Walking through the environment feels floaty. Environment interaction is next to zero. Also: all rooms look pretty much the same. The malaria angle: just annoying. I really really wanted to like this game. And you feel it could have been great. But it isn't. I'd say it is somewhere in the upper 70s or 80s at most. From an FPS perspective it feels like being catapulted back into the dark ages.
Far Cry 2 is hideously flawed game in many ways, which doesn't really come across in Tim's review. However, it's the praise he gives it is also entirely accurate. It's fantastic game, and those flaws haven't stopped me playing it to the execlusion of all else recently.
Far Cry 2, in attempting something which hasn't be done in any other game, obviously came across a number of problems which haven't cropped up in any other game before, so the developers had to experiment. Virtually every solution they came up with is sub-optimal, but what they get right is so special it makes up for it.
[*] Enemy Respawning was an obvious necessity, as they map would quickly become depopulated otherwise, though the speed of respawning was more than a little obnoxious, though it's really you'll actually need to revisit a checkpoint more than twice within a few minutes.
[*] The hostility of everyone outside ceasefire zones is somewhat suspension of disbelief breaking, but if they weren't all hostile the game would quickly become very easy.
Imagine, for example, what a piss of piss the 'trash a random structure in the camp' missions would be once you get IEDs. Having the baddies shoot you in mission locations only is hardly much more realistic than the present situation.
Or else the AI required for them to know when they should attack the player would have to be enormously sophiscated, far cry 2 is huge already and there's only so much developer time and money to go around. Making everyone hate you and quick plot kludge to 'explain' it is an obvious compromise solution.
And it's not so weird as you might think. Turns out, running around armed to the teeth as an un-uninformed mercenary in the middle of a chaotic African civil war might be dangerous. Who knew, right?
In a way, the setting doesn't work in it's favour here. Imagine, instead, you're an downed NATO fighter pilot stuck in a country on the receiving end of some Bosnia style intervention. The soldiers will all shoot you on sight, you're stuck moving from safe house to safe to safe house doing jobs for an (morally ambigious at best) anti-government underground, trying to find a safe way out of the country...
[*] Buddy missions offer no reward? Actually, they do offer a minor reward; increased reptuation seems to have minor gameplay effects, including making AIs less inclined to persue you and different remarks from NPCs in ceasefire towns. But, basically, yeah. They're very repetitive as well. Probably a sympton of the "limited developer time and money thing".
Far Cry 2 is a game where you have to work quite hard to sucessfully suspsend your disbelief. You just have to pretend you have a good reason to do these missions. If you can do that, you'll get a lot out of the game.
Of course, watching gamers nitpick something like Far Cry 2 to death, while praising unbelivably tedious corridor shooters like Crysis or FEAR (they crap on Suspension of Disbeliefs in ways equally as egregious as Far Cry 2, you know, it's just they do it in ways we're all used to accepting) tells you exactly why there's no innovation in the game industry.
