Far Cry 2

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Far Cry 2

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Max Slowik
Brian

Feb. 9, 2009

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Another memorable moment of tragic AI collaboration was heaped over me on, you guessed it, a mission to assassinate some guys. Well I found their camp, in a basin beneath a grassy knoll. Having arranged for a limitless supply of sniper rifles from the armory, I was compelled to use the two poetically. There were about five guys down there, and I asploded two heads when the remaining guys, and this part still sweats me, got into a jeep and just drove me down! Like, over there, they saw their friends' arterial blood, and wisely decided not to run at me in a straight line. I shot plaintively at them with my sidearm, turned and sprinted, but the headlights just closed right in. To hit me with a jeep!

And here's where things got really cool: instead of prompting me to load a save (which isn't something you remember to do in a game that sucks you in like this) another freelancer that I befriended, like kismet, happened by, dragged me to safety, and slaughtered the jackasses who so elegantly foiled my scheme. How she handles a .50 caliber pistol with her diminutive frame I'll never know, but I know I'll grope her with my conversation hand every chance I get.

It's not just death that they've taken a different tack at, the health system has been seriously re-tooled in a brilliant synergy of the hit point and the hide-and-heal systems. You have several health bars, and you regenerate, but only the ones that are partially hurt. To actually heal yourself you can use styrettes (which you take time to inject) or bottled water (which you have to bend down and pick up). You haven't take any real injuries until that last health bar gets hit. That's when you have to fix things yourself. If you're lucky, you get to watch the smoke curl up from the road flare pressing into a bleed, or the process of reducing your own dislocations. But you'll probably have to dig the bullets out of your legs with a knife to staunch the bleeding. Malaria affects your stamina, ability to resist damage, and eventually, vision, so it becomes important to take slightly more altruistic missions for nice people if you want to, live. They're not so altruistic that you won't kill a bunch of dudes, though.

The combat, if not the gameplay, varies with whatever weapons you decide to load yourself out with before you go a-murderin', so you can vary from making the African sun hotter with RPGs and flamethrowers to stealthy thinking killing with silenced arms and bloodthirst. Most games don't reward different tactics. Either you're supposed to chop down your enemies wave after wave or you're supposed to sneak past them, but Far Cry 2 is smart enough to respect your strategy; you kill by your own rules and reap the gory results. I enjoyed switching between curtains of hot lead during the day and suppressed, silent take-downs at night. The time cycle is only marginally faster than real time and you can easily use it to your advantage.

Graphically the game is pure if repetitive, but there are still about four different kinds of brown to kill people in. There are brown shantytowns, brown river valleys and rock beds, brown jungle thick like hero-issued dong, and brown sub-Saharan expanses. The foliage is equally varied but all looks at least dimly sentient and wants to use your organs as fertilizer, and there are at least five vehicles not sponsored by JeepTM, all of which are replaceable but sometimes require roadside servicing by you. And the fire! Hitting someone with the flamethrower is satisfying, standing in a ring of blazing death made by your own haphazard spray is terrifying. The flames are so realistic it will raise the question for all games in the future, why does their fire look so assy? Far Cry 2 had me subconsciously leaning away from the monitor. Plus, if you're not the flamethrower-type, there's got to be at least a dozen ways to kick off the pyrotechnics, guaranteeing that you'll find a way to commit acts of murderous arson tailor-fit to your style.

Throughout the world you'll find discarded or hidden briefcases with rough diamonds in them, but they're nothing compared to taking missions from the two militias, so no matter how high-minded you are when you start, if you're going to do well it's because you played both sides of the field. Diamonds are a convenient form of currency, which you use to purchase weapons, upgrades, and vehicles from the armory. You can purchase weapons crates that manifest themselves in your safe houses with whatever alternate armament you put in them, so if you go in ready for sniping but really need something with a very large magazine you can go to the nearest safe house and swap things out. I'm scratching my head as to why on God's forsaken continent you'd ever pay money to drive around in a Jeep Liberty. As it stands, vehicles are free and plentiful and there's no reason to covet one or invest in another. And there's a simple fast-travel system (buses) that allows you to skip over most of the things that make driving get tedious.

The armory and safe houses are there to make gun maintenance and inventory a non-issue, but this is the sort of game that could rightly benefit from those things. The hands-on approach to everything else could have played out well with actual gun modifications, but instead you're limited to checking a box that adds reliability, and since the only weapons that seem to jam are ones you pick off your victims I fail to understand the benefits. Without gun crates, safe houses are useless except that unlike other checkpoints, their inhabitants won't re-spawn after you sieve the grey matter out of their skulls. With bullets. And they have cots so you can advance time if you're afraid of the dark. When you get down to it, the way the two work is so unnatural that it really pushes against the rest of the game.

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3 User Comments

1 - Posted by Drew on February 11, 2009 - 12:53 pm

Full Disclosure: I liked FC2 enough to play it all the way through twice.

This review was pretty much right on target, if factually inaccurate in a couple of places. Guns bought from a dealer can jam. Eventually, your shiny store bought weapon will be as unreliable as the trash you can pick off a fallen foe. Besides allowing you to time-shift by sleeping. Safe houses also can provide weapons alternatives, first aid, ammunition, and a fresh "ride". They also allow console gamers to save their progress. PC gamers can save any time, but I preferred using only the in-game save points, because your actions then had more serious consequences.

FC2 is an amazing sandbox game with only the most minimal plot layed on top of it. The game play hints at many interesting story elements, but fails to develop any of them. It is as if the developers started with a general outline of a good story, but then ran out of time, money, or creativity needed to create it. In terms of game play, FC2 is basicly a beautiful modern version of DOOM or QUAKE. You want a story? You need to go play HL2 or Deus Ex.

Besides the lack of a developed story, there are a few actual game flaws. The worst is the rapidly respawning check points. In a game where the only point is to kill people, respawning isn't such a bad thing in theory. However, FC2 respawns enemies WAY to quickly. Check points respawn virtually as soon as you turn your back on them. Instead, at least a couple of game hours should have to pass before check points are manned again.

FC2 detractors complain about the distances between mission locations. I think these people are missing the point of the game. They are too goal oriented. In FC2, there are no goals except killing people and enjoying the view. In this case, getting there is half the fun. The fact that your health and resources may be diminished by the journey is part of the challenge. I very rarely drove to missions. The only way to apreciate the environment is to walk through it. Besides, you draw way too much attention to yourself in a moving truck.

2 - Posted by Kurtis on February 11, 2009 - 2:06 pm

Great feedback, Drew. Thanks for sharing. :)

3 - Posted by Rick1974 on July 7, 2009 - 1:52 am

The problem with games (and movies) these days is that it's almost an unwritten law that you can trade off story with great visuals. which isn't the case. Back in the day, some of the best games i ever played had the shittiest graphics, but had far more depth than most games today. I found far cry to be boring and repetitve after a couple of hours of playing it.
I'll give you software companies a couple of tips. - story is god. A shit story and the game will be shit no matter how great the visuals. The customer dosen't give two shits about game release dates. take your time, get a kickarse story going. get the game right the first time, it's unprofessional and lazy to put out a half arsed product with 100's of mb's of updates. if there's two huge titles going to be released and yours isn't going to be ready the same time as the other companies product so what - i'll still buy it. because im thinking you are putting in the extra effort.

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