This is a very good, balanced discussion of the rights and wrongs of FC2. I agree with what they say almost completely.


[quote]Jim: When the RPS hivemind was discussing our games of Christmas earlier this month Far Cry 2 came up, with me as its primary advocate. I’ve played it for many hours, and had some excellent fun times, but nevertheless my first words in that discussion were criticism. In fact, on reflection, my wordy bashing of the game could fill many pages. It was, I concluded, this year’s best disappointment. While it was undeniably saddening and frustrating in a number of ways, it was also one of the best games of 2008.

The two reasons this game was impressive and inspiring were easy. First, the atmosphere of the place was near-perfect. The grotty, gritty African shanties were oppressive, swathed in the threat of violence, and clearly corrupted. The countryside surrounding them, which ebbed and flowed through savannah and swamps, into jungle, and outwards into arid desert. A sense of disease and danger existed throughout. Few games manage such a consistent feeling of tension in their world, and Far Cry 2’s design had, like many other games this year, pushed at the borders of what is possible in a game. It was world design that seemed to breathe uneasily: the worried civilians, the terse mercenaries, all woven into the throbbing soundtrack: it was humid and heavy. More impressive still were the little details that augmented the experience: the flies that swung briefly into your vision and disappeared, the way you knocked on the door to be let out of a militia HQ, the comparative rattle weakness of an old car against the sleek rubberised solidity of a brand new 4×4- and the map, that weird piece of paper magic. Far Cry 2 reeked attention to detail, and it’s tough not to love that. It provides access to somewhere we’re not, with amazing fidelity.

Then - the second reason - was the combat. Imperfect, yes, but full of energy. It was occasionally marred by AI awkwardness, or the relative ease with which confused NPCs could be despatched (some even killing themselves), but the actual chaotic mess of melee was superb, brutal, and ultimately thrilling. Fire propagation and real physics meant that a creaky trainyard could be transformed into a flaming, exploding mess, with enemies screaming their last observations about the world as you ripped them open with an automatic shotgun.

Knocking a rolling convoy off the road with a bazooka, or blowing apart wooden structures with a couple of grenades: this was all meaty, ugly, violent stuff, filled with energy and gore. The brilliant superhuman horror of tearing bullets out of your flesh to survive makes this into an 1980s action movie of a game, with cartoon logic in an all-too-real world. Getting hold of a dune buggy and bouncing into an enemy encampment, leaping out hurling molotovs and gunning down screaming mercs and close range, well, that the kind of release I’m appreciative off after a long day at the office. (My imaginary office in the sky.)

Nevertheless it was not a smooth ride. Indeed, there was a lot of critical flak generated for Far Cry 2, and I was in agreement with most of it. Even if we ignored the strange checkpoint respawns there was plenty of “oh, Ubisoftâ€

I can't believe I read all that. But yes, I think FC2 could've been the greatest game of all time but for its myriad and deep flaws. It did so many things right.

I think we'll yet see some more awesome game time out of FC 2 when the mods start rolling out. Stuff like fixing the AI of the guard posts (ie make them less than ultra-aggressive...even the infected look meek compared those dudes), expanding the game's RPG element or alternatively turning it into a "typical" FPS where you have a map with one 'path' and a lot of enemies. You know? Lot of potential either way.

Just for the record, I'm replaying FC2 on hardcore. I'm not even going after the main quest missions, and I've already gotten a bunch of missions from my buddies that I didn't get the first time through. That's probably because I'm taking my time rather than because I'm playing on hard core, but who knows.

I've unlocked the Dragunov sniper rifle and that's my main weapon. I'm also hauling around some IEDs... they're quite handy at times. I'm still amazed at how pretty the game is. Looking forward to corei7 and the next gen of graphics cards so I can play this thing maxed out.

Freak. I might take you on the challenge, but perhaps I'll wait until someone mods out the damn guardposts or makes them less aggressive than a pack of rabid wild zombies. Fast zombies. With guns. And cars.

On second thought, maybe it's just a respawn variable I can tweak myself.

Btw, is it just me or does FC2 handle its saves extremely slow? Not the actual saving process - the saves overview screen. Because I hit the quicksave button like a madman with all those out of control guard posts, I have a ton of quicksaves. Every time I go to the saves overview, my (great) pc takes AGES to load them all, a minute or longer.

I guess I'll need to manually delete most of them. Stupid console port shit.

Yea, it seems to get a list of the saves, then iterates through them to pull out the screenshot that was made during the save. As your number of saves go up, it takes longer and longer to do that. I've noticed it too. I have a RAID-0 array running on that drive but the wait is definitely there. Stupid coding mistake....just parse the first 10 and then parse the rest if you scroll down to them, but whatever.

Or maybe (gasp) multithread!

I too noticed the lag @ saves. I didnt complete the game, got bored. And my initial plan of not killing people failed too because there are 101 ways to kill a man but that 1 option of leaving him alive is quite impossible.

hehe...I like killing them. I like to shoot them with my sniper rifle. I like to set the grasslands on fire and listen to them scream when the fire catches up to them. I like to run them over in my jeep.

Because I -apparently- had 1200 or so saves (lame) because the game saves every quicksave in a seperate slot instead of overwriting the old one; and because you can only manually select or delete one savegame (no ctrl-clicking) at a time in the save game loading screen, after which the game LOADS THE ENTIRE BATCH again...I had to go into the savegames folder and manually delete every fucking save in there.

It's not that it's a lot of work, but how retarded is that? Seriously.


Enneewai...started new game on 'infamous'. Just for kicks. So far it's doable, did the tutorial part and a few starter missions and died only once really (buddy rescued me). Playing as the Hungarian guy this time around.

I can already tell this is going to be a LOT more sneaking, bombing and sniping. And bus-riding.

Hah...bastard. Hardcore is totally doable... but every fight as the potential to kill you so you better plan your attacks and not let yourself get surrounded. I'm guessing Infamous is the same, only more..