From Bottleneck.org
Far Cry 2
One of a number of PC games I got for Christmas last year was Far Cry 2. I quite enjoyed the original Far Cry game, so it seemed natural enough to go for Far Cry 2 and stretch my graphics card a little. I recently completed the game, which took a hell of a long time really; it's a big game, with a huge "open-ended" world to explore. Overall, I really did enjoy the game, but in some ways frustrating, so I thought I'd share my thoughts with you.
1. It's not Far Cry 2
It's essentially a completely different game to the original Far Cry, which can come as a bit of a surprise when you've bought it because it's called "Far Cry 2". It's still a good game, and I still enjoyed it, it's just not what I expected.
Okay, so both are set in large scale worlds which are graphics-rich, and they're both essentially first-person shooters with optional sneaking. The original Far Cry, though, essentially walked you through a linear storyline, whereas Far Cry 2 provides a whole range of missions, only some of which advance you through the main plot.
It took a little time to figure out which missions are going to advance you through the plot. I tend to play one plot-driven game at a time, and work through it to completion, after which it sits to one side and gets picked up for a bit more fun or side exploration at a future time when I'm less absorbed in it. Which brings me on to the next point.
2. When you're done, you're done
Yup, once you've completed the main plot line of the game, you can't dip back into the map in single player mode and carry on exploring, driving around, trying out the hang-glider, perfoming the various side missions you might have missed, nothing. Game over. Either start again or load a save game, both of which pop you back into the plot line. Given the huge range of the game, this is disappointing. While it might not seem logically consistent with the plot to be able to continue past the end of the game, there's no reason there couldn't be a "free time" mode to let you pop back in and carry on exploring as though you were at a point in time prior to the end of the game. As it is, if you want to "do everything", then it will take forever to complete the main plot line.
Speaking of exploring...
3. It's a real pain to travel across the map
The map is huge, and littered with checkpoints and enemies. That means that getting between any two points on the map means fighting multiple battles. All before you actually get to the place you were trying to get to in order to, er, have the big battle that forms your mission. So it takes forever to get anywhere, and as a result it takes forever to complete missions, meaning it takes forever to advance the plot, and forever to complete the game. All because you're spending all your time driving a little way down the road, fighting out a checkpoint, healing, recovering ammo, driving a bit further... oh look, another checkpoint!
Then, you reach your destination and complete your mission. Excellent. Now you just need to go and get another mission. Which, if you want a mission that will actually advance the plot line, means going back to where you came from. Through all those checkpoints. This very quickly becomes repetitive and frustrating.
The bus system does offer some help, assuming you're near one of the five bus stops per map, and so is your target; generally they're not. The river system is a bit quieter than the road, but still has enemies, is slower, and not every target is anywhere near a river.
Oh and by the way, if you clean out a checkpoint, then run in to a roaming technical that shoots you up a couple of turns down the road, you might think it's a good idea to pop back to that cleaned out checkpoint for the health pack that you saw there. Bad idea. Once you're a couple of turns down the road, the checkpoint is now suddenly repopulated with bad guys.
Which leads us to...
4. It's repetitive 5. It's repetitive 6. It's repetitive 7. It's repetitive
Travel is dull and repetitive and consists of clearing out checkpoints every few minutes. The missions are essentially all the same and can all be completed by just shooting all the bad guys in an area. The format of every mission is "go to A (with inherent multiple checkpoints en route), kill all the bad guys, pick something up, go to B (checkpoints), kill all the bad guys, do something with the thing you picked up." Unless you choose to follow your buddy's add-on mission as well, in which case you can include "Go to C (checkpoints), kill all the bad guys that are trying to kill your buddy."
Then after all that, you can go back to the place you started (checkpoints, checkpoints, checkpoints) and get another, identical mission.
8. Malaria is bad
Ok, so that's pretty self-evident, but I mean in the context of the game.
You have malaria, which means every 30-40 minutes of real-time play, your vision goes all blurry and you have to take a malaria pill before you can really function again. This I didn't mind particularly, it rarely occurred in the middle of a fire-fight and I thought it added an element of challenge.
The problem is, your pill bottle only has a few malaria pills in it. To top them up, you need to go and perform a mission for someone who has some medicine to give you. You know what that means? No? See items 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 above. Of course this mission doesn't advance the plot.
9. You're stuck with the same weapons all game
This is untrue, but here's the problem. Weapons you pick up from enemies are much more unreliable and jam more often, so you don't really want to bother. Weapons you buy from gun shops using diamonds are much more reliable and can always be replaced free of charge at a weapon shop, but the weapons shop has a limited range of weapons available. You can increase the range of weapons on offer by doing missions for the weapons dealer. Which brings us back to items 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 again.
This wasn't a major problem - I found the three weapons I was happy with, upgraded them as much as possible and stuck with them through the game. It's just a bit of a shame.
10. Diamonds are forever (difficult to find)
Finding diamond cases out on the map is tricky. Even when you're in the locality of one, they can be well protected with bad guys, and in an obscure location, access to which requires extreme lateral thinking. Once you've dealt with all of that, you're rewarded with anything between one and three diamonds.
Bear in mind that for most missions you'll earn a reward of between 10 and 40 diamonds, so soon you have loads of diamonds that you can't actually spend on anything (see 9 above), and you quickly realise that life's way too short to bother with finding diamonds out there on the map.
11. What was the plot again?
I'm trying to avoid spoilers here, so I'll try to keep my comments general. I was disappointed in the plot itself. I found it hard to follow, most of the time. I felt it took me in directions with which I didn't feel particularly sympathetic. It became obvious that on the rare occasion you were presented with a choice in the main plot line, it didn't actually make any difference to the final outcome. Even the final choice of the game, which I expected to take me to two different end points for the plot actually both result in the same ending. Which wasn't an ending I particularly cared about by that point in the game.
Also, wouldn't it have been nice if your choices of side or extra missions, or the way in which you chose to persue them, or the degree to which you helped or used the help of your buddies, or the extent to which you opted for APR versus UFLL missions actually made a difference to the plot choices and ultimate outcome of the story?