There are many, many MANY first person shooters out there these days. So much so that they almost transcend genres and create their own to get their point across. Ever since the high acclaim successes of Half-life and Deus Ex, however, there has been a lot of focus of throwing "fresh" into a first person shooters. The result - too much divergent thinking, there are a lot of shooters out there that try to innovate with the end result the core mechanics get neglected.
FarCry 2- THE REVIEW
Today, I would like to talk to you about my thoughts on Far Cry 2 and why you should put money on this and not.. say, Fallout 3. There may be comparisons on unfair standings, and this course could be considered biased.That being said, I still suggest you get FarCry 2 over Fallout 3.
Also, any references to Boiling Point: Road to hell that will be no doubt mailed with pictureised hate mail to me will be ignored, largely because it was an FPS RPG ( so any direct comparisons gameplay wise are nastily weighty), and honestly the game was quite TRASH - end of story.
Far Cry 2 is the sequal to the early 2000s WTF-thon shooter, Far Cry. Before anybody asks, no, it shares NOTHING in common with it. Not characters, not setting, not developers, nothing. Is this a bad thing? most certainly not. FarCry was only good for about 2 levels, before it became just ANOTHER corridor shooter, and really at BEST a mediocre shooter for the second half.
Really what they did for Far Cry 2 was go back to the drawing board with the game. They took what was GOOD from the first game (the initial wide open space gamelplay) and they expanded from there. The Result, one of the most positively awesome shooters on the market. Far Cry 2 really is ground-up a shooter, so any comparisons with S.T.A.L.K.E.R or Fallout 3 are largely unfair due to both of them trying to play the RPG elements card to the table in either a minor or major suite.Far Cry does not even bother with trying to sideline the player's trigger and brain connection like that.
The story goes in Far Cry 2 that you are sent into a war torn and scarred African country (that remains nameless for the sake of creativity) trying to get an arms dealer who goes by the alias "The Jackal". Not long after stepping off the plane however, nature gives you a kick in the nuts and you find yourself struck down with the malaria. After getting laid up in a Hotel to recoup, a strange twist of irony finds you face to face with your target. Too weak to even stand, he scares the shit out of you some and leaves.you then find Yourself right in the middle of a civil war between two massive factions full of Africans. Officially quite fucked, this is where the game actually begins.
The premise of the game's plot is quite intriguing, because it isn't pinning you to it. You can in fact ignore the main plot completely if you want, or you can cannonball the plot if you so choose. Both are polar opposites to each other, yet those two options exist, and every one in between. Essentially, I suppose a good comparison would be to look at the GTA series. yeah, the Delinearisation is probably a bit GTA-style, if a A LOT bigger game area and much more open.
With this amount of you'd expect something to be a miss, but there really isn't. The HUGE map, is well populated with detail, enemies and vehicles. The attention to detail in it is truly staggering. No really it is. a 1:1 day/night cycle, incredible procedural tree regrowth and grass propagation, it's a stunning world. This combined with SUPERB Atmospheric audio, the world literally crawls and sprawls with life. It's the closest thing I've ever experienced to a living world inside a game. In fact, the game is good enough is that respect that you can just stop what you're doing, find a nice little unpopulated area and just go exploring. In fact, no, that really is a good option sometimes.
And you know what? nothing stops you doing it. So Awesome.They've just given you 50-100 square kilometers of area and just gone "kill this dude, or don't- kgo". It's choose your own way FPSing.
Naturally, the tech behind this is really quite special, but the thing is it doesn't need a Black monolithic computer to run decently. In fact, a decent mid range rig could handle this game without too much of a hassle, and the visuals scale well, with a tonne of options to tweak the most frames out of your PC settings. Naturally, having a machine that could render the entire of the Death Star scene from Star Wars WOULD be a benefit, but it isn't the price of entry for the game, so all those mid rangers should rejoice.
A game of this category obviously must have some armaments behinds it, and boy does Far Cry 2 deliver in spades. Starting off , you are on a 4 slot system for inventory (your machete, a sidearm, a primary weapon and a special weapon). Each of these categories has between 9 and 12 weapons in it, and they range from standard Assault rifles , SMGs and pistols, to Grenade launchers (there are 2), rocket launchers, Flamethrowers, FLARE PISTOLS and a whole gamut of everything in between. Far cry 2 also has an interesting way of presenting you with weapons too. You can pick weapons off enemies, but you should be careful, because they ARE African and the weapons they carry are in a dilapidated state. In this state, they jam, and increasingly more so as they get worse, and eventually !KB on you (!KB = KABOOM!).However, getting yourself some of the local currency and visiting a weapons dealer, using his little 386 with Green-on-black CRT screen, you can purchase weapons to be permanently available in your storehouse.
Storehouses are adjacent to said weapon dealer's shop, and store all your weapon purchases. This is handy, because you then have clean, working weapons whenever you want them (read- clean guns that don't jam ALWAYS available for infinity). There are several places in the game world which are safe zones, generally, they are the three major towns (where cease-fires have been declared),bars (where you can pick up side missions from), and safehouses. Safehouses were designed as save points for the player, but thanks to quicksave, some of their usefulness is dulled off on the PC version. Still, safehouses are places where you are untouchable, can quickly change out dodgy weapons for new ones,AND as an added bonus, the only place you can sleep (so you can fast forward to a specific time of day to do a mission if you prefer working at certain times of day like I did).
I really would like to go into a whole lot more depth into all the awesome little things in the game mechanics that just make this a joy but I could be here all night. Just suffice in the knowledge they have NAILED FPS mechanics in the most visceral and gratifying way I've ever seen. OH and you have to actually take bullets out of you if you get shot up. Should mention that.
From an art and design point of view, the game has been gone over with a fine tooth comb, and everything has been given specific attention and care, from grass textures, to gun animations, to rock placement. it's all brilliant. As an additional Kudos, the sheer volume of quality audio is amazing, detail in the Audio.. I've never seen so much of it. Sure you could point at several games with plenty of sounds going on (any COD game really), but there isn't the detail to Audio that FarCry 2 has.
The weapon sounds are a livable mix of stuff they kept from when UBi bought RedStorm, and a whole cast of new sounds which are just MEATY. Machineguns have a satisfying thud to them, while assault rifles feel more dakka dakka, but it's all quality. Then there's the sheer volume of atmospheric sound (which I believe I mentioned earlier), the masses of non-important NPC and enemy conversations, and of course the literal truckload of character Dialog from all the characters. It's truly amazing, and Ubisoft Montreal really have to be given credit for it. The game is an aural masterpiece.
Lastly, I'd just like to give a message to Ubi Montreal- "YOU ARE A BUNCH OF CUNTS! LESS THAN 30 minutes before the end of the game! WHY?! D:" Allow me to qualify. Right, basically the way the story goes, I was getting rather attached to a particular character in the game, much more than I've ever felt an attachment to a game character before. Definition of sucking a player into the game world . I felt he could be a friend of mine in the real world, and he was just so damn cool. Anyway, 30minutes before the end of the game's main plot. oh I can't.. that would be spoiling. Trust me though, when you get there and observe what happens, you will understand my message. Yeah, Ubi, Fuck you. That was an uncalled for shot in the pills guys.
Now for the unavoidable comparing to Fallout 3. In my books really impossible to compare the two. They both are trying to accomplish different things. Far Cry 2 wants to be the best shooter, Fallout 3 wants to be better than Oblivion (not hard),STALKER wants to be Russian. However, gun to my head, I'm going to give it a shot.
I don't really like reliance on stats-based accuracy and damage (ie, roll a 3, do 2 damage, to his*roll again*... little finger) of Fallout 3, I don't think it's particularly good for FPSing with, and it results in absurd situations at times, VATS helps, but it's not really where the shootings at.Despite having an actual ballistics physics simulator built into the game, STALKER has about the least logical amounts feeling to all it's weapons. Starting weapons especially feel less like reall guns and more like spreadfire spud guns .Far Cry2's is much more about using your own wits and abilities to get the job done rather than relying on chance and die rolls, and does so with a nice amount of bravado and visceral emphasis.
Fallout 3's world is wide , open, but very much dead and dying. It feels dead, feels decayed, thus it fits with the premise of the game. Stalker's World is just haunting. It's real, but it's dead kinda of reality which makes you crap your pants around every corner in fear of danger. Far Cry 2 the world is about as living as breathing as game worlds get. Sure it may be a horrid place to live in real life, but my god it's just stunning, it's exactly like Africa.
In terms of art, Fallout 3 has that once again disturbing mix of Bethesda's well made characters and art, but with Bethesda's uncanny valley feel because they're too lazy to make people emote with anything more than vague gestures. STALKER read Roadside Picnic one time too many, played the original Fallout once or twice, then had a holiday in Pripyat to see what it was like. Came back, made the game, and the result is probably one of the best renditions of a wasteland. Far Cry2 relies not on heavy power to bring it's art to you, but it does it with enough conviction that by gosh if there was anything flawed, you could never see it.
If you have got to this end of the review, you should know just one thing if you haven;t already purchased FarCry 2 - do it now. You are missing out on potentially the best placement of money one a game this year (yeah, yes, Fallout 3, bla bla Bethesda, bla bla bla, don't care, too many laser rifles not enough satisfying mechanics).
This Game has officially surpassed Duke Nukem 3D as my most satisfying FPS ever. It has everything , looks, freedom, longevity, plenty of hidden stuff, lots of to do, and the most visceral feeling gun play I've ever experienced.
Get it, get it now.
