Nachimir

Far Cry 2

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Anyone else playing this? Chris mentioned it in the Fallout 3 thread.

(I must confess I'm only playing this because Spaff was kind enough to give me one of the preview copies given to expo staff).

It's much less silly than Far Cry (I gave up on that when I encountered a monster that took more ammo to kill than I could carry), and it's very, very beautiful. Fire is absolutely awesome in it, you can set dry grass alight and watch it spread for quite a way. In one mission I had to blow up a propane tank in a train yard, and sneaking in to lob a single molotov resulted in the consequent fire taking out most of the enemies without them ever realising I was there.

The save system that allows you to choose time of day is pretty eloquent, especially as it's functional but really shows off the aesthetics of the game too as you watch the hours whizz by.

God damn though, getting around can be a chore. The other day I decided to do a side mission, which was to assassinate some random, non-plot related dude. Once I'd got to the town he was in, it only took about 2 minutes to sneak up and set him on fire, but the time to do it including getting to the radio tower to pick up the mission, getting to the target, then getting back to a save point was about an hour. They aren't so much missions as expeditions as a result.

The missions themselves are all kind of short and easy so far, but getting around is hard. It reminds me of Assassin's Creed: Really beautiful, technically stunning, but a bit shallow and repetitive in terms of action. This seems to be a major pitfall for procedural content versus designed experiences; procedural seems to lead to a lot of popcorn-like filler.

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I'm loving it a lot. The personal aspect of the game is fairly sterile, but the actual world and environment is incredibly vibrant and lovingly created.

There's a ton of attention to detail, but it's not in the way we usually use that phrase--it's not lots of little textural details, or little scripted events, or what have you, it's attention to systemic detail in the subtle and realistic depiction of an African savanna, things like how the sun affects all the different types of terrain at all times of the day, the way a rainstorm breaks out, and so on. It's relentlessly gorgeous in that respect, but I've noticed a lot of people call it bland or boring, probably because it's so reserved.

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I agree, it's absolutely beautiful, and the systemic aspects remind me of Stalker.

The lighting can get very flat at night or in bad weather, but when it's sunny everything really pops. More games should have Baobab trees :)

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God damn though, getting around can be a chore. The other day I decided to do a side mission, which was to assassinate some random, non-plot related dude. Once I'd got to the town he was in, it only took about 2 minutes to sneak up and set him on fire, but the time to do it including getting to the radio tower to pick up the mission, getting to the target, then getting back to a save point was about an hour. They aren't so much missions as expeditions as a result.

Yikes! Don't think I could handle that! :tdown:

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That seems like a bit of an exaggeration. I literally cannot imagine it ever taking an hour to get to a save point, that's just insane. You could do a full perimeter of the entire map many times over in an hour.

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Jeeeeeeeeesus, I want to play this game so much, but every time I'm about to double click on the icon I play GTA multiplayer instead.

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That seems like a bit of an exaggeration. I literally cannot imagine it ever taking an hour to get to a save point, that's just insane. You could do a full perimeter of the entire map many times over in an hour.

Not an hour to get to a save point, but to get from one, to the nearest radio antenna, to the target, and back to a save point nearby. One I did on Saturday seriously took an hour of thrashing across the terrain in cars, boats and on foot, getting ambushed, restocking on ammo, health etc., doing the mission, then getting back out to the nearest save point. Most probably take me more like 20 - 30 minutes to run that cycle, but it still feels like a chore when the missions themselves are so brief, and generally very easy.

It kind of surprises me since most distances are a lot shorter than they look on the map, but it has a habit of throwing up obstacles like "go around this meandering ridge, or through the militia checkpoint", and both can add a lot of time to a journey.

It's very pretty and I enjoy playing it to an extent, but it feels a bit bland and repetitive in the same way Assassin's Creed did. FC2 obstructs me far more than it challenges me.

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If you're playing on the PC hit F5 for quicksave. This has saved me quite some trip to my save houses.

This game also has some tough story choices for you in store too. I just finished the game last evening and I loved every bit of it. I was just shocked at the ending. I'm not going to spoiler tag it. It's something you just have to experience for yourself.

The main gripe I hear people talking about is the respawning checkpoints. But I found them a challenge. You can avoid them if you plan your route. Or just barge on in guns blazing. Or if you're a bit more cautious, just grab a sniper rifle and pick them off from a distance.

All in all this game is a blast and most definitely worth a play through. :tup::tup::tup::tup: out of 5

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PS3, so no quick save alas.

I don't mean to sound too negative, and I am enjoying it. When I say chore, I mean awesome beautiful chore, but still repetitive.

Just did one and a half assassination missions in an hour, carefully picking my routes to avoid the checkpoints and occasionally massacring a patrol or two. Relying on my hearing more makes it easier too; hearing a patrol jeep coming and hunkering down until it's passed is pretty cool.

I'm sure a lot of my feelings toward it are also because I've been focusing less on the story and more on earning lots of diamonds to unlock decent weapons.

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Heh, you earn the most diamonds with the story missions. And scrounging the countryside for diamonds helps too, especially early on in the game. Just pay attention to the green led on your GPS unit.

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Yeah, I tend to pick them up if I'm passing in a jeep and notice the GPS flashing, but not really worth hunting a whole map segment for so few. Assassinations pay 14, which is getting me some decent kit :tup:

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I've played four hours of this today, and the more I play it the less I like it :tdown:

I've gone from feeling ambivalent about it to actually hating it. Story missions today. Last mission: get inside the fortress and kill someone or tag some gold in the desert.

45 diamonds for a "stealth suit" sounded like it was going to be an awesome upgrade. I'd already done some sneaking into towns to kill people, and wanted to be able to do it better.

So anyway, even in the middle of the night it doesn't stop snipers that aren't being rendered yet (blood on screen gives direction, yet no tower, no silhouette and no muzzle flash) from picking you off while you're sneaking through bushes, crouched. I reloaded the game, didn't waste any money on the suit then tried again with exactly the same results, and took them out by running out of cover towards them until I could actually see them and take them down with the dart rifle.

Inside the fortress, even without the stealth suit, the AI at times couldn't see me even though I was in the middle of a courtyard right in front of them. After completing the mission, I'm driving along a road when I get rammed, shot dead, rescued, kill the bad guys, then more pile over a hill, kill my buddy and kill me.

It's not like there wasn't a recent save, but that's exactly when I thought "I can't be fucking arsed with this". The map is insanely over populated, and moving around it is as hard if not harder than the missions I've done so far. Upgrades and new weapons are often frustratingly rubbish (despite having earned enough to buy some fairly good kit. Another crappy upgrade was the "assault ammo upgrade", which doesn't actually give you more assault rifle ammo). Lining up a good headshot doesn't guarantee a kill, sometimes an enemy can soak up a stupid amount of bullets without dying. The AI is poor. I look back on about 12 - 16 hours of playing and can remember perhaps two moments when I was actually enjoying it, now I just look at how much map is between me and whatever objective then sigh :tdown:

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That reminds why I stopped playing this game after the first mission - go to the hut where you can sleep, just after meeting the boss guy. Drove over there, liked the map and car etc. There were two guys guarding... I hid behind a burnt car waiting for one sentry to walk past me, with his back to me, the other was behind the house. I hacked the dude from behind with my machete...the other guy shouted and ran round from the back of the house immediately... not impressed.

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I look back on about 12 - 16 hours of playing and can remember perhaps two moments when I was actually enjoying it, now I just look at how much map is between me and whatever objective then sigh :tdown:

Umm... why are (were) you playing it for so long if you don't enjoy it?

Anyway, I kind of like it. Although the faults are obvious. The missions are like from an old school hack'n'slash game (I was reminded of Mordor I and II): they are really generic, with only a few variations. Especially the side missions -- only the location of the target differs most times. I also don't like the respawning guard posts. The least they could do is make the respawn time longer (for example they could only come back the next day or something). Most annoying is that everybody is willing to kill you. You learn pretty early on that when outside of the cease-fire areas, you should shoot on sight to not give any advantage.

The checkpoint save locations seem pointless, seeing as you can even quick-save (or do they disable that with a harder difficulty setting?).

But the game is certainly beautiful and the open world aspect of it is nice. Better than S.T.A.L.K.E.R., which was disappointingly linear (with some exceptions).

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Umm... why are (were) you playing it for so long if you don't enjoy it?

Because I'm prone to addiction and foolishly expect things to improve. With games I'm often convinced that I "just don't get it". For instance, things like Wipeout and Ouendan throw an insane seeming difficulty curve at you and reward persistence with a massive sense of achievement. FC2 just kept throwing the same generic baddies at me, but I was thinking "Maybe if I try a lot of weapons and find a loadout I'm happy with. Maybe if I save up for a stealth suit it'll become more fun...".

If a game doesn't start rewarding persistence, it makes my opinion harsher.

I really enjoyed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and was talking about it with a fellow mod at Black Cat. He hated it, but really enjoyed FC2. We're still not sure what the important difference is between them. I think there are a lot.

The journey towards Pripyat and Chernobyl creates a sense of progress, which I find lacking in the wide open maps of FC2. A lot of the places in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. were very distinct while keeping to the theme, whereas FC2 seems generative and bland (Shacks, grass and soldiers).

The Zone and the characters in it were implicitly hostile, so I think I accepted that many things there were hassle. I also found it easier to avoid enemies yet still follow fairly straightforward routes to where I was going. FC2 tries to be very friendly in the way of most modern games, yet certain things really aren't intuitive, like which slot a weapon you're about to buy will occupy, for instance. I found that really intensely annoying.

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Been watching this thread with interest for some time as I was really interested in Far Cry 2, sadly it sounds like a bit of a disappointment.

I still would like to play it because I liked the setting but I think it is another wait until it drops in price.

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Holy mother of a shit fuckering cock sucking son of a bitch. I just lost two hours of play* because the quicksave failed silently when I didn't have enough free disk space to save. I.e. the game told me save was successful, in fact it did nothing.

And also, I hate it how the savegames list takes a minute of "refreshing list" before it is displayed.

* mostly diamond hunting in seldom visited corners of the map and a somewhat difficult sneak I managed pulled off.

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Hah! It turns out some files were in fact saved. Fucking 0-byte files, though.

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It's still amazing how often games fail to properly save. It's not like it's that difficult.

1. Save to a temp file

2. Validate data being written (usually implied by the IO system)

3. Replace old file with the temp file

Of course, quite some games also fail additionally a quick saving, i.e. use more than 1 quick save slot, at least 3 has my preference.

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Just finished it. Some thoughts:

It's really beautiful :tup: but the lack of non-enemy characters makes it feel empty :tmeh:. I liked the first map a lot more than the second, so the last half of the game didn't appeal to me as much. Although the rivers in the second map were nice.

Phantom blinks? Sometimes (quite often, actually) I thought I saw the diamond-detector blink just once, but really it didn't. Or did it? Is the game messing with me, or is it just my brain? Did this happen to anyone else?

I got many of the weapons/upgrades that would have been most useful for my play style relatively late in the game, when they weren't that useful any more. Maybe I'll play it a second time later with a different character and I'll know what to buy.

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The 360 version was $30 on a boxing day sale (a bit early, yeah, but online shops open for boxing day on Christmas eve!) so I ordered it. Will begin playing as soon as it's arrived. Getting kinda psyched, actually.

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Infovore makes FC2 sound fascinating to me.

I kind of want to go back to it and ignore the side missions altogether instead of what I did with it before, but the "to play" pile is already far too big.

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Get in a Jeep, drive, hit a checkpoint, stop the car, get in gunners seat, shoot bad guys, drive off. Notice stragglers from the checkpoint following, stop car, get in gunners seat, shoot bad guys, drive off. Hit next checkpoint, stop car, get in gunners seat, shoot bad guys, drive off.... [rinse and repeat]... finally reach destination, stop, get in gunners seat, shoot bad guys, drive off.

:fart:

Actually, I liked the game but I really don't understand where all the pontificating over it comes from. You can elaborate on the experience of playing most games and make it sound utterly amazing but that doesn't necessarily mean the game delivers.

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