I hate Far Cry 2, what am I doing wrong?

[Ninety-Three]

Recently I was bored and decided to pick up a certain game the Idle Thumbs are always talking about. I like shooters, and the game came well-recommended, so I was surprised to find myself hating nearly everything about it. I'm not too far in to the game, so given how well-liked the game is, I'm entirely willing to believe that I'm doing something wrong, rather than that the game is as bad as it seems to me. I can't bring myself to keep playing it like this, so I come for your advice, Idle Forums: How can I enjoy this game?

 

There are a number of things I hated that seem like they just have to be tolerated, like the nearly minute long cutscene when a buddy rescues you, or vehicles touching level geometry in just the wrong way and becoming undrivable. Since my goal is to enjoy this game I still believe is good, I'll focus on explaining my problems with the core systems, in the hopes that someone can recommend a solution.

 

 

1: Driving is boooring. There's not much to say about this, it's just an extremely dull activity that I have to do every time I want to be somewhere where there's stuff to do. The long dirt roads are boring, and every now and then there's a checkpoint which is full of guys I don't want to fight, because apparently they respawn even if you clear the checkpoint, so doing anything other than blowing through is just a waste of time.

 

Is there a way around this problem? Fast travel, or just a way to make sure the missions I take involve less driving?

 

 

2: Diamond finding is sloooow, and therefore boring. I cannot for the life of me judge how fast that damn green light is blinking (I can walk thirty feet in any direction and not be able to tell if the light has gotten faster), so whenever I notice nearby diamonds, I just stand in one place and turn in a circle at an agonizingly slow pace until I get the direction to walk in (too fast and the light only goes solid for a split second, which gets lost in the beeping). I would just ignore the diamond caches entirely, but given that they are my upgrade points, ignoring them seems like a bad idea.

 

Am I particularly bad at reading the frequency of blinky lights? Is this the way the system is supposed to work? Can I safely ignore diamond caches?

 

 

3: I can't tell where anyone is in jungle combat. I'd say that maybe I'm blind, but I've never had this problem in a game before. When there are aggroed enemies in the jungle, they might as well be teleporting in behind me for how well I'm able to see them coming. The rather vague damage indicators compound this problem: I'll get shot by someone on my left, scan left, and the indicator will fade before I can find anyone, then I'll get shot by that same guy again.

 

Is there some graphical setting I can change, maybe crank the gamma up to maximum? Or is this a system working as intended, and the game is telling me "Don't fight near foliage, it gives the enemies cover and is dangerous"? If so, how do I avoid it? It seems like most of the combat I've done so far has either taken place in jungles, or in outposts ten feet away from jungles that the enemies immediately run into when aggroed.

 

 

4: Malaria. Goddamn Malaria, who thought that was a good idea? It's not that I'm being crippled by the effects of the disease, exactly the opposite. My screen starts to turn funny, I take a pill and continue on my merry way. But eventually I run out of pills, and then I have to take time out of doing whatever I wanted to be doing to get more pills. It's a complete waste of time. Does anyone remember Spore at the interplanetary stage, the countless "Something has gone wrong in your empire, drop what you're doing and get over to planet X and fix it" missions? This has that same time-wasting, "stop interrupting me" feeling.

 

Is there any reason I shouldn't just mod this annoyance out of the game?

 

 

So those are the things that made me stop playing Far Cry 2. I want to like the game, and I trust that there's something good there, help me find it.

[Winnipeg Fats]

I think, and this is just off the cuff without putting real thought into it, that the charm of FC2 comes from life in the world of FC2, and less from the usual gameplay loop of find and complete objective that many games with the same packaging go for.  Rather than jetting from objective to objective the fun from that game comes from meandering around the island until the next bonkers thing happens in front of you and drags you into it. At least that addresses the issues with pacing you've mentioned like driving and diamond caches.

 

The combat I understand as well.  It's a visually confusing game at times.  I got a better perspective on FC2 after playing Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, and approached combat encounters more intentionally, trying to find and kill guys one at a time rather than engaging in a firefight with all of them at once.  I don't know a better way to describe that, and I'm sure someone who is less tired than I am right now can phrase that up a little nicer.

 

Finally, Malaria gets to be hilarious in Far Cry 2, so let's not take that away from Malaria.  Always such bad timing on Malaria.

 

In summary I would say that you're not doing anything wrong if FC2 doesn't grab you, because it didn't grab a lot of people.  If you really want to engage with it, I would maybe say don't think of your objective as your actual objective. Your objective is to experience the island.  Kind of like how in Skyrim you never really get to just go the place you want to go, you have to engage in a million little distractions and some madness on the way, and the game is more about spending time in a living space.

[clyde]

The appeal for me was that it felt like a distinct place that I wanted to spend time in rather than a list of objectives. I enjoyed looking at the map and trying to figure out what weapons I would need to get to the mission safely, whether to take boats or chance sneaking around the tall grasses near a check-point, and what a good approach would be to a safe-house that was near my target for a foward operating base. One time I was sneaking around the back of a mountain to get a good vantage point for reconaissance and I ended up watching a memorable sunrise. That type of stuff was what I enjoyed the most. I'm sure I've forgotten all the tedium that went with it though.

[tegan]

are you using wasd or arrow keys

[tegan]

bringin' it back all the way to 2010 up in here

[SecretAsianMan]

I don't really care for Far Cry 2 either.  It has lots of systems I think are cool, and I certainly liked hearing the stories from the podcast, but my actual experience was mostly frustration and annoyance.    I wrote about my final moments with the game in this thread.  I can see why other people like it, but it just didn't click with me.  I think it's fine to not like it.  Honestly I wouldn't force trying to like a game you don't just because you think you should.

[pabosher]

are you using wasd or arrow keys

 

I appreciated it, don't you worry.

[Nachimir]

 

 

Idle Forums: How can I enjoy this game?

 

I can't answer that, and I had the same reasons for hating it as you*, but I think a part of why I hated it was playing the PS3 version. Someone on here said to me that's a pretty awful port, and it certainly feels like it's more of a PC game. I loved it for the first few hours of just wandering around the world, but trying to play the game, I wanted to just mod everything out of it and walk around.

 

* Though mainly I hated the tedious, almost instant respawns on checkpoint guards, and that on one mission, I was being sniped by people beyond the render distance. That was also after I'd spent hours finding diamonds to get a stealth suit, which seemed to do sweet fuck all even though I was crawling slowly through bushes about half a mile away. In the dark.

 

So, uh, my sympathy. I keep meaning to return to it on PC, but there's always something else to do like unblock a sink or empty cat litter.

[Griddlelol]

. so given how well-liked the game is.

It's really not well-liked. At all in fact. Most people have the same problems as you have highlighted, but it's not a matter of playing it differently, it's just a matter of taste. It's sort of the opposite of most shooters, focusing on taking away power from the player and making you feel more like a grunt than a super soldier. Of course you're still Rambo but you're way less of a Rambo than most shooters.

I've noticed that people who like shooters I'm general hate FC2, but those who aren't that into shooters tend to like it. Many of the parts you said you loathe are exactly why I like it. I also don't play FC2 for short bursts, I like to Immerse myself into the world and see all the stupid crazy shit that happens. The quests are basically excuses to travel for me.

Don't worry about not liking it, it's certainly not for everyone, and doesn't mean you have poor taste. By the sounds of it you're playing it "right" but just not liking the core of the game.

[Gatazhk]

FC2 is a very straightforward game.  It is centered around surviving in an extremely hostile and beautiful open world and completing missions successfully through advance planning.  Some of that is loadout and some of it is choosing your approach.   It is not a 'fair' game the AI has advantages that can frustrate the player but the player also has 'friends' that can rescue him in a crisis.   Assume that enemies will flank you constantly and you will probably need to run away from some fights.  The AI will also detect you when you are sneaking and don't expect to be detected.  Guns jam, malaria strikes yadda yadda.

 

Instead of trying to blow through checkpoints in your car, get out of the car and sneak around them if you don't want to deal with them.   However, knowing the type of checkpoint can be very useful because each one has a resource focus that is available to you once you clear it out, either health, ammo or explosives.  You should use the bus frequently and plan your drives in advance to avoid checkpoints, i.e. drive where they ain't.

[TheLastBaron]

Is there a mod that changed the camps of guys constantly respawning?  That kind of ruined the game for me, I just wanted to drive around and explore and enemies just kept respawning all the time and it became a chore.

[Ninety-Three]

However, knowing the type of checkpoint can be very useful because each one has a resource focus that is available to you once you clear it out

 

This confuses me. In my experience clearing out checkpoints doesn't matter, because the next time I go there, the baddies will have respawned. Sure I could fight them each time to gain access to the resource, but that seems like a good use of neither time nor resources, given that there are free refills available from other buildings not guarded by enemies.

 

As for being rescued by friends, twice is too many times to sit through a fifty second cutscene in which nothing happens. I quickly started reading that as the game telling me to just reload my save file, because I'd get back into the action a lot sooner.

 

Finally, you said some things about beauty and loadout, and I just haven't seen those yet. So far every place I've been to has been indistinguishable jungle with boring dirt roads, and my loadout choices are currently "Shotgun vs rifle vs other, similar rifle". Do things improve further in to the game?

 

I'm playing it on PC, and the biggest problem I'm having with combat is that it seems the enemies have X-ray vision and magical aggro-locking. If there's a giant leafy fern between me and them, they will light me up, and I can only fight back by spraying the fern with bullets and hoping to hit blind. And because they engage from long-range, there's always a fern in between us. I've also noticed that enemy damage seems to be wildly variable: I've had an enemy hit me from long rang and knock off a tiny fraction of a bar, then hit me again and blow away ten times as much, what's going on there?

 

Another combat question: When I shoot a guy, he staggers, implying to me that like in Just Cause 2, damage can stunlock an enemy. However, I'm pretty sure I've been shot by guys in the throes of a stagger animation. Is it just aesthetic, or does it indicate that they've been briefly stunned?

[Gatazhk]

In my experience clearing out checkpoints doesn't matter, because the next time I go there, the baddies will have respawned. Sure I could fight them each time to gain access to the resource, but that seems like a good use of neither time nor resources, given that there are free refills available from other buildings not guarded by enemies.

As you advance after a few missions you'll be able to collect enough diamonds to purchase better equipment, so you'll have loadout freedom and with better weapons the checkpoints won't be so overwhelming.   If I'm low on syringes and trying to get back to a gun store to replenish, I might attack a health check point to get a full syringe pack so I'll have enough left to get where I ultimately need to go.  It's a calculated risk though.

 

Checkpoints are there and respawn for a good reason and that is to try to get you to plan and pay attention carefully to what you are doing.  They can be avoided, or dealt with, but never permanently.

 

 

Another combat question: When I shoot a guy, he staggers, implying to me that like in Just Cause 2, damage can stunlock an enemy. However, I'm pretty sure I've been shot by guys in the throes of a stagger animation. Is it just aesthetic, or does it indicate that they've been briefly stunned?

 

Not sure about the stunning.  Some guys will seem dead but actually are wounded and they will shoot you from a seated position if you're in their vicinity.

 

There's savanna and desert environments in the game, not just jungle.

 

In the beginning there is a lot coming at you, your weapons aren't very good and the AI hunts you down like a dog.  Use crouch to move around and try to avoid confrontations as much as possible. Get diamonds, unlock and upgrade weapons, learn your way around, don't forget to use the boats too.    When in doubt, run away.

[Thrik]

I was only able to tolerate an hour or two of Far Cry 2 before throwing in the towers. I too have enjoyed hearing the stories about it on here, but I just didn't find anything to like about the game. Maybe playing it in a stealthy and considered way was part of my problem, because I was just constantly thinking about how other games have done the same thing better. I was also playing Crysis at the time, which I guess was a different game but it had many similar concepts and executed them really well.

I have no doubt that those who've experienced hilarious situations caused by the game's systems like I have in Metal Gear Solid, Skyrim, Battlefield, and Grand Theft Auto have a justifiably good opinion of the game. Sadly, I was not privy to such things and unlike other games I wasn't having enough of a good time to hang around long enough to encounter them.

[Gormongous]

Well, I ought to post, because I feel like this thread has been overwhelmingly critical of Far Cry 2 as a game experience, as opposed to just a game-design talking point. I've played Far Cry 2 three times through, twice on the hardest difficulty, and it's still the only shooter I'll load up just to pop off a few guys. I think it's so different from anything else along the same lines that it feels a bit silly to focus on what other games did what specific mechanics "better".

 

What worked about it for me? Most of all, I like that it's a game about an environment and how you learn to interact with it. Most open-world games, most games in general, follow an arc of empowerment and then subjugation. You get this skill or that gun and the game opens up for you. Even Dark Souls, for all its inaccessibility, has a point where you can simply outlevel the game's difficulty curve and are able to start disregarding its systems. Far Cry 2 resists that in interesting and fascinating ways. There's no must-have gun, although the bolt-action rifle feels so damn good that it might as well be must-have, and no way to exterminate hostile NPCs in order to make the game easier or more convenient for you. It's about waking up in a safehouse, getting a loadout that you enjoy, and then driving through jungle and savannah along a path that avoids what guard posts you can and puts you in a position to take out the ones you can't. That sort of environmental traversal is the core loop of the game, so I understand if someone who wants to shoot dudes gets frustrated with Far Cry 2, which has you spending as much if not more time not shooting dudes if you're able.

 

There are important things to do to make it a better game, things that I think are mistakes on the part of the developer. You should do as many gun dealer missions early on, because the starting guns are crap. You should buy a stealth suit as soon as possible, because it doesn't make you as stealthy as a sane person like Nachmir would expect but it does make the AI's aggro range something more in line with reality. You shouldn't bother hunting every single diamond unless it's something you enjoy, because the game's missions and assassinations will give you enough to buy two or three decent loadouts. You should use bus stops and rivers to circumvent checkpoints, because otherwise it is all dirt roads like you say. You should set fires as much as possible, because goddamn.

 

So yeah, I don't blame anyone for quitting, because there's no one-size-fits-all game and, even if there were, it's certainly not Far Cry 2, which is almost entirely about frustrating you horribly and then letting you try to overcome those frustrations. That said, I'd take it any day over Crysis, which I felt like was an incredibly conventional shooter in terms of its aesthetics and themes, just with unprecedentedly wide corridors. No other game's let me use my jeep as a makeshift roadblock to stop a truck convoy by some IEDs I'd set, while I waited at the treeline to pick off the survivors fleeing the gasoline flames. That was something else. Then one of them got into said jeep and ran me over. Video games!

[Nachimir]

So yeah, I don't blame anyone for quitting, because there's no one-size-fits-all game

 

This is what most interests me about games at the moment, and makes me wary of criticising games I don't like. I understand FC2 isn't a terrible game, just not my kind of thing (it might be if I'm in the mood, but I thought the Stalker games gave me a more enjoyable and interesting harsh wilderness to learn about and die repeatedly in), and I worry about it coming over as "Wah! Wah! It's not a proper FPS" or similar bollocks. That's there's expressive range left to discover in such a well trodden genre is kind of fascinating.

[Sno]

I really love Far Cry 2, and i usually like coming into threads like these with lots of advice that might help people discover what's enjoyable about a specific game, but i think this might be one of those games where the things some people love about it and the things other people hate about it are exactly the same.

*Shrug*

I don't really know how to make a case for Far Cry 2. Can you appreciate and enjoy a game that actively strives to make you feel kind of miserable? That's sort of the question Far Cry 2 poses, and there's not really any way around it, no way to mitigate that through a deeper understanding of its mechanics. It's designed completely to be an upsetting experience. That's why people love it, and that's why other people hate it.

[Gatazhk]

IED provoked encounters are some of FC2's best, for sure.   Approach any mission any way you want, results will vary, although there are some basic ways to get an edge.  Sometimes the commotion alerts nearby enemies that will join the action, sometimes not,  Unlike FC3 there isn't an alarm to warn you when they're coming.

 

STALKER is a comparable game; both have striking atmospheres of desperation and feel true to their environments.  Probably my two favorite SP shooters. FC2 is much easier to jump in and out of however, the story/systems/combat are simple and permit this.

[Sno]

I think the relative simplicity of Far Cry 2's systems as compared to other similarly demanding games also make it harder to move past how oppressive it is.

Stalker starts out pretty rough, but you can stack the deck pretty significantly in your favor.

[brkl]

I played Far Cry 2 on the PS3 as my first console FPS and loved it to death. Everything apart from the snipers beyond draw distance. This was before Idle Thumbs talked about it, so I didn't know I was supposed to love it. All the talk at that time was about how bad it was compared to Far Cry, and I couldn't understand it. I still 'read' the gameplay as an excellent adaptation of some of the themes from The Heart of Darkness, but I guess that's just my personal history talking. It's just rare in being interesting to play to me when most shooters these days don't draw me in at all.

[Berzee]

When I play Far Cry 2, I don't think of the game (or its "core loop", if you wish) as being the 10-15 minute experience of accepting and completing a mission, but rather the 1-3 minute experience of discovering a band of hostiles and eliminating them using my custom loadout, the environment, and whatever props I can find -- explosive scenery, dry grass, vehicles.

 

I like the gunplay and the AI, and I like how depending on your current inventory you might find yourself perfectly equipped for a situation or entirely out of your depth -- and so playing it as a game about adapting to "one moment in time" works for me. Sometimes I'd pop in and just play for ten or twenty minutes, do a couple of firefights, maybe find a diamond if I want to feel like I achieved some kind of permanence. =P

 

Accepting a mission doesn't lengthen or alter the core loop for me -- but it does add some interest by posing the question, "Ok, you accepted a caravan destruction mission. Now how are you going to cross the desert and kill those snipers up ahead when pretty much all you've got is bombs?". If I do find myself well-equipped for the situation before me, I start looking for ways to complete things stylishly or elegantly. Of course, in the middle of some such smug attempt to "challenge myself" is a perfect time for malaria or gun jamming. =P

 

I tend not to stick with one favorite gun, instead switching my loadout whenever I return to base. Sometimes I go for a themed loadout (all fire weapons, or all silenced, etc) and sometimes I pick a nice balanced combination so I can adapt to anything. The vehicles with guns make a nice supplement for some of my stupider weapon selections and the other just-for-fun vehicles, exploration, scenery and wildlife make for nice distractions along the way.

 

Also I avoid the boats and water as much as possible. =T

[clyde]

I think that the tonal differences between Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 3 bring some idiosyncracies of the former into focus. The shooting felt better in 3; the Enemy A.I. was more varied (but with seemingly less desire to effectively flank); 3 included friendlies on the battlefield (this was a huge improvement to me because it I could no longer assume an incoming vehicle was worth blowing up); the rock-tossing distractions, stealth kills, dragging bodies into brush before enemy patrols found them, wild animals, and compact landscape-variations all provide me with a more enjoyable game, but the two games provide such different atmospheres. Far Cry 2 gives me the sense that I'm role-playing as an independent mercenary in a war-torn former british colony whose governance is determined by the diamond-trade. Far Cry 3 makes me feel like my dad has been kidnapped by a south american drug-cartel and I am trying to feel better about it by playing a game made by MTV.

[tegan]

I always find it more than a little hilarious how Far Cry 2 has become this Old Man and the Sea type deal where a lot of Thumbs listeners fight to enjoy it rather than just not play it.

[Ninety-Three]

I always find it more than a little hilarious how Far Cry 2 has become this Old Man and the Sea type deal where a lot of Thumbs listeners fight to enjoy it rather than just not play it.

 

I wouldn't say I'm fighting to enjoy it, I played for long enough to want to put it down, did so, then came here to see if I should pick it back up. To that end, I played a bit more of the game with the promise of getting out of the jungle, and developing a loadout. In the process, I got the bolt-action sniper rifle, which so far has been game-breakingly good, and now I'd like to ask about that.

 

It's not just so good that it turned the game into a cakewalk, it's so good that I can't imagine how the game will ever be hard again. Thirty bullets on a 100% accuracy rifle that kills with torso shots, it's insanity! I can attack enemy camps from so far away that their AI can only run around rather than shoot at me, and then it's trivial to snipe them all. Because it's so ammo-efficient, I can engage medium-range targets with ease, as opposed to the assault rifle where I had to think "Is it worth most of my clip to gun that guy down from here?" I can take a mission, head towards it, kill every enemy I encounter on the way there, mop up the mission with ease, and return to base on one load of ammo, without even touching my secondary or special weapons.

 

Clearing out a camp or a blockade is somewhat satisfying (becoming overpowered always is) but I have to imagine that the lack of challenge will get old soon, and I'm all the more perplexed by it based on the comments in this thread. It seems like everyone else played a game that was difficult, which Far Cry 2 has suddenly stopped being. Do you just choose not to use the sniper rifle, or does the game find a way to challenge sniper players?

 

On a different note, I continue to be irritated by all the driving the game makes me do. I feel like the game is just not respecting my time. Case in point: Why is Mike's Bar not in Pala? Why do I have to drive to Pala, then spend another minute driving down the completely dull, never-contains-an-enemy road from Pala to the bar? What does that add to the experience, other than making me wish for fast travel? The game is full of so many empty roads that do nothing except force the player to spend uneventful time driving to get to where they're going.

[Griddlelol]

I always find it more than a little hilarious how Far Cry 2 has become this Old Man and the Sea type deal where a lot of Thumbs listeners fight to enjoy it rather than just not play it.

 

 

At first glance I agreed with you, and thought how silly it is to try and enjoy something that doesn't click immediately. Then I realised how I did a similar thing with Dark Souls. I didn't quite get it, then I decided to give it another try since it's so well recieved.

 

However, I didn't push on while hating it, I just played it again and it clicked, almost immediately. It's worth trying games you think you dislike because you might have just missed something. DS has gone from something I thought was over-rated and irritating to one of my favourite games ever. Definitely one of the few single player games I've spent more than 40 hours playing (currently nearer 100) and not gotten bored.