Welcome to Thunderdome

Posted: **Mon Dec 29, 2008 4:07 pm**

If I had played it, I would probably say the following:

It's gorgeous on a machine that has the horses to make it gorgeous. The sound is pretty good and is critical to gameplay.

The story places you as a merc in Africa with the task of tracking down a weapons dealer. You do work for other mercs, the two warring factions, and an underground group. There is a cool twist that occurs immediately upon your arrival to Africa.

The gun play is nice with the very notable exception of the RPG, which sucks. You can equip yourself as a sniper, heavy weapons guys, stealth guy, etc. Very good diversion of weapons creates multiple approaches to tackling a mision.

The AI counters by being ridiculously good. We have reached a point in gaming where the graphics are hurting the performance of the AI. To make a long rant short, the visuals the player sees isn't what the AI sees. We see a jungle and shadows which people wearing camouflage can easily hide within. The AI sees YOU.

The AI cheating really shows when you're going stealth. There is a sniper rifle that allows silent long range shots. However, nearby enemy units psychically know if a fellow soldier is down. They then use their incredible forensics abilities to quickly figure out your position. It's not a game killer though.

What does make the game redundant is the respawning enemies and the fact that almost everyone is hostile to you.

The respawning is ridiculous. Eliminate an entire outpost of say 7 guys, drive a little bit down the road so you're just out of sight, then return and there will be 7 new guys there. Stupid and lazy game design.

The hostility part is worse. You can choose to play as a white guy, black guy, indian, woman (or both races), chinese, etc. No matter who you play, most people you encounter will shoot at you on sight. There is no rhyme or reason to it. Why have a checkpoint if you're just going to shoot everyone who drives up to it? It honestly gets insane. During one assassination task, you're asked to go to a village to eliminate the target. The problem is that the ENTIRE village is hostile to you. Thus, you either find a good spot to camp and wait for the target to finally appear outside and then you snip his ass or you kill the entire village.

Anyway, Far Cry 2 is no Half-Life killer. It's not even a Crysis killer. It's very ambitious, and has a lot of cool features that I'd love to see in other games (Cake, they finally solved the "Run/Jump" thing you hate about FPSs!).

However, it is very redundant. I'm sick of going back and forth to the same places over and over and I haven't even gotten t halfway through the story yet. Granted, I'm an "explorer" so I see many places more than once, but it gets really old traveling from A to B and being forced to fight multiple times during the journey. Especially when it's outposts and such you just wiped out 10 minutes ago.

Overall, at the halfway mark, I'd rank it as a solid purchase and play, IF it wasn't for that pesky SecureRom that gets installed along with the game. That, all by itself, makes me advise all PC GAMERS to avoid this game like the plague until EA removes that piece of shit "anti-piracy" software (they mean anti-privacy). I'm sure the game is just fine on the X-Box 360.

If it weren't for SecureRom, I'd recommend it to anyone. It's a bit repetitive, but there is an absolute shit ton of FPS action within. The beautiful graphics and FPS action offset a lot of the problems with the game.

I'd put it at 7 out of 10.

However, once again, DO NOT buy this game for the PC in its current state. Wait until it is SecureRom free.

Posted: **Mon Dec 29, 2008 5:51 pm**

(Cake, they finally solved the "Run/Jump" thing you hate about FPSs!)

I'm curious about this. What is this thing, and how did they solve it?

Posted: **Mon Dec 29, 2008 11:03 pm**

It's actually pretty simple. You just get tired.

However, the nice touch is your vision starts to blur, particularly around the corners. The screen even gets darker.

You also start to run slower and you can't jump as high or even at all.

You're also limited on what you can carry. You always have a machete, but your guns are handgun, primary, and secondary. The primary is typically a machine gun or sniper rifle or grenade launcher, while the secondary is a rocket launcher or dart rifle or some other big explosive thing.

They also limit ammo to real world amounts, but you can increase it by purchasing ammo belts. It never gets to ridiculous levels though and you're always looking for more ammo.

Posted: **Sun Jan 04, 2009 12:38 am**

Act 2 is quite a wake up call.

During Act 1 you're in the North and you get used to the fighting up there. Guys have machine guns, handguns, and the occasional sniper rifle. The assault trucks have M60s.

No big deal.

Act 2 moves you down to the South and the first area is similar. Then you hit the first mission and you realize everything has changed.

Now there are guys shooting rockets and grenades. Assault trucks have grenade launchers and machine guns that make the former ones look like cap guns.

I've quickly died a few times just raiding check points. In Act 1, raiding a check point usually meant taking a few shots, but never being in danger. Now I can't drive an assault truck around without worrying that a genade or rocket is going to hit me for the insta-kill.

To make matters worse, I have no friends to come bail me out in the south yet.

If I didn't mention, you have friends in the game who can give you missions and come bail you out when you die...but not always. If you get saved by a friend, who will show up to pick you up and fight alongside you in that particular skirmish, they won't be available again for a bit. I'm not sure what the counter is on that feature.

Posted: **Thu Jan 15, 2009 3:57 pm**

Beat it.

I love that this FPS was very, very long or at least could be played for a long time due to the number of locations and things to do.

After seeing the ending, I will say that the writing is piss poor. From the first scene going forward the story was doomed and the game being so large didn't help matters as you'd spend days doing things outside of the main story and completely forget who's who or what your motivation is supposed to be...I kid about that, but it's pretty accurate. (Hint: Next time, take a tip from the GTA series and put a working radio in the cars. Then you can further the story via it or simply remind the player that there is a story.)

There is a twist towards the end, but it really, really sucks. I say that because it's devoid of logic. You can tell that it was simply done for shock value. The problem is they had too many ingredients. Too many characters )allies, enemies, and neutral) that didn't stand out from one another. A lot of the later missions were of the "Take out this guy" variety and they were apparently supposed to shock you or something along those lines, but they don't.

Instead of receiving missions from both factions, gun dealers, antennas (no, I'm not kidding), and all of your allies, they should have cut that down to a manageable middle man or two and eliminated the majority of your allies. Instead, turn them into pseudo boss fights which would've helped with the pacing. I mean, they are mercenaries, right? Why are they there sitting in a bar instead of actually doing their jobs?

A single merc working alongside you throughout, or even just through the first half of the game, would've been far more effective.

Anyway, I still cannot recommend Far Cry 2 because of the ignoranr consumer hating spyware/malware that gets installed with any legally purchased copy, but I will say that if it wasn't for that, I'd recommend it to all FPS fans.

Posted: **Sun Jan 18, 2009 11:23 am**

Respawning is part of what I hated about Fable. Stupid missions of having to guide people through territory, and you tell them to stay, clear out a room, or even a whole series of rooms, and monsters still respawn and kill your vulnerable target.