Far Cry 2
I finally finished Far Cry 2 by powering through over the weekend. It was a satisfying experience, although the endgame section frustrated me to no end. And like a lot of games these days, it didn’t seem like the end plot was very well thought out and I had lost interest in the story because it took too long to develop. It dulled a little bit of my appreciation of the game. Like espion4ge, I’m excited to move on to a new title though!

Halo Wars
The first thing I tried to do when I got my Xbox back was to finish up the Halo Wars campaign, but I got sidetracked by multiplayer. I finally finished the campaign on co-op, netting the OMG BFF FTW achievement (best name ever) and then I started playing a lot of multiplayer. I’m getting really into it, even though the game is pretty simple I am finding it a lot of fun. espion4ge and I have been playing some 2v2s but we’ve also tried 3v3s with other friends and I’ve tried a few 1v1s. I like the counter-heavy gameplay that Halo Wars encourages. There probably are some balance issues that need tweaking, but we’ll talk about that in our review later this week!

Street Fighter IV
I tried to pick this up again but now I’m even worse than I was before. So it looks like I either need to start putting in some serious practice or I need to move on and accept that I am not “IN. DE. STRUCTIBLE.”

Retro Game Challenge (DS)
I finished all of the Guadia Quest challenges, so I only have one game left to finish. Man, I forgot how annoying it was grinding in old school RPGs, and how frustrating the dungeon design could be. There was this one section where you would like fall through the floor and then you had to work your way back up. I just wanted to throw my DS out the window. This entire game really harkens back to the NES days when you only got one or two games a year and had to make the most of them.

Dead Space
A friend of mine just sent me his copy, so now I feel compelled to play it, but I don’t know if I can handle the scare factor! Why must I be such a chicken?

As I’ve stated before, Far Cry 2 was a title that not too many people heard about last year. Generally, a title that has sold 1 million copies doesn’t qualify to be under the radar, but I think this is a game that a lot of people skipped in favor of a lot of the other big titles that dropped last fall. The game was developed by Ubisoft Montreal, known for Assassin’s Creed and the Prince of Persia series, and published by Ubisoft. Due to…technical issues…I haven’t finished the game, but I finished Act II and have been playing for over 25 hours. I figured I’d write a review while the game was still fresh in my head, and also since I have a lot more free time on my hands. Some people have heralded Far Cry 2 as the next step in first person shooters, while others have been bored by its repetitive gameplay. For what it’s worth, I think it’s a little of both, and I am actually pretty bummed that I didn’t get to finish the game this week as I had planned to, because the story was getting pretty interesting. The best laid plans of mice and men… Hit the jump for the full review.

The Good
- Open world, sandbox nature of the game lets you choose your own adventure
- Gunplay feels realistic and planning/executing attacks is a lot of fun
- Beautiful graphics make you believe you are in Africa

The Bad
- Gameplay can get repetitive, especially since everyone shoots at you
- AI companions can act incredibly stupidly
- Presence of glitches can detract from the fun and immersion

1. Intro
2. Storyline and Premise
3. Gameplay Mechanics
4. Achievement System
5. Final Thoughts

Intro
The original Far Cry, released in 2004, was incredibly well received. It was released on Windows originally but was re-released on the last generation of consoles as Far Cry Instincts. Crytek, the original developer, is no longer involved with Far Cry but Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the “true sequel” to Far Cry. The funny thing is, there are very few similarities between the games except for the fact that they are both first person shooters taking place in far away lands. In many ways, Far Cry 2 is a re-imagining of the first person shooting genre. Generally, first person shooters just have you progress through various “levels” and move through them in a certain order. Far Cry 2, on the other hand, literally dumps you in the middle of a huge civil war in Africa and leaves you to your own devices.

A few towns in Far Cry 2 have shaky cease fire truces. This is not one of those towns

Storyline and Premise
Far Cry 2 is set in a fictional African country where two rival factions, the UFLL and the APR, are in an intense civil war. It is a world where there are no rules of engagement, civilians (the few that are left) are not safe and gunfire is commonplace. There are only a few safe zones in the entire game, three towns where the rival factions have declared a shaky truce. For the most part, the world of Far Cry 2 is a dangerous place; don’t leave your safehouse unarmed.

Facilitating the conflict is a man known only as The Jackal. He is an amoral mystery with questionable motives. Only two things are for sure. First, The Jackal is the supplier of all of the weapons that are perpetuating the conflict, thus his profits are directly tied to the country’s body count. Secondly, you have only one mission: to eliminate The Jackal.

“You” are Far Cry Dude, any one of 12 mercenaries whom you choose from at the beginning of the game. It doesn’t really matter who you choose – all it determines is whose voice you won’t hear (your own). You will meet the other 11 mercenaries throughout the course of the game and become mercenary buddies.

The game starts much like Call of Duty 4: you are riding in a car and taking in your surroundings, making for a breathtaking introduction to the world you are entering. After that, it’s pretty different. You contract malaria within minutes, all hell breaks lose, and before you know it you are face to face with The Jackal himself! For some reason he lets you live, and then the game sets you free in the world to do as you like.

The freedom Far Cry 2 gives you is what sets it apart from other first person shooters. You are given a map, which shows you the available missions, and a pistol. That’s it. You can do whatever missions you want in whatever order you want. To advance the story, you need to do some work for either the UFLL or the APR (or both, if you’d like), but that is the only thing you have to do. It really is a lot like Grand Theft Auto IV, your character is morally ambiguous at best (Far Cry Dude is a mercenary, so he’ll kill for whoever pays), and you have the freedom to undertake side missions or to just plow through the main plot. The game doesn’t offer the same variety as GTAIV, but you still have options. There is definitely a lot of gameplay to be had for those who are interested.

Blowing up stuff looks amazing, and enemies recognize fire as a secondary threat which can distract them

Gameplay Mechanics
So Far Cry 2 is an open world first person shooter. What does that mean for gameplay? There are 5 different types of missions. There are main story missions which are offered by the two fighting factions. There are missions where you hit weapons convoys to unlock new weapons for you to use in the rest of the game. Then there are assassination missions that you receive from cell phone towers, and you can also take optional side missions that your mercenary buddies offer you. Finally, there are some good will missions you can do. In order to get medicine for your malaria, you deliver travel documents to refugees trying to escape the country who give you medicine in return.

Really, that is the only good you do in the country. The game doesn’t seem as outwardly dark or gruesome as titles such as GTA or Gears of War 2, but if you start thinking about it, Far Cry 2 can be disturbing. You are a mercenary who will kill whoever and blow up whatever for diamonds, the only currency that matters. In fact, almost all of the missions boil down to that, making the gameplay a little repetitive. For every main story mission, one of your mercenary buddies gives you the option to “subvert” the mission, which involves you killing someone extra or finding a parcel before you complete the main mission. This doesn’t really do much to offer variety, which is unfortunate because it could have been so much more. Another problem with the game is that it’s tough to tell what effect your “subverting” the mission has aside from furthering your mercenary buddies selfish needs.

You meet your mercenary buddies throughout the game, and they can be pretty useful. If you ever get knocked down in a fight, one of your buddies comes to save you and stays by your side to fight with you until that particular battle is over. After you are saved once you have to wait awhile for your buddy to become “rescue ready” again. I found myself actually getting a little attached to my buddies (selfish money grubbing people that they are). One achievement requires you to ease your buddies passing (basically, watch them die). It’s pretty heavy stuff. Considering the minimalist dialogue in the game, that’s pretty impressive.

If only your buddies were a little smarter. Sometimes they will just stand around in one place and get themselves killed. Other times after I meet up with a buddy, I lose them in the African savannah! I wish the AI had been designed a little bit better. All in all though, your buddies are quite helpful and make Africa a little less…lonely?

The actual first person shooting aspect of the game is pretty solid. The guns feel good, although eventually they rust and begin to jam. This gives the game a very realistic feel and make the guns feel realistic as well. The recoil on the different guns is very unique. There is definitely a set of weapons I enjoy using, and you can only carry three weapons at a time (plus a machete). The fun part of the game is planning out your attacks. I mentioned that the game’s missions are pretty repetitive, but what makes them fun is planning how you are going to go about them.

You can always just run in guns blazing, but sometimes I like to stay on the outskirts and snipe, or blow up something important, or throw a molotov to distract them, etc. It keeps the gameplay fresh if you are willing to try and I found it pretty worthwhile to experiment. The nice thing is, if you’re in trouble you can just try to grab a car and get away. There are cars strewn across the landscape, and they all come equipped with GPS to get you where you need to go. The map you carry is more reliable though, because it shows the big picture, and it can be fun to drive with your map out because you have to keep looking down at your map and then up at the road. I find it amusing because it’s how I drive in real life with a map. Don’t try that at home, kids.

Hang gliders give you a bird’s eye view of the action, and can help you get to some unreachable diamond cases

Achievement System
The achievements in the game are pretty balanced, but it’s tough to get the full 1000. This is because 360 of the gamerpoints are distributed amongst multiplayer achievements, and one of the achievements requires you to rank up to level 20, which can take a long time. I never even got a chance to check out the multiplayer. I was going to give it a whirl before writing this review, but RRoD prevented that and I decided that the single player was enough for me for this game. For those looking for thoughts on the multiplayer suite, I apologize.

The single player achievements are pretty fair for the most part. There are your standard story based achievements, achievements associated with trying all the different mission types, and achievements for completing all of a certain type of mission. And then of course, there are the collect-a-thons. One actually is very enjoyable. Over the course of your travels you keep running into a journalist named Reuben, who conducted a long interview with The Jackal, your target. You need to find the 18 “Jackal Tapes” scattered around the country which contains all the audio from the interview. It’s a pretty interesting listen and fleshes out the character a bit more.

The other collect-a-thon involves 221 cases full of diamonds literally strewn across the map. They wouldn’t be hard, except some are in places that are impossible to reach without a hang glider. So first you need to find the diamond case, then you need to determine if it is impossible to reach, then you need to find the hang glider, and then you need to hope you aim the glider correctly. Compounding the frustration is the fact that there is no quicksave, you always need to save in a safehouse. Ubisoft seems to love these, as there were the flags in Assassin’s Creed as well. Why!? It certainly does not make the game more fun. But I digress…

For all of its faults, the beautiful Far Cry 2 deserves a shot

Final Thoughts
Overall, Far Cry 2 offers a lengthy and enjoyable single player campaign. I really enjoyed just driving around, looking at the wildlife and the amazingly rendered grass and trees, and blowing up things to soak in the well done fire effects. It definitely is held back by glitches though, graphical and otherwise. The one I ran into the most was the fact that safehouses wouldn’t always unlock after I killed the people protecting them. I’ve also read that people’s saves have been corrupted, and there are other weird glitches too. At one point I was talking to a character who was inside a building, but for some reason the door to that building wouldn’t open. The character, however, was talking to me as if I was standing right in front of him.

I give the game a solid B. I would give it a higher grade, but I don’t think Far Cry 2 is for everyone. You really need to be patient to enjoy this game, it’s not a non-stop rollercoaster ride like other first person shooters. Still, I recommend that people check it out, at least as a rental. The story was good enough to leave a big impression on me. The lasting thought Far Cry 2 leaves me with is just the feeling that civil war in Africa is horrible, and evil people benefit from it. I wish in some respects that Far Cry Dude had been a little more moral, but I guess I can’t expect too much of a mercenary. At least he doesn’t fist bump his buddies every time he kills someone.

I hope other developers take notice of what Ubisoft Montreal did with Far Cry 2. Though their product isn’t perfect by any means, the open world first person shooter really has a lot of potential. They also could have done a lot more exploring the moral aspects of the civil war and mercenaries in general, I thought the narrative could have been a lot more interesting. I hope to see more games like this in the future. It probably would be good for the industry, and it definitely would be good for serious gamers.

I booted up the last mission of Halo Wars Sunday night, planning to cap off a fun week in gaming with a triumphant victory over the Covenant and Flood. After being treated to an exciting cut scene introducing the mission, my friend and I were prepared to finish the fight. But really, a picture is worth a thousand words. I should have taken the picture with my new phone, which I needed to get because my phone got run over by a car yesterday. All in all, not a good weekend for me and technology. Hit the jump for my thoughts on Far Cry 2, Halo Wars, Street Fighter IV, and Retro Game Challenge (DS)!

Far Cry 2
This game occupied the majority of my time this week. I’ve unlocked all of the weapons and now just need to collect enough diamonds to buy all of them. I’m coming up on the endgame and it seems like this entire African country is spiraling out of control with me at the center of the vortex. It’s pretty awesome. I am getting a little tired of shooting every single person I see driving on the street, but in this game I’ve learned that it’s better them than me. The biggest thing I’d like for the game’s ending to resolve is this: Am I a good guy or a bad guy? Right now I really have no idea.

Halo Wars
One more mission to go (that will have to wait a few weeks). Also got destroyed in a 2v2 map the other day which was pretty fun. It’s good to know that one basic technique (which my partner and I were trying to execute) will not always win the day, we lost because we didn’t adapt fast enough and the enemy did a good job of recovering quickly from our attacks. I am enjoying this game a lot, but the little things really are piling up to annoy me. There is yet another achievement that is incredibly difficult solely because units will not move without attacking. Oh yea, and for some reason units were never taught by their mothers to walk in a straight line. I guess that’s what happens when you are the product of genetic modification, but what excuse do non-Spartans have?

Street Fighter IV
I have been trying to improve my game online, and met with a pretty steep learning curve. I’ve decided that Akuma’s ultra is pretty much useless because you can’t combo into it, so I need to find myself a new character. But who!? For those interested in continuing the nitpicking SFIV theme, feel free to check this out.It’s written by the guy who put a lot of work into balancing HD Remix. It’s interesting stuff, though some of it is a bit over my head.

Haggleman is the side scrolling beat em up you never remember playing

Retro Game Challenge (DS)
I’ve been hearing a lot about this game on various podcasts and sites and finally decided to pick it up. I tried to get it at Best Buy and then Target, but those stores seem more interested in selling Hannah Montana and Hillary Duff games, which made me kind of sad. At Target, half the display case featured games with different shades of pink on their cases. It boggles my mind to see the audience that Nintendo caters to these days (Wii too). I’m not hating, it’s just shocking for someone who grew up in a time when games were for nerds.

Speaking of those times, Retro Game Challenge is a throwback to simpler times. It is a compilation of 8 “classic” 8-bit games, which are classic in the sense that they are all knockoffs of previous games even though they’ve been built from the ground up. You progress through the main game by beating various challenges in the “classic” games, which unlocks them for freeplay. There are so many things I am enjoying about this game that I think I will write some brief impressions on it and maybe even a review down the road. So far I’ve played through Cosmic Gate (Galaga clone) and Haggleman (side scrolling beat-em up). I’m about to start Rally King, the token racing game. I am excited to see the RPG they come up with (I think it’s the 7th game you unlock), I still remember playing the original Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior) on the NES and instantly falling in love. A slime appears!

Halo Wars – Grabbed this on launch day and have been working with a friend on playing through on Heroic difficulty co-op (guess I’m used to playing RTS co-op now). We were doing fine until Mission 6 when the Covenant sent us straight back to Harvest. I was so upset I ended up beating it on my own, but it took me twice the “par” time for the map. I don’t know if I just stink at the game or the mission is unfair. Impressions on the game so far will be up this week. Teaser: Mixed bag.

Street Fighter IV - Finally beat Seth with every single character on medium. It felt more like work than fun, and it didn’t really help me get too much better at the game. I plan on spending all my time with the game online for a week or so, hoping to learn some new tricks to take back to the challenge modes.

Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 – Played this a little over the weekend to pick up some more achievements. Slowly working my way to 1000, but it’s gonna be a bit of a grind. The end of the final campaign was pretty fun, overall I definitely got my money’s worth out of this game. I’m curious as to how it plays online, espion4ge and I might try later this week.

Far Cry 2 – Playing through the back half of the game, still enjoying myself quite a bit. I’m starting to get some better weapons too so that makes everything fun. Also, the second half of the world map feels a lot different from the first half, which I think is a great design choice. More people should have tried this game! It’s not too late…

Street Fighter IV – I’ve been working my way through medium difficulty, trying to unlock the “Storied Reputation” achievement. I can’t say it’s tons of fun, but I do have a good handle on how to deal with Seth now. Unfortunately, that’s not really helping me with online play. I haven’t won a single match against my buddy LargeLobster yet. I need a sensei…

Far Cry 2 – I finished the first act of the game and moved into the southern part of the game world, which means I need to wander around finding/collecting things again (even though I’ve given up on collecting all the diamonds, there are other smaller things to collect that I want to do). I have to say, the story is picking up – the transition from Act I to Act II was pretty heavy. I’m really enjoying this game.

Guitar Hero World Tour – I finally finished my last band career. Having a bass career is kind of lame, even though some of the bass lines are pretty difficult. I gotta say, the game actually was a lot more fun on my second run through (when I wasn’t playing it in the wake of Rock Band 2). Go figure.

Left 4 Dead – Got some Versus play in with some buddies. Still can’t drop this game yet, probably the best 40 dollars I’ve spent in a long while.

Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 – espion4ge and I are almost done with the final campaign. I don’t know if it’s because the Japanese require more micromanaging, or because they have the most difficult campaign, but we’ve come across some pretty hard missions. We’re trying to finish the last two missions before Halo Wars comes out tomorrow, but if the last few missions we’ve played are any indication, we might not make our self-imposed deadline. I’m pretty curious to see how Halo Wars ends up playing, since everything I’m reading says it’s too simple. RA3 is not, so I wonder if Halo Wars will feel even more dumbed down for me.

Last fall was a huge season for gamers. A bunch of huge titles hit the stores, including (but not limited to) Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Fallout 3, Dead Space, Mirror’s Edge, etc. With the huge glut of titles, most gamers didn’t get to play all the big titles, and a lot of smaller titles went completely unnoticed. One such title that I always wanted to try out was Far Cry 2 developed by Ubisoft Montreal. It is now almost March and I finally got to start it even though it was released last October! Hit the jump for my initial impressions of the game.

I honestly know very little about the original Far Cry (I’ll do some research before I post a review in a week or two), so I won’t even pretend to possess any knowledge about that. Far Cry 2 has a new lead character and a new setting anyway so it really doesn’t matter. It is set in a fictional country in Africa that is rife with armed conflict between various warring factions. Your character, who you get to choose at the beginning of the game, has been sent by powers unknown to kill The Jackal, the arms dealer who has armed both sides of the conflict (thus perpetuating the war).

Far Cry 2 has been labelled by some as a sort of revolution for first person shooters – being an “open world” first person shooter. I’m not sure if it’s a revolution, but the open world description is pretty accurate. After an opening scene that feels a bit like Call of Duty 4 and a brief tutorial mission, the game basically says to you, “go and do whatever you want to do, find the Jackal, and kill him.” It really is quite liberating! Of course, it’s not like you can just find the Jackal’s hideout and kill him and end the game in 30 minutes (it’s not THAT open).

The way the game handles missions is through your map. When you check it, exclamation marks appear over places where you can get missions. Missions can be side missions, which net you diamonds (cash) or access to new weapons, or they can be main missions, which advance the story. Eventually, the story gets to a point where you need to move into the southern section of the country, which is basically a new location with all new side missions and story missions. You can do anything in whatever order you want. It’s kind of like Grand Theft Auto IV, but from a first person perspective, and with much better controls. Also, Africa and Liberty City feel incredibly different, for obvious reasons.

So far, I think I’m only about 20% through the campaign, but that’s not for lack of time. I’ve been spending a lot of time doing the side missions and I’ve finished every single side mission in the northern region. I haven’t decided whether I am going to get all the diamond cases or not (collect-a-thon), but since I’ve been so distracted by Street Fighter I’ll probably pass. That looks like enough background, so on to what I like/don’t like.

What I Like So Far
It Feels Very Realistic
I’m at a bit of loss as to how to actually describe this, but I think it’s what I like most about the game. It’s authentic. People have complained about how your guns jam and stuff, but I actually like that. The guns have a great feel to them, the recoil feels legitimate and you can feel the difference between powerful guns and weaker ones. It kind of reminds me of how I felt with the gunplay in Call of Duty 4.

In addition to that, all the cars handle pretty realistically, especially on different terrains. It seems like they got the physics right: if you fly off an embankment into a semi ditch, you don’t automatically clear it – gravity points you downwards and a lot of times you just snowplow into the ditch and get stuck. It can be annoying but it reminds me to drive carefully. Also, since it’s all in first person, when I’m reversing I need to “look over my shoulder” and stuff, so it just feels right. This may sounds very abstract, but I don’t know how else to explain it. There is just a lot of attention to detail that makes the gameplay fun. For example, when you pull out your map, it’s an actual map so that changes your sight lines (you can’t read your map and really see where you’re walking very well).

Far Cry 2 is a beautiful looking game

The Setting and Graphics are Impressive
I have to hand it to Ubisoft Montreal: the Africa they have designed looks amazing. Sometimes I am just driving around and I kind of just look left and right to observe the wildlife. It’s cool to be driving alongside a bunch of galloping zebras (though running into them causes considerable…damage). There are three distinct environments that I’ve seen so far, dry grassland, rainforest, and desert. Each looks pretty unique and all three are stunning in their own way. The water in the game (of which there is a considerable amount) has the right amount of murkiness and the town looks dingy and broken down (in a good way).

A lot of people have been praising the fire effects as well, for good reason. When you light up dry brush, the fire takes on a life of its own and spreads according to the wind patterns. Fire burns almost everything, and gives enemies an extra threat to deal with. Even car explosions sometimes cause small brush fires that you can get caught up in if you’re not careful. It is a little unrealistic that the fires put themselves out, but I guess the game isn’t about burning down all of Africa so it’s forgivable.

Freedom Fighting
I do enjoy the freedom of doing whatever I want at whatever pace I want in the general mission structure. This extends to how you want to handle missions tactically. You can go in guns blazing, you can snipe from distance, you can sneak kill, or you can blow everything up. You have a limited amount of ammunition, so it is important to make smart choices and be accurate. Even at the normal difficulty level I find myself hunting for ammo in the middle of a firefight, and at the harder difficulty levels ammo is even more scarce. You can always pick up an enemy’s gun, but those are liable to jam.

In one mission I had to kill someone in a moving vehicle, which turned into a thrilling car chase on the African Savannah. The game doesn’t feature any checkpoints and I hadn’t been to a safehouse for a while so it was pretty stressful. Luckily, I managed to ram the guy enough to slow his car down and then I quickly switched to my jeep’s mounted gun and got enough shots into the other jeep to cause it to crash. It was as thrilling as it sounds!

What I’m Not So Sure About
Repetitive Mission Structure
Every mission boils down to “kill a bunch of guys” or “kill one guy who is protected by a bunch of guys.” While it can be fun to experiment, it can sometimes get boring. The fact that I don’t get incredibly bored is really a testament to the gameplay, but I can see how things could wear on people.

The Little Things Slow You Down
Adding to the annoyance of repetitive mission structure are all the little things the game throws at you to slow you down. People in the African jungle don’t drive by, they DRIVEBY. Which means everyone you pass on the road tries to ram you off of it or shoot you, which can get annoying. Since there is no fast travel system, you are always due one or two encounters as you try to get to your destination. There are buses that let you warp from area to area, but there are 9 areas in the northern section and only 5 bus stops so they don’t cover everything. The game is good about providing vehicles and unlimited firepower on those vehicles which make encounters with random bad guys easy to overcome, but it’s like swatting mosquitos away constantly (African rainforest metaphor!).

You also are infected with malaria at the start of the game, which makes you prone to bouts of dizziness. I don’t mind these so much, it’s just tough to take cover to take my medicine in the middle of a firefight.

The Diamond Case Collectathon
I started the game thinking I would get all 221 diamond cases, but I give up. Since I run into enemies all over the place, it’s too annoying. Achievement Locked.

Parting Thoughts
Overall, I’m really enjoying this game. Now that I’ve finished all the side missions in the northern zone, I’m looking forward to advancing the story again. I’ll admit I’ve been distracted lately, but hopefully I can finish this game in a few weeks. I’ll have an indepth review up then. Until then, if you’re stuck in the winter doldrums of gaming and aren’t gonna pick up Street Fighter IV or Halo Wars, you might want to consider picking this game up, especially since it seems to be on sale for 30 dollars every week. Africa needs you!