Far Cry 2
Tuesday 16th December, 2008 @ 02:08
It’s been a frantic few months at work and with doing lots of different stuff outside of work (helping lead worship at church, helping lead an Alpha group and rock-climbing) but on my time at home, when I’ve shunned the invitation of a £4 pint (South-East London, you are awesome but you are expensive 
) I’ve found some time to unwind with some of this seasons great games.
My most recent addition was Far Cry 2. It’s available for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.
The following video gives you a nice feeling for the combat and some gameplay without any real spoilers:
As you have seen Far Cry 2 is absolutely stunning, the video really doesn’t do it justice. When you see the shadows cast by the branches of the trees, the beams of light through mist or your first sunset you will truly be amazed. It’s definitely the most visually attractive game I’ve played and this level of polish is consistent throughout the game. The voice acting is pretty good, the weapons sound meaty, satisfying and realistic and the open “world” is spacious yet varied. The best thing about Far Cry 2 though that it actually plays well on reasonable hardware unlike some other beautiful games we could mention. My machine hasn’t been upgraded for a year and a half and it still was the best looking game I’ve ever played. Obviously it’s not going to run on your Pentium III but if you have a reasonably decent machine or a console be prepared for a treat.
Something that really adds to Far Cry 2’s immersion is that you are always kept in first person, regardless of what you character is doing. You can see this used to great effect with the healing animations video below:
If you’ll excuse the clichéd simile, computer games are much like women. When they are excessively attractive (like my better half) that may initially pique your interest. However, if they are boring or no fun then it’s game-over (unlike my better half). Far Cry 2 is a beautiful woman but not one that will appeal to all those who admire her on looks alone. As I keep saying, it really is gorgeous but it’s gameplay is perhaps not what you might expect from a very mainstream shooter (like COD4 or Half-Life 2). Although it is filled almost wholly with action (don’t expect any deep RPG-style interaction here or a dynamic “quest”) it allows the player a large degree of freedom in choosing what to do at any current time. Want to avoid the enemies? Take a boat down the river or go diamond hunting. Want to get around quickly without any interaction? Take a bus. Want to just blow stuff up? Take an assassination mission. Want to get a better selection of weapons? Take an arms dealer mission. True, most of the missions involve blowing stuff up, capturing things and then killing the guards before they kill you but this is countered by the to travel between missions and and exploration whilst diamond hunting.
This may sound like a repetitive game and, to an extent, it is. Despite this, I can’t personally recall ever being bored as I was free to just chose to stop doing anything I didn’t feel like at the time as almost nothing is time-critical. This isn’t a game for RPG/RTS types; it isn’t particularly cerebral, the story is decent enough but not as strongly driven as I’d perhaps have liked through the main missions. The buddy characters you’ll meet introduce some nice gameplay elements and add a bit of diversity through their random assignment (you’ll get different buddies on each playthrough). I would that even with the above downers this is the best straight-FPS game I’ve seen since Half-Life 2 and its Episodes.
If you are at all into FPS games or ever have been I strongly recommend picking up a copy and giving Far Cry 2 a shot. I bought it for <£30 and played it for 30 hours before completion and then immediately started another playthrough. It’s now available on Amazon for just £17
Let me know what you think!
Posted in Computer Games
