There's a problem with this: Far Cry 2 encompasses realistic (i.e. lack of) travel, the chance of getting malaria and the struggle to find a cure, etc. These happen to be the things most often bemoaned about the game. There are three obstacles to including this kind of experience in games: one, games are meant to be fun, and this might not always be so amusing; two, how exactly would you express any of those moments in gameplay (not cutscene, gameplay), particularly the last two; three, in the current 'political correctness' climate you'd have to be extremely careful to avoid anything that could be construed as offensive or racist.
While I agree that the first one in particular would make an excellent game moment, I don't feel the lack of cultural experience a massive detriment to games. I daresay if it existed and was then suddenly removed, I'd feel its loss, but among the most interesting and involving games I've played have been those pretty much devoid of other characters.
There's Bioshock, populated only by cannon-fodder NPCs and yet evocative and eerie (at least until you get fed up of its gameplay, but whatever). In fact, a Bioshock without the omnipresence of Atlas and Tannenbaum and Fontaine would probably have been *better* - more emphasis on Rapture's ephemeral mystery, devoid of anything living and sane until at least half way through, and get rid of half the splicers and security cameras for god's sake. Piecing together the history of Rapture through discarded diary recordings, pictures and letters was, for me, the most interesting part of the entire game. Would this work quite so well for a deserted town in the southern reaches of China? Possibly. Probably not.
I do know that it's Bioshock's world that holds the interest. I wasn't really concerned with Jack's motivations or Bioshock's much-touted plot twist. Atlas had a pleasant-sounding accent but was merely the boring "go here do this" character, at least in-game. Sure, that changed with the twist, but I'd pretty much worked that out for myself by then, and after the twist the game dipped downhill quite sharply. In-game, Fontaine and Ryan were just dicks, regardless of their roles in the backstory. No, it was Rapture's history that held me, in a way that you can only get from a made-up 1960s underwater city. And, I guess, the culture of the 60s that influenced and shaped the environment, and was a major player in the ways Bioware made Rapture such an enthralling place to pretend to be in. I dunno. It could work in the real world, but only in certain places. Where those are, I don't know.
There's Portal, which contains a sum total of two characters, one of whom is mostly just a voice and the other of whom never speaks. (Interestingly, from what you see of her, Chell - the quiet portal-wielding protagonist - looks quite Oriental.) Portal's environment is neutral-grey and minimalistic, including nothing but what's necessary. There is no culture whatsoever, no enemies, no backstory aside from the barest hints, and no motivation given for Chell's test-centre incarceration. None is needed. Portal is a game at its most refined; slimlined, trimmed-down, innovative, ever-changing, with rising complexity and difficulty, and of course a healthy serving of its famous dark humour. In a way, it's like any of the games you'd find on Miniclip - there's no massive overarching plot arc, evil nemesis or anything else for TVTropes to feast on. It's just a lot slicker (and has much better graphics, obviously).
Then there's Doom 3: a place that omits cultural references almost entirely and yet manages to evoke Mars very well. Maybe we can just identify with the characters. It's like Bioshock in its own way; almost deserted, but populated by memories, these ones recorded in the form of emails. They have rivalries, friendships, annoyances, spam mail, the lot. Doom 3's protagonist, another nameless space marine who just kills demons in the dark, isn't what makes the game interesting, just like how I found Jack in Bioshock rather a nonentity of a protagonist (FPSs can be like that). When you think about it though, the characters could fit pretty much any cultural mould you wanted them to. Sure, I saw them as Brits, but that's because I'm British (Welsh to be precise). There's no religious references in the messages at all (besides the odd thing about satanic stuff, but that's plot-related, obviously) and no real cultural memes. I daresay you get spam mail anywhere you have the internet, whether it's in Tokyo, Taiwan, Texas or Timbuktu. (Doom is set in 2145 anyway. We're on Mars. I daresay the culture we know today would be very different by then.) You can identify with the characters no matter where you're from, I think.
*thinks of more games* Hmm...
I haven't started S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl yet, besides a brief testing period. From what I've heard and observed so far though, the deadness of Chernobyl has a sort of culture all of its own. How well this is realised and built up in the game though, I know not. What about The Suffering? That game gives you a little more idea of what it's like to be in prison - even though a lot of the prisoners are dead by now and there are daemons popping up everywhere. (What can I say, I like games where you can shoot daemons. Anyway, The Suffering's available legitimately free online, so I downloaded it the first chance I got.)
