I've played Far Cry 2 for at least 5 hours now, played on hardcore (the second highest difficulty), so it's time to at least put in my first impressions, I haven't even got close to finishing it yet, so take everything I say here with that disclosure.
In many ways, Far Cry 2 is excellent, but Far Cry 2 also drops the ball in a significant way.
First, the ball dropping. One of the most important and amitious aims of Far Cry 2 was to create a completely open world FPS, and while there's an open world in the sense that there's a large (and beautiful) area to drive around in, it's not implemented in enough depth to be convincing as a world. What you'll find, to put it harshly, is a series of people who want to kill you separated by roads. Ostensibly this is in the middle of a civil war, but you'd be hard pressed to tell that because as you drive around you won't find anyone actually shooting at each other, and the main bases of each side co-exist peacefully in the same central town. There are no civilians, unless it's part of a mission. Outside of the main town, you will find men standing around at checkpoints who will try to shoot you, and if you see a car you can be sure that if the occupants will try to shoot you too. Basically, out in the world no one so far has had anything better to do than either give you a mission, sell you something or either stand or drive around aimlessly so they can try to kill you on sight. I've only done missions for one faction, so it's not like they both hate me. That faction claimed it's a secret I'm working for them, so even their people will try to kill me, but that makes no sense considering the introductory taxi ride where I wasn't killed on sight or the simple logic that they shouldn't want me to be massacring their men every time I drive around. It's just transparently stupid handwaving, really.
This annoyance is exacerbated by the fact that cars come along very frequently, and the enemies respawn at checkpoints minutes after you've turned you've left. Now sometimes it's a welcome diversion to come up to a hostile checkpoint and break up the journey by either getting out of the car to sneak up, scout it and swiftly take the enemies down or to tear through it at top speed as bullets riccochet off your car, but when every checkpoint is hostile and you just went through that sodding checkpoint minutes ago it gets grinding, frustrating and underscores the lack of depth in the game world.
Another area in which the lack of depth shows is the side quests. For example, you can do missions for arms dealers to unlock new weapons for sale. But these missions are so far always the same: find some arms convoy and blow it away. The convoy always has a couple of jeeps, one completely empty truck and it drives back and forth aimlessly in a small area until you arrive to dispatch it. At least the main quest missions are much better.
Far Cry 2 does many excellent things to maintain your immersion in your character, so another annoyance and baffling design decision is that all the dropped guns, ammo, medkits and other pickups have a helpful pulsing glow so you can see them easier. This is entirely unnecessary and highly damaging to the illusion of immersion. It's just plain stupid, and I could not find any way to turn it off.
All this sounds very negative, but Far Cry 2 is at heart a good game, even maybe a great game.
The gunplay is not quite at the level of CoD4 and Crysis, but it is still very fun and intense and explosive. Blowing things up is a blast, it's joyous to watch that explosion destroy flimsy buildings and shake the trees, starting fires that spread through the grass. The AI is excellent, albeit not perfect; all FPS AIs have some level of stupidity, but so far Far Cry 2's AI is among the least stupid FPS AIs I've seen. They are excellent at flanking you, and you'll have to keep a sharp eye out and know when to move to keep them from surrounding you.
The open world gives you a chance to approach objectives how you want, and it's great to play how you want to. Maybe you'll do a little scouting first so you can start the fight with a first well placed grenade and a few well placed bursts of fire on unsuspecting targets. Or maybe you'll go in at night with silenced weapons. Or pick people off with sniper shots. Or just barrel through the front gate and start raising hell with some explosions.
Sometimes it's just magic, like when I was tearing through the grass in an area of savanah at night in a jeep, following the red marker on my map showing a convoy with a man I had to kill, meeting the road as they passed, then leaping out to nail the jeep with the guy in it with the grenade launcher as he sped past me and off into the distance and then finishing off the escorts as they came back to kill me in the same fashion with a series of spectacular explosions in the dark, and then driving off leaving the ruined jeeps and smouldering grass.
The game has many great ideas for creating immersion. The camera remains in your characters POV as you move around, even when getting in and out of cars or moving around in the car. One mission had me threaten someone; the immersive effect of staying in your character's point of view when you pull out your machete and hold it to some guys throat is not to be understated. When you get badly hurt, you need to give yourself emergency first aid, and watching you pull a bullet out of yourself with a pair of pliers is wince inducingly intense. Weapons can be unreliable and found in various states of disrepair; don't be suprised when that rusty piece of shit AK you just picked up jams. When that happens, you have to mash reload, and you see your character struggling to clear the jammed round. This can be brilliantly tense when your gun jams at a crucial moment and you have to sprint and hide while trying to fix it. I wouldn't want every game to have weapons that jam, but in this game it really works.
So far, it also takes a view of morality that is refreshingly not black and white. You are stuck in a dirty conflict, surrounded by the corrupt and violent and you basically kill people for diamonds. When you kill people for diamonds, the game doesn't care about telling you they're bad and deserved it, or good and don't. Combine this with the immersiveness of staying in your characters point of view and I felt torn to find myself standing in front of someone who I know little about and who is unarmed and has his hands up and contemplating shooting him in the head. I've done worse in GTA, I suppose, but it was very different to do it while experiencing it as if through my own eyes than impersonally watching it over someones shoulder as they do it. The game also has buddies, fellow mercenaries, for you (and no, they don't want you to go bowling). You can easily get attatched to these guys, because if you get 'killed' you might find youself blacking out but then waking up to find one of your buddies dragging your injured arse to safety. But your buddies can be killed, too, and they are left rolling on the ground yelling in agony. You can fix them up with a syrette, but if you don't have one (or don't care to use one), you'll be confronted with the gut renching options of walking away leaving them to die in agony, or ending their pain.. by killing them. And the game goes on just fine without them if they die.
If Far Cry 2 had been able to create a world that was on even slightly on par with Morrowind or Oblivion in depth, it could have been an amazing game, but it just doesn't and it falls short. So far, I'd call it as being somewhere in the region of good to great.
Edit: Forgot to say, I'm playing the PC version.
In many ways, Far Cry 2 is excellent, but Far Cry 2 also drops the ball in a significant way.
First, the ball dropping. One of the most important and amitious aims of Far Cry 2 was to create a completely open world FPS, and while there's an open world in the sense that there's a large (and beautiful) area to drive around in, it's not implemented in enough depth to be convincing as a world. What you'll find, to put it harshly, is a series of people who want to kill you separated by roads. Ostensibly this is in the middle of a civil war, but you'd be hard pressed to tell that because as you drive around you won't find anyone actually shooting at each other, and the main bases of each side co-exist peacefully in the same central town. There are no civilians, unless it's part of a mission. Outside of the main town, you will find men standing around at checkpoints who will try to shoot you, and if you see a car you can be sure that if the occupants will try to shoot you too. Basically, out in the world no one so far has had anything better to do than either give you a mission, sell you something or either stand or drive around aimlessly so they can try to kill you on sight. I've only done missions for one faction, so it's not like they both hate me. That faction claimed it's a secret I'm working for them, so even their people will try to kill me, but that makes no sense considering the introductory taxi ride where I wasn't killed on sight or the simple logic that they shouldn't want me to be massacring their men every time I drive around. It's just transparently stupid handwaving, really.
This annoyance is exacerbated by the fact that cars come along very frequently, and the enemies respawn at checkpoints minutes after you've turned you've left. Now sometimes it's a welcome diversion to come up to a hostile checkpoint and break up the journey by either getting out of the car to sneak up, scout it and swiftly take the enemies down or to tear through it at top speed as bullets riccochet off your car, but when every checkpoint is hostile and you just went through that sodding checkpoint minutes ago it gets grinding, frustrating and underscores the lack of depth in the game world.
Another area in which the lack of depth shows is the side quests. For example, you can do missions for arms dealers to unlock new weapons for sale. But these missions are so far always the same: find some arms convoy and blow it away. The convoy always has a couple of jeeps, one completely empty truck and it drives back and forth aimlessly in a small area until you arrive to dispatch it. At least the main quest missions are much better.
Far Cry 2 does many excellent things to maintain your immersion in your character, so another annoyance and baffling design decision is that all the dropped guns, ammo, medkits and other pickups have a helpful pulsing glow so you can see them easier. This is entirely unnecessary and highly damaging to the illusion of immersion. It's just plain stupid, and I could not find any way to turn it off.
All this sounds very negative, but Far Cry 2 is at heart a good game, even maybe a great game.
The gunplay is not quite at the level of CoD4 and Crysis, but it is still very fun and intense and explosive. Blowing things up is a blast, it's joyous to watch that explosion destroy flimsy buildings and shake the trees, starting fires that spread through the grass. The AI is excellent, albeit not perfect; all FPS AIs have some level of stupidity, but so far Far Cry 2's AI is among the least stupid FPS AIs I've seen. They are excellent at flanking you, and you'll have to keep a sharp eye out and know when to move to keep them from surrounding you.
The open world gives you a chance to approach objectives how you want, and it's great to play how you want to. Maybe you'll do a little scouting first so you can start the fight with a first well placed grenade and a few well placed bursts of fire on unsuspecting targets. Or maybe you'll go in at night with silenced weapons. Or pick people off with sniper shots. Or just barrel through the front gate and start raising hell with some explosions.
Sometimes it's just magic, like when I was tearing through the grass in an area of savanah at night in a jeep, following the red marker on my map showing a convoy with a man I had to kill, meeting the road as they passed, then leaping out to nail the jeep with the guy in it with the grenade launcher as he sped past me and off into the distance and then finishing off the escorts as they came back to kill me in the same fashion with a series of spectacular explosions in the dark, and then driving off leaving the ruined jeeps and smouldering grass.
The game has many great ideas for creating immersion. The camera remains in your characters POV as you move around, even when getting in and out of cars or moving around in the car. One mission had me threaten someone; the immersive effect of staying in your character's point of view when you pull out your machete and hold it to some guys throat is not to be understated. When you get badly hurt, you need to give yourself emergency first aid, and watching you pull a bullet out of yourself with a pair of pliers is wince inducingly intense. Weapons can be unreliable and found in various states of disrepair; don't be suprised when that rusty piece of shit AK you just picked up jams. When that happens, you have to mash reload, and you see your character struggling to clear the jammed round. This can be brilliantly tense when your gun jams at a crucial moment and you have to sprint and hide while trying to fix it. I wouldn't want every game to have weapons that jam, but in this game it really works.
So far, it also takes a view of morality that is refreshingly not black and white. You are stuck in a dirty conflict, surrounded by the corrupt and violent and you basically kill people for diamonds. When you kill people for diamonds, the game doesn't care about telling you they're bad and deserved it, or good and don't. Combine this with the immersiveness of staying in your characters point of view and I felt torn to find myself standing in front of someone who I know little about and who is unarmed and has his hands up and contemplating shooting him in the head. I've done worse in GTA, I suppose, but it was very different to do it while experiencing it as if through my own eyes than impersonally watching it over someones shoulder as they do it. The game also has buddies, fellow mercenaries, for you (and no, they don't want you to go bowling). You can easily get attatched to these guys, because if you get 'killed' you might find youself blacking out but then waking up to find one of your buddies dragging your injured arse to safety. But your buddies can be killed, too, and they are left rolling on the ground yelling in agony. You can fix them up with a syrette, but if you don't have one (or don't care to use one), you'll be confronted with the gut renching options of walking away leaving them to die in agony, or ending their pain.. by killing them. And the game goes on just fine without them if they die.
If Far Cry 2 had been able to create a world that was on even slightly on par with Morrowind or Oblivion in depth, it could have been an amazing game, but it just doesn't and it falls short. So far, I'd call it as being somewhere in the region of good to great.
Edit: Forgot to say, I'm playing the PC version.
