Darkness62 said:
The first open world game? Where did you come up with that? It's certainly not the first. The breaks in reality are from trying to make the game more realistic? I think not, a shirtless guy taking a whole clip into the head and chest is not realistic. I do like how you say it's innovative and in the same paragraph how it borrows heavily from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. which is of course, a much better open world game despite it's flaws, whereas Far Cry 2 is a poor example of an open world world game because of it's flaws. I would also like to see an example of how Far Cry 2 adds an element of RPG to the FPS genre, I for one don't see it. Even S.T.A.L.K.E.R. had a very watered down RPG element, but certainly more than Far Cry was able to muster. Far Cry 2 is a console gamers FPS, nothing could save it. Too long, far to boring and only bringing one thing to the table did not help, fire was nice, but the novelty wore off quickly when faced with weak game play and monotonous quests. I have barely touched on the faked open world, which anyone who actually played the game knows, the game corrals you through set paths with unclimbable cliffs. Only to face a legion of suicidal NPCs in jeeps and completely unrealistic spawning checkpoints, sorry the smoke and mirrors did not fool me. The lack of civilians to me seems less of a political statement and more of a lazy developer unwilling to add another level to the gameplay to an already lackluster game, almost seems like Ubisoft themselves saw that the game was extremely weak and phoned the rest in, which would explain the poor ending. Think of what could have been done with civilians added, how it would change how you take objectives faced with collateral damage. It could have even added to the endings (I use the plural here loosely as Far Cry 2 did not really have multiple endings) creating multiple endings for how you handled situations with civilians involved. I'm sorry in no way other than fire is Far Cry 2 innovative, in fact it's not even good. I am glad you liked it, but to me, a PC gamer this console garbage can't be tolerated.
Could you please respond to things I actually said?
Far Cry 2 is the first open-world first-person shooter, not the first open-world game period. Games like
Fallout 3 and
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. do not qualify because the former is a role-playing game and the latter is not a truly open-world experience, created and designed that way from the ground-up; the game is broken up into very distinct segments and maps, and the plot progresses linearly from one to the next. You can spend time lingering in them and returning to previous ones, but the story does not really make use of the open world in any way.
I never said the lack of civilians was a political statement. It is somewhat justified by the fact that they are in hiding and only really visible before the war breaks out, inside Underground safehouses, etc. I agree that it was a mistake to turn the game into an "everything trying to kill you" sort of experience, and it was likely done because play-testers either did not want to or could not make the distinction between friend or foe in a shooter without distinctly having their weapons taken away to physically prevent them from firing. The same thing was done with the jeep patrols and bullet damage - play-testers didn't think that there was enough action, and that the enemies died too quickly. However, I don't think it ruins the game... and you have to remember that the highbrow PC gamer who can appreciate the subtleties of a more complex game is not the target market for this title.
And yes, it is a console title from the ground up. I am a PC gamer, not a console gamer (if you'd bother to read any of my other posts I think that that is fairly obvious). The interface, the field of view, the awkward mouse aiming, these are all blemishes on what I think is a great title. The fact of the matter, though, is these blemishes do not ruin the game, and I think its successes - creating a living and breathing natural world to explore and inviting player experimentation, exploration and tactical versatility - outweigh those issues. I objected the same way you did when I first played it, feeling like I had been cheated because the game felt like a console title. Then I got over it and had a lot of fun anyway. Your attacks towards it seem a lot more like niggling technical complaints over the PC conversion than any sort of genuine arguments about the game's design - which, in case you had not noticed, is what we are discussing, and what I was praising, not the somewhat rushed and lazy PC version which I think could have been a lot better with minimal effort, but frankly I find it hard to knock Ubisoft as a whole too hard because usually these issues arise due to rushed development schedules, lack of necessary funding, etc. rather than any malicious intent on behalf of the developers. When you've got a month left to bring the game out, would you rather spend that time fixing the interface, or game-breaking bugs across all platforms? Furthermore, there are absolutely some design decisions that are a result of multi-platform development, but take that up with the Ubisoft executives, not the developers. It's a sad reflection on the state of the industry, that the emphasis on console development comes at the expense of truly high-quality PC versions, but
Far Cry 2 shines despite that and the developers definitely would have improved the state of the game if they had the time to. Being able to spend five years bringing a game to perfection is not the rule, it is the incredible exception.
In any case, I find your "fuck you console 'tard" attitude to be discouraging, to say the least; my ire was pointed at those who beg for innovation and freshness only to object when they receive it, not people whose choice of gaming platform is apparently a direct result of a deficit of grey matter. I always thought most PC gamers were pretty reasonable people, but apparently there's just as many blithering idiots among them. Ah well, another day, another brick out of the pillar of my faith in humanity.
