TOGSolid said:Except that nothing about this game got even close to "horrifying me."
The game fell completely flat at trying to relay any sort of message. I never did buddy missions because they were a waste of time and frankly, as a mercenary character, had no reason to do them since I wasn't getting paid (a job worth doing, is a job worth getting paid for). Which just ties into my point that you're completely missing. The presentation SUCKED. You arrive at the beginning of the game under the assumption that you're a mercenary, doing jobs for money (in this case diamonds). Now already the game is in trouble because people are going to be playing this game (key word here, games really should avoid trying to be art because of problems exactly like this one) under the assumption that they are playing as a merc. This means an assumption of free will. Already the game has itself in trouble because of this. The aformentioned problem of "why do the buddy missions if I'm not being paid" crops here. Stacking a lack of narrative on top of all of this really didn't help itself.
Now the game started well, a fact I think most everyone will agree with even if the respawns were kind of annoying. The missions made sense, and the plot clipped along nicely. It wasn't until act 2 that everything went to shit. Being forced to work with the same people who just betrayed us with no line of reasoning? Being forced to sit through the Jackal's diatribe rather than just shooting the son of a *****? Once again, presentation is the entire problem with this game. The journal entries the character writes are hardly indicative of a person who's falling out of touch with humanity, etc. etc. He seemed pretty clear and down to business, which can only bring us to the alternative explanation of "the guy in Far Cry 2 is a moron." Good for you if you felt some great hipster emotional message from the game I guess, but I have to ask, why are you really the only one arguing this while everyone else just thinks the plot was a piece of shit?
And for the record, Halo is garbage and Silent Hill was about as psychologically jarring as watching butter melt. I still need to get around to playing SotC.
I'll save you some time: You won't like it.
Really, I hate when people state their opinion like it's a fact.