Far Cry 3 Review
- Thread starter WMDogma
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I hate all of you who thinks Far Cry 2 was a bad game.
Everything in this game looks like an improvement, only thing that's really sad to see go is the organic interface of Far Cry 2. Pausing the game to look at maps only reminds you it's a game. Pretty much everything in Far Cry 2 was done in first person, it never took you out of the experience, and I wish more games would learn from that. It's the same kind of cool as Dead Space's holographic menus popping out of Isaac's suit.
Everything in this game looks like an improvement, only thing that's really sad to see go is the organic interface of Far Cry 2. Pausing the game to look at maps only reminds you it's a game. Pretty much everything in Far Cry 2 was done in first person, it never took you out of the experience, and I wish more games would learn from that. It's the same kind of cool as Dead Space's holographic menus popping out of Isaac's suit.
While I haven't played Far Cry 2, it does sound like stealth isn't really a means to an end in the series. If you're assaulting a compound, the odds are you won't be able to eliminate every single person without being seen. It's more about plotting a strike, sneaking deep into enemy territory, and unleashing the whirlwind after a few sneaky kills... or fucking up and having to improvise like mad.JoesshittyOs said:
Stealth in the original Far Cry (and non-stealth suit stealth in Crysis) is and has always been really tough. It's one of the few game series that doesn't bend over backwards to make stealth super-easy for you to do. In most games, you can crouch move through bushes unseen, which in reality looks like something moving through bushes unless you move really, really slowly which is why real-life snipers move slower than snails in such terrain.
I keep meaning to check out Far Cry 2, because I love the openness of the combat in the Cry games. At its best, it's about using stealth when stealth is useful, and blowing shit up when you've achieved the upper hand. Pure stealth is insanely hard to do and frontal assaults tend to be suicidal, so the game forces you to think through situations instead of relying on one or two basic tactics. Do you stealth your way to a powerful stationary gun? Do you Predator your way around the outer defences before launching an assault? Do you sneak in and use their defensive positions as cover to launch a run-and-gun assault? Do you muscle your way in through the front door in a vehicle?
Argh, why did I watch this review? I'm trying to cut down on my spending when it comes to games... You're not helping!
From the video it looks like FC3 was made by ripping off game-play concepts and mechanics from other AAA title. It feels like something in between Fallout, Borderland and the original FarCry.
I still want those crazy Zombie-mutant-gorrilla-things from the original game...
I still want those crazy Zombie-mutant-gorrilla-things from the original game...
My biggest pet peeve with Far Cry 2 was the voice recording. It's like they told the actors to disregard periods, commas, and pauses all together. Were they trying to rush through the dialog or what?
I read that as "It's basically sex with even more powerful orgasms?!Monsterfurby said:
"Any game that is like Just Cause 2 makes me very happy.
I'd like to hear what was broken and shit. The respawning checkpoints, sure, bad design. But you were never forced to fight them. A lot of the problems people have with Far Cry 2 stems from the game not telling you the rules of the game. How the AI will react, how close is too close when sneaking outside tall grass, that gunshots will make nearby checkpoints send out search teams. I haven't encountered a single thing that was broken other than occassional AI hiccups.Dogstile said:
Shit: Story was terrible. Malaria was a bad mechanic because it took to long to deal with due to travel times being excessive even with the fast travel points. Your "friends" were almost useless in an actual fight, bullet sponging was the best use. You didn't see a single friendly character outside of the villages aside from your friends, which made the world seem empty. Even the factions you were trying to help would try to kill you, which was annoying as all fuck even if (terribly) explained.HaraDaya said:
Oh, the diamond system was stupid too. I'm glad you didn't need to upgrade your guns all that much, because searching for diamonds so I could have fun wasn't cool. It turned it into a grind. I realise there were ways to make it less of a grind, but it was still a grind if you wanted a lot of gear.
Broken: Stealth. Yes it was broken, it took enemies all of two seconds to spot you 300 meters away in a bush with a rifle. The AI had no real search mechanics. I know they tried the whole "react to sound" thing but it just meant that if you fired a gun within earshot, they'd instantly know where you are, rather than the general area. Its not like creeping up on them worked either. Silenced weapons were barely any better because the second they find a body they know where you are again aside from very rare occasions.
Fire: Dynamic my arse. Throw molotov, watch as the fire spreads in a perfect circle and then stops. Totally dynamic guys, real dynamic fire totally behaves like that.
Checkpoints: You've mentioned the checkpoints which are one of the most annoying aspects, but you say you were never forced to fight them, which quite frankly isn't true. You can drive as fast as you want, they'll follow firing their mounted gun at you, getting the AI to send out more search teams. It doesn't end until you take them out. It was a major design oversight (which if i'm reading what other people are saying properly, they actually just couldn't fix the bug that was causing it) and it sucked.
Rusting guns:
No, guns should not rust that quickly. I'm using it, i'm firing it. If anything make it so something inside the gun breaks and I have to repair it. It was ridiculous how quickly the guns rusted.
But after all that
I wanted to like the game, I really did. The combat was pretty fun, it kept me immersed, I thought it was really cool. They just made the fun parts not worth the slog of dealing with the other parts. I had the most fun blasting through a camp with explosives because even if I managed it with stealth, it was because I was insanely lucky, not skilled. I played far cry 2 for a long time. Unfortunately, for every good experience I have with it, I have a stupidly long drive across the map to remember. Or a memory of enemies seeing me, crouching, not moving, not firing in long grass away from the path.
The story wasn't anything worth mentioning, and especially the ending with all your friends betraying you, shit. But that wasn't the meat of the game. You made your own stories through decisions and creativity.Dogstile said:
Malaria, I don't know what the point of that was either, but it only ever got really annoying when you ran out of pills and were forced to go find more immediately. But what many people misunderstand in Far Cry 2 is the long travelling. They see it as a bore, they want to be at the destination already. That's the thing the game taught me. The good parts of Far Cry 2 isn't just being in the mission area and doing what you're told to. The moment you get your mission you're on a mission, big part of the mission is getting there, it serves as a buildup to the climax. And more often than not, the moments that stand out the most are the ones you had on the journey.
I don't think you were ever trying to "help" either faction. Hence why you couldn't choose to stick with one of them. You were a mercenary working for diamonds. It didn't matter what they had you do as long as you were paid.
Point taken about friendly faces, a few neutral NPCs here and there would've done much. And there's probably a lot of excuses to why there's none. The buddy system was pretty genius, it made your character vulnerable, instead of killing you outright, and thus ending your character's story, you got a second chance to overcome what downed you from a different angle with support. Other than that, the buddies were incredibly shallow.
You gotta work to have a lot of gear, simple as that. While I avoid grinding diamonds too, it only encouraged exploration.
And no, the stealth is by no means broken. But it's not very forgiving. Snipers and RPG nests will spot you from 300 meters away in a bush, it's what they're there for. You take them out first before moving in. During the day the AI will spot you in tall grass from a good distance, being stationary in a bush almost makes you invisible if you got the stealth suit. During the night your chances are much much better. If it's dark and the wind is rustling everything? Even better. I can consistently pull off stealth, make them suspicious, make them check out where they thought they saw something. Heck you can even plant a remote explosive close by to drag some of them away from you. What the game misses to make one-by-one stealth possible is quiet take-downs. It's rare you get lucky that their body falling to the ground won't alert nearby sentries. Instead stealth comes with the benefit of letting you plan the most efficient way to attack and place yourself accordingly. I even recorded a video or two on youtube of me using stealth in it.
The thing that's broken about stealth is if you play it on the PC with a keyboard. The game uses your movement speed to decide your "spotting" radius. And when you're stuck with a digital input that's either no movement or full speed in either direction, that's when stealth becomes hard.
Fire spread in a circle if the wind wasn't blowing hard in a direction.
The thing is, driving a car near checkpoints is a risk. Get on foot and sneak around, or take a long curve around them in your car, and you won't have to deal with them. Again the problem is people want to get to their destination as fast as possible.
They couldn't fix the respawning checkpoints because it was hardcoded into the game. The game wasn't coded to save any information about the checkpoints, so whenever you got far enough away from a checkpoint it'll unload the area out of your computer's memory. And when you came back, it'd load into the default state, being occupied and in one piece. There's no timers deciding it.
Guns detoriated, I thought it was an interesting mechanic, but poorly executed. It degrades from firing it, not from what kind of terrain you pull it through. Guns jam if they aren't maintained, and just grabbing a new one instead of giving an option to maintain your weapon feels stupid.
Yes the game has faults, but it's not faults so bad I think should put it in the "bad game" category.
Searching for diamonds was a grind but shooting people wasn't? Dude, it's a shooter. For once a developer has the proclivity to put an actually interesting activity into a game instead of pointing the trigger at men and clicking a million times and you call it a grind? Well shit, no wonder I find the genre a borefest.Dogstile said: