Far Cry 3 Review

[Dogstile]

Spoiler

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.

It's a shame that while it kept you immersed, the rest of the game was either broken or shit.

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.

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.

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.
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.

I'm going to sum this up with "you realise you've just excused it for every bad design decision they made because you liked it, right?". The majority of the people who played the game didn't like it because it was boring. It was fun for a couple of hours, the travelling, the grinding, everything. Then I realised that I actually wanted to be playing the game and sneaking across the game map wasn't playing the game, especially seeing as if you wanted to get anything done within a sensible time (sensible being within an hour for a mission) you had to drive fast and then get the heat off you when you got there.

After the novelty of exploration wears off, the game really has nothing to keep you going. It stops being "lets sneak past this checkpoint" and becomes "for fucks sake, I have to go past that again!".

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.

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.

Shooting people is never boring as long as the AI is challenging in combat. Diamonds require no skill to go get, you literally have to just follow your little light. A grind is when you do something over and over again, gunfights change.
In fact, the combat is the one thing I can't fault far cry for. The AI is actually pretty decent to fight, but only if you're actually trying to fight them, not sneak around.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Spoiler

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.

It's a shame that while it kept you immersed, the rest of the game was either broken or shit.

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.

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.

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.
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.

I'm going to sum this up with "you realise you've just excused it for every bad design decision they made because you liked it, right?". The majority of the people who played the game didn't like it because it was boring. It was fun for a couple of hours, the travelling, the grinding, everything. Then I realised that I actually wanted to be playing the game and sneaking across the game map wasn't playing the game, especially seeing as if you wanted to get anything done within a sensible time (sensible being within an hour for a mission) you had to drive fast and then get the heat off you when you got there.

After the novelty of exploration wears off, the game really has nothing to keep you going. It stops being "lets sneak past this checkpoint" and becomes "for fucks sake, I have to go past that again!".

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.

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.

Shooting people is never boring as long as the AI is challenging in combat. Diamonds require no skill to go get, you literally have to just follow your little light. A grind is when you do something over and over again, gunfights change.
In fact, the combat is the one thing I can't fault far cry for. The AI is actually pretty decent to fight, but only if you're actually trying to fight them, not sneak around.

Now you're just being selective. Gunfights are all the same to me. Point the trigger at the target and away you go. I can't remember the way diamonds were sought in Farcry 2 but it's clear that it, at least, could have been both challenging and interesting. Puzzles to work out to find way-points, terrain to navigate to find a passage, people to interrogate to get info. The task in itself is far more interesting to me than the simple killing.

 

[Dogstile]

Spoiler

Spoiler

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.

It's a shame that while it kept you immersed, the rest of the game was either broken or shit.

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.

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.

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.
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.

I'm going to sum this up with "you realise you've just excused it for every bad design decision they made because you liked it, right?". The majority of the people who played the game didn't like it because it was boring. It was fun for a couple of hours, the travelling, the grinding, everything. Then I realised that I actually wanted to be playing the game and sneaking across the game map wasn't playing the game, especially seeing as if you wanted to get anything done within a sensible time (sensible being within an hour for a mission) you had to drive fast and then get the heat off you when you got there.

After the novelty of exploration wears off, the game really has nothing to keep you going. It stops being "lets sneak past this checkpoint" and becomes "for fucks sake, I have to go past that again!".

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.

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.

Shooting people is never boring as long as the AI is challenging in combat. Diamonds require no skill to go get, you literally have to just follow your little light. A grind is when you do something over and over again, gunfights change.
In fact, the combat is the one thing I can't fault far cry for. The AI is actually pretty decent to fight, but only if you're actually trying to fight them, not sneak around.

Now you're just being selective. Gunfights are all the same to me. Point the trigger at the target and away you go. I can't remember the way diamonds were sought in Farcry 2 but it's clear that it, at least, could have been both challenging and interesting. Puzzles to work out to find way-points, terrain to navigate to find a passage, people to interrogate to get info. The task in itself is far more interesting to me than the simple killing.

It's almost as if we have different ideas of what's fun. Funny that.

I'd agree with you if it used terrain well and let me navigate and it looks like far cry 3 will let me do that. My problem is in far cry 2 you couldn't do that. Most diamonds were "follow the light on your wrist" like a game of hot cold. They could have turned that into something cool but they just shoved diamonds on top of rocks for the majority of them and went "welp, that'll do".

At least with far cry 3 the island looks rather fun to explore and it looks like they've fixed a lot of the stuff that went wrong with the last game. I'm looking forward to it, but only after i've heard some things from my friends.

 

[Britisheagle]

So psyched to get this game, loved the look of it from the get go nut refused to get excited as I found FC2 disappointing.

Very good review, one that seems to praise the vast majority of things you can do whilst having a 25-30 hour capaign.

 

[HaraDaya]

I'm going to sum this up with "you realise you've just excused it for every bad design decision they made because you liked it, right?". The majority of the people who played the game didn't like it because it was boring. It was fun for a couple of hours, the travelling, the grinding, everything. Then I realised that I actually wanted to be playing the game and sneaking across the game map wasn't playing the game, especially seeing as if you wanted to get anything done within a sensible time (sensible being within an hour for a mission) you had to drive fast and then get the heat off you when you got there.

After the novelty of exploration wears off, the game really has nothing to keep you going. It stops being "lets sneak past this checkpoint" and becomes "for fucks sake, I have to go past that again!".

The point is, Far Cry 2 is not a bad game. But most people didn't like it. And that's fine, I hate Call of Duty and it's scripted campaign, I think it's the enemy of good games. Millions of others buy it every year regardless of my opinion.
So what if a mission takes over an hour? If you find travelling and encountering dynamic scenarios is boring, then Far Cry 2 is indeed not for you. But that doesn't make it a bad game. You're trying to play a different game than Far Cry 2 is.

 

[Dogstile]

I'm going to sum this up with "you realise you've just excused it for every bad design decision they made because you liked it, right?". The majority of the people who played the game didn't like it because it was boring. It was fun for a couple of hours, the travelling, the grinding, everything. Then I realised that I actually wanted to be playing the game and sneaking across the game map wasn't playing the game, especially seeing as if you wanted to get anything done within a sensible time (sensible being within an hour for a mission) you had to drive fast and then get the heat off you when you got there.

After the novelty of exploration wears off, the game really has nothing to keep you going. It stops being "lets sneak past this checkpoint" and becomes "for fucks sake, I have to go past that again!".

The point is, Far Cry 2 is not a bad game. But most people didn't like it. And that's fine, I hate Call of Duty and it's scripted campaign, I think it's the enemy of good games. Millions of others buy it every year regardless of my opinion.
So what if a mission takes over an hour? If you find travelling and encountering dynamic scenarios is boring, then Far Cry 2 is indeed not for you. But that doesn't make it a bad game. You're trying to play a different game than Far Cry 2 is.

Your entire argument is now "I think its a good game, you're just playing it wrong". Which I find hilarious, because it was meant to let you play however the hell you wanted to. If you're going to ignore every single point i've thrown across and say "well I liked it, so its not bad" then i'm done here.

 

[HaraDaya]

Spoiler: quote

I'm going to sum this up with "you realise you've just excused it for every bad design decision they made because you liked it, right?". The majority of the people who played the game didn't like it because it was boring. It was fun for a couple of hours, the travelling, the grinding, everything. Then I realised that I actually wanted to be playing the game and sneaking across the game map wasn't playing the game, especially seeing as if you wanted to get anything done within a sensible time (sensible being within an hour for a mission) you had to drive fast and then get the heat off you when you got there.

After the novelty of exploration wears off, the game really has nothing to keep you going. It stops being "lets sneak past this checkpoint" and becomes "for fucks sake, I have to go past that again!".

The point is, Far Cry 2 is not a bad game. But most people didn't like it. And that's fine, I hate Call of Duty and it's scripted campaign, I think it's the enemy of good games. Millions of others buy it every year regardless of my opinion.
So what if a mission takes over an hour? If you find travelling and encountering dynamic scenarios is boring, then Far Cry 2 is indeed not for you. But that doesn't make it a bad game. You're trying to play a different game than Far Cry 2 is.

Your entire argument is now "I think its a good game, you're just playing it wrong". Which I find hilarious, because it was meant to let you play however the hell you wanted to. If you're going to ignore every single point i've thrown across and say "well I liked it, so its not bad" then i'm done here.

That is exactly my argument. Not all games are supposed to be played the same like you're arguing now. I've counter argued the points you were wrong about, and acknowledged the others that are either down right bad, or undeveloped. But you're basically saying you wanted to take straight drives towards the objective with no confrontations? Is that honestly more fun? You're in a hostile enviroment, come on, no way it's ever going to be a safe drive. That's the setting, that's the game. How you confront each checkpoint is part of the story you create. I'm sick of games that tell me how to do everything. Far Cry 2 gives you the freedom to be creative in your approaches. But people are only focusing on going to that objective and flipping a switch. Would it be better if they dotted the path towards the objective and told you to shoot this guy first, then the other guy? Make your own objectives. Use your damn creativity.

We finally get a game that isn't telling us how to do everything, but people are too accustomed to being told how and when to do everything that they think a lack thereof is bad. It's not perfect, nobody ever said it was, but it's a lot closer than we've been in many years. Even a game like Deus Ex: Human Revolution that prides itself as an RPG had less freedom.

 

[Spud of Doom]

Still got my eye on this one. Might buy it later on after a price drop.

 

[RedDeadFred]

But how does it compare to the previous installment?

I can confirm one thing - no more baddies respawning at checkpoints minutes after you clear them out.

This is what made me kind of dislike the second game. I may have to pick this one up because that was really the only thing that I was worried about.

 

[Netrigan]

I'm going to sum this up with "you realise you've just excused it for every bad design decision they made because you liked it, right?". The majority of the people who played the game didn't like it because it was boring. It was fun for a couple of hours, the travelling, the grinding, everything. Then I realised that I actually wanted to be playing the game and sneaking across the game map wasn't playing the game, especially seeing as if you wanted to get anything done within a sensible time (sensible being within an hour for a mission) you had to drive fast and then get the heat off you when you got there.

After the novelty of exploration wears off, the game really has nothing to keep you going. It stops being "lets sneak past this checkpoint" and becomes "for fucks sake, I have to go past that again!".

The point is, Far Cry 2 is not a bad game. But most people didn't like it. And that's fine, I hate Call of Duty and it's scripted campaign, I think it's the enemy of good games. Millions of others buy it every year regardless of my opinion.
So what if a mission takes over an hour? If you find travelling and encountering dynamic scenarios is boring, then Far Cry 2 is indeed not for you. But that doesn't make it a bad game. You're trying to play a different game than Far Cry 2 is.

Having not played Far Cry 2 (played the PC version of Far Cry 1), it sounds like it's stuck in that awkward phase of sandbox games, where you have these huge commutes between missions (Far Cry and Crysis had this problem IMO), but without doing what it needed to do to make that interesting to most players.

To use Fallout 3 and Skyrim as examples, the game knows that exploration is key, so you're required to find locations first, but because they know you'll often want to travel there quickly, they have a robust Quick Travel system so you're not constantly dragged into random skirmishes you're not interested in dealing with. Half the time I'll just walk wherever I need to go, because getting distracted from your objective is half the fun... but sometimes you just want to get the job done and those distractions are a giant pain in the ass.

And I agree with your observations about stealth based on my experience with Far Cry 1. Stealth was possible, but the game didn't program in a lot of artificial stupidity to make it easy. You couldn't just crouch walk your way through brush and expect them not to notice you, because you're a six foot man in a loud Hawaiian t-shirt. But half the fun of Far Cry was utilizing stealth to plan an assault.

Of course, in that game, everyone complained about snipers taking them out from a mile down the road. Which probably says a lot about who does and doesn't like these kind of games. If you think walking down a road to an enemy base is how a game should be played, you'll hate Far Cry, because the game will absolutely punish you for doing something like that. It's a game for the guy who wants to circle round the back and hop a fence.

 

[Hekler]

But how does it compare to the previous installment?

I can confirm one thing - no more baddies respawning at checkpoints minutes after you clear them out.

Great news! That was one of the weakest and most frustrating parts of the game.

It looks like a more complete, polished and feature added version of FC2. I'm happy with that, because while I mostly enjoyed FC2, I did feel it could have been a better game.

 

[Nazulu]

I wonder if this will have the same flaw as Skyrim where it's so easy to become over-powered. I'm gonna wait to find out, if it's more functional then I may consider it.

 

[hazabaza1]

I hope there's no implied r*** in this one.

... SOMEONE HAD TO SAY IT!

Implied rape in Farcry? Bwuh?
Gonna need to elaborate on that one, buddy.

 

[Easton Dark]

I got interested in this yesterday after reading another review.

It looks like a better FarCry 1 that focuses less on the story and more on the gameplay, which I can appreciate.

I'll be picking this one up eventually for sure.

And hey, NO MALARIA THIS TIME.

 

[Gunjester]

2. Is everyone outside the settlement/s outside to get you like they were in Far Cry 2, or are there neutral people minding their own business?

Judging by when he mentioned "There is some satisfaction in watching a territory transform from Hostile control to everyday civilians going about their lives" It's the latter you mentioned.

 

[Murmillos]

The only thing that I saw so far that "irked" me about the game, was that during a couple of driving sections that I saw, the bushes are still being render inside the vehicle, instead of being "ran" over; which I don't remember experiencing in Far Cry 2.

Either its a pre-release reviewers version issue, or its a huge step back.

 

[hazabaza1]

wow, great health regen mechanics
[/img]
i'm excited

Actually, it does still have segmented health like with Far Cry 2. Only 3 segments rather than 5, and there seem to be less animations, but some of it's still in there.

 

[Duffeknol]

Game of the year for me. Hands down. I can't think of a bad thing to say.

Also the 'melodramatic' parts of the story criticized in this review... I don't think you get the point. You start acting more and more the part of a native warrior, going completely over the top with your fanaticism. At one point you even tell one of your friends that killing people now feels like 'winning'... I'm getting a real Spec Ops vibe from this. You're being constantly manipulated further and further into madness.