I think Farcry 2 is better than 3.

[SpAc3man]

Far Cry 2 had a better setting. Somehow it just feels bigger. It was way too repetitive however.
Far Cry 3 has better gameplay. I would like FC3 to have weapons that degraded though. Maybe if they made it happen over a longer period of time and had some extra aspects to it. Faster degrading if a weapon gets wet for example.

 

[ksn0va]

So I've started playing Farcry 2 again and I have to say its better than 3. Farcry 2 has the single player (you are alone) feel and story that Farcry had, but the story with other characters in Farcry 3 became a bit too annoying for me. Yeah I know its a tropical paradise and in that respect it makes sense to have someone on vacation. Its just that the protagonist calling out for his friends sounding like he ate too much Valium made me care less for each cut scene. In the beginning it was ok though, and Vas that dirty bastard did put a nice twist to it. (such as when he ties a block of concrete around your foot) But after a while the novelty wore off.

Now the things that to me makes Farcry 2 better are the following.

Usually I wouldn't mind different opinions on stuff life this but Far Cry 3 was an improvement similar to the jump from Assassin's Creed to AC II. Far Cry improved on almost everything that people hated in 2. For example:

-In 2, the protagonist followed everyone he encountered that I was expecting a Bioshock kind of twist. Factions didn't mean anything if you couldn't stay loyal to one. In 3 however, the character and his journey was more believable, add to that, an antagonist that gives you a perfect reason to push forward.

-2 had a very interesting setting and the locations were certainly varied enough, but only when doing the main quests. Exploration revealed a lifeless world however. 3 on the other hand, had a great sense of verticality, under ground caverns, raidable tombs, dangerous wildlife, Abstergo bunkers, and many more.

-2 had respawning guard posts every 5 feet. 3 had more scattered guard posts with more elaborate settlements with optional respawns.

-3 had fewer but bigger radio towers which actually made more sense.

Overall the only things I missed from 2 were the weapon degradation and the unique African setting.

 

[Festus Moonbear]

Because, you know, tension can't be added by having a huge amount of intelligent enemy soldiers. No, we have to randomly interrupt combat with random mandatory chores that make you incredibly vulnerable.

I'd rather only plan when I want to and not when some mechanic decides so, but I guess that means I'm just crazy.

"this is not going to end well for you, because violence rarely does."

That's how it is in real life, but why are games trying to teach me a moral lesson like I'm 5 years old and watching playhouse disney? I came for violence and roller coasters, not morals and malaria pill popping.

Why shouldn't tension be added in that way? Or rather, why is it bad to add it in that way? Fair enough, if you'd rather have everything go your way all the time with no bumps in the road, and "only plan when you want to", then FC2 just isn't for you. That hardly makes it bad. Some people might like a game that requires thought and planning all the time, not just when they choose, and a game that gives them other emotional experiences as well as "fun", but I can see why others wouldn't want that. That's taste for you.

Anyway, the Guy From the 80s and those with similar tastes might like to read Tom Chick's review of FC3 if they haven't already, as it expresses a lot of what I felt about the two games:

http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2012/12/03/far-cry-3-may-be-good-but-its-a-far-cry-from-far-cry-2/

I would also recommend people check out Major Slack's Far Cry 2 walkthrough on youtube to have an example of one way of playing the game to maximum effect. He's doing FC3 at the moment and those videos kick ass too, especially when he finds fault with it

 

[Guy from the 80's]

-2 had respawning guard posts every 5 feet. 3 had more scattered guard posts with more elaborate settlements with optional respawns.

I cant agree with this because thats not happening in my playthrough.

-3 had fewer but bigger radio towers which actually made more sense.

Overall the only things I missed from 2 were the weapon degradation and the unique African setting.

Radio towers in 2 would not make any sense, you are a mercenary in Africa and you got a map with GPS. It would make no sense to "unlock" a map you already got. In that sense the map in 3 makes even less sense.

Anyway, the Guy From the 80s and those with similar tastes might like to read Tom Chick's review of FC3 if they haven't already, as it expresses a lot of what I felt about the two games:

http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2012/12/03/far-cry-3-may-be-good-but-its-a-far-cry-from-far-cry-2/

Thanks

 

[Brandon Yi]

My memory goes to this one moment in FC2 when I had gotten into a bit of trouble with a group of enemy NPCs at the trainyard. Like an idiot I rushed in thinking I'd flush them out with grenades, but they were too entrenched in cover and took me down without too much fuss. My partner came to the rescue as she had done a few times before; she pulled me up, handed me a pistol, did a quick visual/verbal check to see that I was fit to fight and we battled it out with the 10 or so remaining enemy NPCs. shit was on fire and things were exploding and people were yelling... It was glorious.

We whittled them down to one last man but I wasn't sure where he was and my companion was out of my field of view at the time. A couple bursts from a rifle rang out from behind me but I noticed my health bar was still intact. The last guy got a few shots off on my companion, and she was on the ground. O.K., no problem I thought, she had been shot down before. I quickly took him out and sprinted to my companion's side. I figured I would inject her with a syringe as I'd done before and we'd be on our merry way. I was SOOOOO Wrong.

When I came up next to her she was still alive but very clearly fighting for her life. I furiously injected syringe after syringe into her but the look in her eyes grew more and more fiery, her body heaving and moving in ways I'd never seen in a videogame before or since. Her eyes and her slightly agape mouth had this regret-tinged sadness to them, and for a moment I really thought I could see her reflecting on a life filled to the brim with violence and hate. It was clear to me after about the 3rd syringe that the effort was futile and she seemed to acknowledge the same. We exchanged uneasy glances and I(I, I) muttered under my breath "OK. This is it. I'm here for you." And then she died.

Honestly, the closest to this that I felt in FC3 was at the beginning when Vaas kills the main character's brother. I'll admit that it was an emotionally charged moment (thanks in large part to Vaas' voice actor) but when I took a step back and analyzed it, it was clear that I was steered to that moment, to that outcome, and really, to that emotion. And so it felt sort of fake.

On the other hand, the feelings of isolation, desperation, & just overall sadness at the human condition are VERY pervasive in FC2. There's almost a philosophical undercurrent to it even though the plot can be sort of "meh" at times. I think it accomplishes that through a thick atmosphere and game mechanics that facilitate these sorts of emergent (read lifelike) moments. Lastly, since virtually every action is done in real time with no loading screen, the sense of player agency is just astounding. I don't really know the main character's name in FC2, because he is me.

EDIT: Awesome Review link above, thank you. He pretty much sums up how I feel about the two games

 

[Goofguy]

Far Cry 2 was a grind. The only reason I saw it to the end was because I felt compelled to, not because I truly wanted to. Such was definitely not the case with Far Cry 3.

My gripes with FC2 have already been mentioned. The respawning guard posts were fucking tedious and annoying, it made me feel like I was making absolutely no progress in the game. And the world did feel uninhabited to me. The only time you saw anyone who wasn't a mercenary were in the houses where you deliver travel documents for malaria pills. There were little to no animals and overall, the world didn't feel lived in. While I like the unique setting, it was not really fun to play through.

 

[Lennie Briscoe]

I agree... to an extent. And now I'm gonna go on an indulgent rant about it.

Far Cry 2 was a very atmospheric game, and thematically I felt it was more coherent. Everything is in a state of decay and breakdown, including your own body, and even your guns. Diamonds were a collect-a-thon, but at least they served a purpose, unlike Far Cry 3's little idols. And the respawning guard posts... I liked the idea, but did they really have to repopulate themselves every few minutes? Also, the buddy system was cool. Of all the things they had to leave out of the sequel...

Far Cry 3, from a pure technical standpoint, is a superior game, what with it's improved engine, more informed stealth mechanics (which were wonky in the second game) and the garrisons, which were much larger and more complex than 2's guard posts. No respawning enemies meant that large stretches of the game felt empty and barren once you cleared them, leaving little more than random animal attacks to liven things up. Vehicles felt like vehicles, and not like little boxes being pulled along by a giant invisible string... Storyline was a mixed bag; the insanity themes seemed to only really pop up when it was convenient to the plot, whereas the suffocating tension of Far Cry 2 was felt throughout the entire game.

I dunno. I'm tired of trying to choose between them. I'll just say that I like them both the same, just for different reasons.

 

[Bertylicious]

The graphics were beautiful though... and I liked the feeling of isolation you had for a lot of the game... you wern't adopted as a savior by literally the first character you meet in the game! Saying that they could have done the factions a little better... it didn't matter who you worked for, all guards on the island would try and kill you anyway!

That was one of the things that I really liked about FC2; the moral ambiguity of the different factions. They were just out for themselves, burning the country down and gobbling up what they could in order to beat their rivals and steal what little was left.

I think that if I had joined one of the faction, if loads of the outposts were filled with "my" guys, then I'd have felt like part of that faction. As it was I never felt complicit in the vileness of the APR and the UFLL, in spite of the fact that I was doing horrible shit for them.

 

[spartandude]

I do think Farcry 2 was rather under rated, it was fantastic but i do think Farcry 3 is better, mostly because the world feels alive

 

[EternallyBored]

Farcry 2 had an amazing setting and atmosphere. The African savannah, jungles, swamps, and desert made for a varied and interesting experience. Unfortunately that's where most of Farcry 2's good points end, pretty much everything else was an exercise in tedium and bland. Weapons mostly felt kind of off and the degredation meant you spent most of your time salvaging the small even blander selection of enemy weapons.

Mission variety was a joke, and I barely explored the southern second half of the map, by that point I was mostly just rushing to finish the last missions, because everything started blurring together into mass of samey mediocre shooting. The villain was only met 2 or 3 times in the whole game, and only really explained his motivations in the final mission, and even then it was just some half-assed point about cycles of violence and all that crap.

The factions were meaningless and interchangeable, and even then still boring to the point I can't even remember what the difference between them was (was it one side was capitalist and the other communist? I really remember almost nothing about them). The respawning guards weren't necessarily bad, but they were too frequent and made traversing the map a chore. The missions were also set up to require stupid amounts of driving from one end of the map to the other just to get things done.

The companions were too numerous to have any of them fleshed out with anything greater than the description paragraph that gave the barest of details. The fact they could die permanently and the death scene where you keep injecting them with morphine were pretty great, but ultimately they still came off as interchangeable mooks that didn't add anything significant to the game.

For all its faults, Farcry 3 did pretty much everything better than Farcry 2, except its setting (because tropical islands feel a little played out at this point). I had fun with Farcry 2's setting, but everything else in that game was just painful, and so damn tedious.

 

[Evonisia]

I think I prefer FarCry 2 to 3. I much prefer the gameplay of 2 (those needles, malaria and the like), and the atmosphere of (to quote Yahtzee) Fictionesia was more appealing to me than FarCry 3's island. It felt a bit empty, which half the time bored me but the other half put me in the feeling of "I'm all alone, help me!". Granted, 2 has the worse endings, I mean seriously there's hardly any way to get a worse ending than FarCry 2's endings.

Personally the reason I didn't like FarCry 3 as much was because it felt like they were trying to take the beautiful enviroment, scenery and characterisation (listen to the guards and their unique dialogue for each mission) of FarCry 1 but with a dumbed down version of FarCry 2's gameplay (of course with it's own querks added, don't get me wrong). Maybe if I could look past that I'd like FarCry 3 more, but I see it as inferior to both.

 

[stroopwafel]

Farcry 2 had the better atmosphere and setting. Like you were part of some random African conflict no one really gave a fuck about. While the story only played a marginal role the motivations of the Jackal actually surprised me. Everything in Farcry 2 just felt more rooted in 'reality'. Also I found the shoot-outs in FC2 more...kinetic. Maybe b/c these guard posts were all tiny with conveniently placed ammo dumps and fuel drums everywhere. However the enemies just felt like they were made of rubber even when you were up close with an AR-15. The weapon breaking mechanic was interesting and added a sense of vulnerability, but even when fully upgraded they would still break! It was also never a problem for the enemies, who always had perfectly functional weapons. I also I found navigating a chore. The environment, weather effects, and lighting was just gorgeous though. Farcry 2 probably has the prettiest sunrise I've seen in a game.

Farcry 3 was great as well(for many of the same reasons) and fixed many of FC2's problems, but it just didn't have that same sinister atmosphere. FC3 is probably the best open-world stealth game though.

 

[G-Force]

Why are we arguing about these two games when we all know that the best Far Cry is Blood Dragon.

 

[Festus Moonbear]

Just finished a huge playthrough of Far Cry 2 yesterday, 100% all missions, subversions, diamonds, etc. Just kept getting better all the time, right up until the end. No other game has given me anything approaching such a visceral, emotional, experience. And such an aesthetically beautiful one, too - hard to believe it's 5 years old. I would take it over FC3 any day, and indeed over any other shooter and possibly any other game, because no other game has ever affected me like this one. Infinite respect to Clint Hocking and everyone else who made it what it is.