Why I think Far Cry 2 is one of the most underrated games ever made.

[Akoomsh]

Far Cry 2 has received an overall negative review by a lot of the community online. Occasionally, there's someone who defends it, or even supports it, but for the most part, it seems most people don't even bother finishing it. There are accusations of clunky controls, AI being able to see you from a mile away, chase you across the map, and shoot you accurately at any distance. Enemies respawn in camps you cleared minutes ago, the huge map takes forever to transverse, and you can hardly shoot all the bullets from your gun without having it jam. The story is lacking and repetitive when present, and the ending is unsatisfying.

Some of the good things being said are that the scenery is gorgeous and fits the setting, the realism (using syrettes to heal, having to take pills for malaria, and not being able to use long the guns dropped by enemies due to poor conditions) creates a unique and incredibly memorable gameplay, and missions can be completed in any way you like. Your only instruction is who to kill. Not how, or when, just who.

But despite any of that, no one seems to address the theme. The message of the game. The part that made it better than any other game I have ever played. It seems to have gone completely over everyone's head, despite being literally what the game is about. Due to this being, naturally, loaded with spoilers, I'll explain more at the end. For now, I'll go into detail with the main cons of the game.

One of the things that annoys people most about the game is that enemies respawn so quickly. Clear out an area and leave for a minute chasing a hidden diamond - in game currency - and you can come back minutes later under a hail of bullets from people who have seemingly been camped out there for hours, without any trace of the explosions, wildfires, and general carnage you just caused. I don't think this is a bad thing at all. Naturally reinforcements would have arrrived, and without even justifying it in-game, it helps. It makes it difficult. You can play as long as you want to, you'll never not have enemies around the corner. It gives it the feeling of being hundreds of times larger, somewhere you could lose yourself even with your map and compass. Not to mention it has saved me numerous times from bugs. I remember one specific time I was doing a mission to get more malaria pills. As any player knows, if you've resorted to having to search for more pills, you have minutes left before the disease gets you. I show up at the building, and as usual it's being guarded by 6 or so enemies. I wreck the area with my vehicle-mounted gun, but I can't open the door. I run around desperately, looking for the last guy who I'd have to kill to enter the room, but it appears the game just encountered a bug. I leave the area, drive off a few hundred feet, and when I return I run over the newly spawned enemies and find myself inside the room seconds later. The game had reset the area, and I was able to "retry" without having to worry about losing progress.

A second thing people hate is the AI. Fire half a magazine into one of them and they may not drop dead. If you don't kill them all immediately, one shot and they all know exactly where you are, and have their guns firing before they've even aimed. Not that they need to aim, they rarely miss, from any distance. Run away and they'll grab a truck and chase you until the world ends. Stealth is hard to master, even killing with the machete attracts more attention than it should. You don't notice this, however, as long as you play the game right. I've spent over 60 hours playing, and am currently on my second time through on the hardest difficulty. I have never bought an automatic weapon. Truthfully, they're crap. I spend the game running around with pistols, or a sniper at best. Those and shotguns are the only ones worth the noise. If you have a pistol, you have all you need to beat the game on any difficulty. It's not about the weapon, it's about how you use it. To clear a camp, I hide behind bushes and trees, sneaking closer, until I finally pop up and fire my pistol. 3 shots, one in each head, and I'm not even scratched. Headshots are the only sure way to kill anyone here, and pistols and snipers are the only weapons with enough accuracy to do it. I don't care how many guns and bows are in Far Cry 3, nothing is more satisfying than clearing out a camp with a pistol shot to each head like a trained assassin. If you do need to get away, turn off the road and navigate between bushes. No wonder you're found so easily, the roads are few and if you just put a good tree between you and them, the AI will be stuck long enough for you to be out of there.

I know most of the weapons in the game are automatic, but Far Cry 2 isn't a standard shoot-em-up FPS. You're not an action hero. You're not a movie star with a stunt double. This is where Far Cry 2 excels in realism; in the idea.

One of the best things about Far Cry 2 is that it is a FPS that stands against everything a FPS is. There are shallow things; aiming is laborous and weapons degrade, you need syrettes to heal as you can't just "recover health." Then there are the deep themes. The game starts, and it looks like a standard game of its genre. You're a mercenary, you're in hell, and your sole mission is to kill the Jackal, a standard hollywood black and white bad guy. However, literally before you get to take a step as your character, you get malaria. You pass out and reawaken in a bed. There, across the room, is the Jackal. He's there. The end of the game is in your sights. He walks over to you, machete in hand. He knows who you are. Pulls back his arm, and slams the machete into the wall behind you. He doesn't kill you. You're a mercenary, he says, and you failed. You kill for money, but you failed to kill, and you'll never get your paycheck because of it. Now that you don't have that incentive you're no threat. (the actual dialogue is much better, I'm summarizing.) So he leaves. An explosion goes off, and you look around. He left you his machete, and a pistol. The man you're trying to kill. And he spared you. Why? You assume you're being mocked, and I think you decide to go after him and kill him anyway, out of hurt pride more than anything else. That's not typical. All the while, you're plagued by this disease. You take drugs to heal, and when things get rough you have to hide behind trees and use your teeth to pull a bullet out of your arm, or a foot long iron bar out of your stomach. You aren't an action hero, and this isn't a game. Those are your first hints this is something special. Action heros don't get diseased like that. No one in call of duty had to take actual painkillers to heal in battle. This was the first sign that this was more than a standard FPS game. You get mixed up with the local factions. You want to kill the Jackal, because he is making money by making war, and most of all because he humiliated you. So you do jobs for both sides of the factions. Take out an important leader in one, to get diamonds from the other, which you use to buy guns to kill your former employers, for diamonds from the other side. You don't discriminate. You kill, to get paid, so you can find the man who is killing to get paid, and kill him. Because he is evil. Starting to see a problem? Throughout the game, numerous times, you're approached by the Jackal. He comes to you and belittles you, taunting, and worst of all, reasoning with you. He points out, you came after him, because he makes money from perpetuating war, but to get there, you're perpetuating war yourself. You're no better than him. You ARE him. You are exactly what he is. Killing for money. And you start to believe him. There's a buddy system in-game, where you have a number of other mercenaries who help you out. They offer missions, help with missions, and even revive you and fight with you when you're wounded. At one point, you have to make a decision. You can head to the town and rescue all the refugees being slaughtered by the factions, or head to the hangout place and rescue your buddies, also under attack. I chose to help my buddies. I was knocked unconscious, and fell off a truck later. I nearly died to save these people, as they've nearly died to save me in the past. It felt so genuine. Near the end of the game, you confront your best buddy. They and all the others have turned against you. After they had been offered a few diamonds, they all jump you, and you're trapped in a ring with all of them gunning for you at once. You either die, or you put down one by one the only people you ever trusted in the game. It's horrible. It's stupid. And that's why it works. When it comes down to it, you were all mercenaries. It was just another job for them. No matter how many times you save their lives, people who kill for money are always going to consider killing for money. You leave with all your friends dead, and no one left to trust.

And now, for the magnificent ending.

you wander to a little hut. You have no allies. You have no one to help you. Upon entering the hut, you're confronted by the Jackal. Usually you'd expect, in a game like this, an awesome shootout, or a final scene like in Goldeneye where you fire a bullet and win the game. But he treats you like a friend. He talks to you. He's the only thing you have left, so you stand across from your oldest enemy, and listen. He talks of the war. Of how evil it is, how men are damned to partake. He talks of bad things he's committed, and how you've done the same. And he's right. You realize this fully. This wasn't a game full of good guys who help you, and bad guys who deserve to die. This was a game of people, people who turn on you for money, who give you money to turn on others, and people who make money off of killing. That's what you both are. He's a weapons dealer, you're a merc turned vigilante, but when it comes down to it, you're both a guy stuck in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who decided to find a goal and were willing to kill to complete it. It felt so right until now. You think back on how many people you killed, and it applies to all games. Yeah, you shot up the enemy in Call of Duty to save some lives, but do you deserve to live, killing people on such a subjective matter? I think one of the most iconic lines of this scene is when The Jackal says that neither of you deserve to survive this. You're on equal planes, and neither of you have any right to walk out of there and live for it. This is what I love about Far Cry 2. The Jackal tells you, there is only one good thing left you two can do, and that's to save the refugees. He gives you a choice. You can take a bomb, or a briefcase full of diamonds and a gun. You choose which you want. You can take the bomb, climb a mountain, and blow yourself up, collapsing rubble and blocking off the factions from the innocent refugees, or take the diamonds, bribe the border guards into saving the refugees, and then go home and shoot yourself in the head with the pistol. You confront the only real objective in the game, the only assured bad guy, and you make a death pact. You're no hero. You got a disease. You had to kill your only friends. You never even complete the one objective of the whole game.

You're just an average person in an above average game, not a story about a hero, a story about a man in a hero's situation, who ends up paying for trying to be a hero. It's an anti-FPS. You're not running around with a gun shooting people. You're making choices the player even rationalized, and paying for it in such a realistic and harsh way, it becomes more of a lesson than a game. You pick one option, and he picks the other. You don't "win" the game. You chose to "chase after the bad guy," but when you realize you're not the good guy, it hits you like nothing you've ever seen. You deserve to die, and you do. It's a shooter about how shooting is bad, a game about morality and life, and definitely the most thought-out and moving game I have ever played.

And that's why I think Far Cry 2 is one of the most original, genre-defying First Person Shooters in existence. I just don't think many other people saw that through the 2008 graphics and repetitive missions.

That really saddens me.

[Akoomsh]

İlk olarak |:STFU:| - Karma tarafından gönderildi:

The 3rd one had an ok story, mostly depicting how far someone is willing to push their anger, but the part i really enjoyed was wondering how if might affect you. In 2, you never really wondered if your actions had consequences, you just...did things. Then, FLASH, you made a decision based on the conseqences. I really enjoyed 3, for it's world was astonishing and the ability to literally go ANYWHERE, unlike 2. However, while 2 isn't a realism simulation, it felt much more realisitc than 3 which felt way too arcade-y. 2 was much more difficult as well, as Infamous gave me a challenge everytime and many times i had to adjust tactics on the spot to get out of a situation. 3 never really gave me that opportunity because the game was too easy. As you develop these skills, the enemies become way too easy, and even with a mod that disables the cameras abilities to wall-hack, it was still too easy. If the game would have been harder, i might have liked it as much as 2.....also could do without the cutscenes every 5 minutes....

Aside from the story, the gunplay in 2 is still some of the best i've ever seen. Goes hand-in-hand with the theme of the game i suppose, because i love the action of shooting the guns in 2, which in turn made me enjoy killing everyone = the whole point to the story anyway. Gives me more of a connection to the story.

Damn, i just read the OP again....♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ love it.

Thanks, it really means a lot. Haha.

I always wished Far Cry 2 had more cutscenes, because the closest it has are the opening and the ending, and it's in a first-person point of view. It makes sense, in a way. You feel more of the character if you don't have cutsenes, because then the character doesn't have thoughts or actions you don't. It would take away from control. Still, if that weren't the case, some cinematics could definitely have helped.

I'll try the third one, too, then. I'm not looking to spend more than $20, especially with having bought Far Cry 2 for about $3.

[Karma]

right now i'm doing a completionist run collect every diamond, every mission, you name it. Should take me about 23 hrs. Now, all side missions in north completed, all but 4 briefcases, and 3 main missions left at 9 hrs. Oh, and i'm not taking buses, so i'm driving or walking ONLY. Plan on taking a screeny when i finished.....

.....mainly want to do this to show people just how driving and walking is a big part of this game, but i think people DRAMATICALLY exaggerate the time taken to drive. Really? It takes a whopping 2 mins to go from Pala to ANYWHERE on the map, as long as you're smart and dodge any patrols/guardposts. I've been running into some on purpose because i enjoy the gunplay so much.

[Akoomsh]

I'm playing through on the hardest difficulty, trying to collect everything, too. I'm only using the silenced pistol, the dart rifle, and anything lying around. It's a lot more entertaining when it's on a hard difficulty, and I've ♥♥♥♥♥♥ good at quick headshots from long distances with a pistol. The driving does seem faster than I remember; it can just be frustrating when you're forced to walk, which does take a while. I also find myself paying more attention to the small plot points such as the story behind the warlords, which was just kind of "there" the first time I played through, back when I didn't know what to be looking for.

[Akoomsh]

Also for some reason I've rarely had problems with guard posts and patrols - when driving by, I take a direct route and maybe run over an enemy, and I automatically weave between trees once I hear a vehicle pursuing me. The AI tends to crash into a tree, and take forever trying to back up (and crash into another tree). Keep an eye out for rocks and thick foliage, and going off-road you'll never have an annoying long-distance car chase. I just keep wishing my buddy could jump in the back with me and man a mounted gun... Two player co-op or a larger emphasis on buddy help would have been mind blowingly fun if the game could have handled it at the time it was made. At least, they could have made finishing the game unlock completely open-world modes. I was dissappointed the first time when I beat the game but hadn't finished all the extra stuff. But I guess that's part of the emotional distress of ending with such an urgent, this-is-my-last-chance note of how the protagonist is nearly a complete failure of a human being.

[Karma]

Playing on Hardcore (infamous is a blast, but can get frustrating sometimes), using a loadout currently of M1903 sniper, 6P9 silenced pistol, RPG7. When i get to the south, i usually alter my loadout several ways. Might go for the AR16, m79 GL, Dart rifle. When i unlock all weapons it's really hard to just stick to 1 combination of weapons.

[T_BONe]

I disagree with you. Eventhough I like your point of view on this whole topic I cant get rid of the feeling that you give this game and the story in particular way too much credit. Im a type of person who does not play FPSs for their story. Might sound ridiculous but what caught my eye was the premise of realism and fair challange. And this game failed to deliver on these two fronts. What should have been realism turned into harassment. As you said, the stealth is non existent and the AI jumps from brain dead zombie to a unhuman supersoldier. The core mechanics are weak. Games should not incline to cheapness in order to give challange. AI should not be able to detect you exactly the moment you fire a silenced weapon especially if you are hidding in bushes and wearing camo suit, as well they should not be able to catch up to you if you are driving your vehicle at max speed without even hitting an obstacle. I really wanted to ignore all these problems but I just couldnt. Every encounter left me with bitter taste and question, why am I putting my self through this? Why do I even bother clearing those outpost, why do I even bother buying anything else but sniper rifles. Why do I have to kill some random guy just to get an extra ammo cache built to my safe house. Halfway into the game and all I had were questions and no answers. Therefor, I do not think this game is underrated at all.
So my final point is: Seemingly deep story should not be an excuse for weak game mechanics.
Thank you.

[Akoomsh]

İlk olarak T_BONe tarafından gönderildi:

Im a type of person who does not play FPSs for their story.

That's fine. Most people don't. That's why this game worked for me. It's designed to start off as a generic FPS made only to give you a reason to shoot people, and because most FPS games are like that, we all go for it. When, at the end, it shames you for that, and makes you pick how you want to kill yourself in repentance, it becomes majorly powerful. Not just because this character in this game murdered people, but because you were the one in control, you chose to do it, and you enjoyed it (though, I guess, you yourself didn't.)

İlk olarak T_BONe tarafından gönderildi:

the stealth is non existent and the AI jumps from brain dead zombie to a unhuman supersoldier. The core mechanics are weak. Games should not incline to cheapness in order to give challange. AI should not be able to detect you exactly the moment you fire a silenced weapon especially if you are hidding in bushes and wearing camo suit, as well they should not be able to catch up to you if you are driving your vehicle at max speed without even hitting an obstacle.

The stealth isn't nonexistent. As far as I've seen, it's the most realistic stealth in any video game. You have to master hiding behind things, moving when people look away, and using darkness. Most of the time, your cover is blown because you were seen or heard, and honestly it's times when the AI would have to be blind and deaf not to detect you. You can't stand in the shadows and walk right past someone, because there's never a place dark enough for that, and the game recognizes it. You're a merc, not a Splinter Cell operative. You were never taught how to move quietly and hide yourself.

Honestly, no matter how good of a silencer a guy has, if a small piece of metal shoots anywhere past your head going at the speed of a bullet, you're gonna hear it. If one guy shouts, everyone else is gonna hear, and often times they won't detect you. They'll often spin around and run until they find you, and if they do because you were poorly hidden, that's your fault.

The AI can shoot you with an assault rifle from hundreds of feet away, but you can also hit them in the head accurately from twice the distance using a pistol. It's not an unfair advantage. Camo suits only do so much, and usually have to match a terrain. Far Cry 2 has deserts, savannahs, and jungles. It's a miracle if you can get a suit that works as intended in two of the three.

The driving controls themselves aren't very good, and that accounts for most of these issues. You can only go one speed, around 60km/h, while the speed limits are 80-100. It may not even be the maximum speed, because going any faster, you'd be lucky to make it through a jungle with the car not in flames. The steering wheel doesn't turn on a gradient either, and that's because you're using keyboard keys (If you're playing on a computer) where there is no in-between. Full speed or no speed, right left or center.

Yes, the game could have been better done, but I think it could not have ♥♥♥♥♥♥ more realistic. I think your expectations are typically set to video game levels.
You can't shoot better than anyone else, you can't drive better than anyone else, and you can't hide better than anyone else. You're an average mercenary, and your only advantage is that it's you - an intelligent human - controlling the character, not an AI system. You can outsmart everyone, and that's it. You're no super soldier. You caught Malaria and were humiliated by your target in the first 20 minutes. I like Far Cry 2 for that. It's more realistic than anyone ever thought it could be - because it's not built with the protagonist's advantage. It's built with a real person's blunders. I've played Metro: Last Light and plenty of other games where it ends with the protagonist killing himself, and it's never been satisfying to me. How can these characters go through an entire game of being shot at and healing, but this one time, they can't somehow save themselves. They were superhuman, and now for some inexplicable reason they're mortal. In Far Cry 2, it fit. You were never empowered, and you never felt superhuman. You've got a deadly illness, you take drugs to keep you alive, your only friends tried to kill you for money, and you can't even kill this one guy. Damn right you're going to kill yourself.

[Karma]

i think the stealth is pretty good actually. Just finished playing for an hour and a half, and i lost count of the silent kills i had with the pistol. Cleared out 2 guard posts entirely with it while doing a buddy mission for Marty in the south.

And Akoomish, i conpletely agree with you about the notion of how the AI can shoot you from far away. I'm not sure why people complain about being shot at by a sniper from REALLY far away........when you can do the same damn thing AND THAT"S OKAY!!!!

But i would have to disagree about Metro Last Light. If you got the Bad Ending, i thought the sacrifice was warranted. You help contribute to the war (like in FC2) and the only way to stop it was to eliminate all the people involved....including yourself.

[Akoomsh]

İlk olarak |:STFU:| - Karma tarafından gönderildi:

i think the stealth is pretty good actually. Just finished playing for an hour and a half, and i lost count of the silent kills i had with the pistol. Cleared out 2 guard posts entirely with it while doing a buddy mission for Marty in the south.

And Akoomish, i conpletely agree with you about the notion of how the AI can shoot you from far away. I'm not sure why people complain about being shot at by a sniper from REALLY far away........when you can do the same damn thing AND THAT"S OKAY!!!!

But i would have to disagree about Metro Last Light. If you got the Bad Ending, i thought the sacrifice was warranted. You help contribute to the war (like in FC2) and the only way to stop it was to eliminate all the people involved....including yourself.

I know, I know, Metro Last Light was a decent game, but the ending just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It had all the right elements for it to be a sacrifice to end what was provoked, but the elements weren't stressed on the same level. It seemed needless, I guess. Artyom could have totally taken a health kit and easily killed the remaining soldiers on his own - that would have literally been what he spent the last two full length games doing. Instead, he killed himself too. There was little if any realization of his evil, and little meditation on his own choices causing all of this. He's knocked down, drags himself over to a bomb, and kills everyone. There was never, throughout the game, any hint that he was mortal in the least. Any wound could be healed with a magic medkit, and there was almost no time you felt out of control. Far Cry 2 was set up to make you feel lucky. Healing was pushing a bullet out of your arm, cauterizing a wound, taking a full syringe of drugs. You were doing a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ job the whole way through. When it got to the end, you were given a whole speech to think about exactly what you did, and then a choice on how to kill yourself. It doesn't matter you weren't given the option to live, because just having that choice made YOU in control. It taught you that life is crap, it set you up to accept your death, and let you be the one to kill yourself. You weren't given a choice, really, in Last Light. In Far Cry 2, even killing yourself was the player's decision. That's what makes it so much better in my opinion. I felt forced to kill myself in Last Light. It was the story who did it, I was along for the ride. If Far Cry 2 did something well, it made you feel as close to the main character as you possibly could. In every scene, you were in the body of the character. The character made no personality, morality, or individual choices that the player themself didn't do. it was truly you. And in the end, Far Cry got me to accept my death, and do it myself. No amount of mercs could kill me; the last 60 hours proves that. But I can always kill myself. And so I did. Last light never did that. In last light the same reds killed you who you had easily taken on just an hour before. That doesn't have the same continuity.

[K_Wrecks]

I couldn't agree more with your write-up. Excellent post and discussion here regarding a game that seems to be written off as an annoying slog, but is anything but...

Far Cry 3 did some things better that FC2 and removed some things that I thought to be brilliant in FC2... namely the GPS and in-game map. Being able to pull up the map without taking you out of the game was excellent and never done so well in any game, IMO.

All in all, Ubi Montreal keeps knocking it out of the park and I'm looking forward to the next installment (which the studio head states won't be as long as it was between FC2 and FC3 as the fan reaction to 3 was well past expectation).

[Chomerly]

For me, Far Cry 2 has been one of the worst games i've played.
It's probably one of the most buggiest games too.

I don't know what it is about games from Ubisoft. They all seem so buggy and never really live up to the hype they are given.
The only exception has been the Assassins Creed serious, though number 3 was mediocre, and from all of those games it was Brotherhood that i found to be the best of the lot.

Far Cry 3 was an ok game but god it was bugged up to hell and crashed a fair bit.
Far Cry 2 on the other hand is diabolical.

Within the first 8 minutes of play it crashed.
In fact, it crashed more times than i've had chance to get anywhere meaningful in the game.
So much so that i eventually gave up and uninstalled it.

Never again will that game grace my computer and if i was able to give it away to get it off my Steam account, i would.

Simply terrible is the best way i could sum it up.

[Akoomsh]

That's totally a fair judgement, if that was your experience, but I've been playing for nearly 100 hours now and I have yet to encounter any bug even remotely game-breaking.

[Obstdieb]

I can't believe this. I agree with pretty much everything. Been saying the same for years now, most people don't care though. Far Cry 2 is easily one of the best FPS in recent history, not to mention that it's heavily inspired by The Heart of Darkness. Read this book, if you liked the story OP.

[Obstdieb]

Also. Finally someone who realised that the Stealth system is actually working.

[B✪✪tsy]

Holy crap @ the wall of text.

I did not read it all, but still I agree that the game is underrated. The story and and the voice acting I did not care for, the gameplay itself was very repetitive and very obviously stretched out by placing objective locations constantly on the other side of the map (though you can take the bus). And of course the infinite AI spawns made it quite unrealistic, reinforcements alright, but not after 1 minute. And one major annoyance for me was the voices after you have been detected. You hear the AI talking to themselfs "where is he" and it sounds like they are 10 meters from your position while they are at least 100 meters away.

The atmosphere however is great in this game, it's been the closest feel for me being in Africa thus far. The maps are well designed and diverse. All the weapons work well, how the AI fights back is challenging and entertaining, car braking down, malaria pills, buddy aid, all cool. The real gem is the editor in the game. Creating custom maps is as creative and intuitive as painting a picture. I think all game companies should have a good look at the FarCry editor, this is how a public 'user friendly' editor should be made. If only the editor had the option to create single player storyline scenario's like for example the editor of ArmA then it would have been perfect and a possible 1000 more hours of gameplay fun. And FC2 needs Steam workshop, doesnt matter if the game is not new, the workshop might bring this game to live again.