Gaming Far Cry 2

So I'm not the only one that thinks the malaria thing doesn't add to the game. I wouldn't mind having to run across the map to get some pills when I run out, if not for having to fight past everyone I encounter on the way....still I'll slug it out some more and see if I get into it. If nothing else, you've reminded me Rockstar are due to be dropping GTA IV on the PC next month so I'll be kept busy till then

But i really would appreciate a patch that limits when/why guards shoot at you instead of opening fire the moment you appear. I don't need gunfights to distract me when I'm on the way to a mission.........

 

use the buses man, there are bus stations in the 4 corners and the central town, you can use them to go to any of the other bus stations instantly and without any guard camp trouble

 

Tried the buses, sadly have to go past several guard posts to get from where I was to the bus station, and from the bus station at the destination to where my target is. If it's not guard posts, it's roaming jeeps with guns. I just used up 5 medical syrettes going from where I accepted the mission to where the mission was, and that was trying to avoid gunfights, AND using a bus. If driving past won't work, then that means stopping and fighting every time you encounter someone else. In fact, they start shooting from far enough away that they couldn't possibly know I wasn't one of them!

Incidentally, since these guys shoot indiscriminately at anyone going near them, surely they'd shoot at the buses too! lol

I very nearly quit straight out of it just now through sheer frustration, and in fact I could only put up with doing one mission because of all the added 'fun' on the way. Even Crysis could make me lose track of time when playing, so far FC2 hasn't sucked me in that much. If this had been billed as an OK shooter maybe it wouldn't bother me, but I had very high expectations...and so far I'm having trouble convincing myself to play it long enough to get into it. One reviewer did say it gets better a few hours in....after a fair bit of tedious repetitive guardpost shooting.

And call me ultra picky but I like being able to lean from cover (as in the original FC, and Crysis, and most modern shooters...). or have I missed an option to set this in the controls?

Oh - and I want to see giant crocodiles in the water :-D That would make for interesting choices - escape from a gunfight into the water and risk getting eaten? Or stick it out on land

 

i think that as you start to unlock better weapons the guards become less of a problem
my method is to drive straight through, then when they chase get out and kill them
as its easier to kill them as they get off their jeep than when they're hiding in their camp

or just jump out and pop the jeep with a grenade launcher

 

Lions? Yeah, give uns lions! And how about an elephant herd, or maybe at least an aggressive lone elephant bull that will trample your car and make you run if you get too close? No antilopes either? And where's those buffalos the taxi driver from the initial car ride had to shy away? Not even chickens are running around! I mean, Africa w/o lions is irritating enough, but w/o chickens at the settlements? C'mon! And these lifeless places all over, except for guards and fighters of the various factions?

I think that with current hardware there could have been room for some nice decorative non-combatant NPC AI, let's say as an option you can toggle on for those with multi-core machines. Consider some children playing at the road side, or African women getting water in pots on their heads ... picturesque. This game does nothing more than all other games of that kind in the past decade: Offer a framework for the basic game mechanics and story to halfway work. It doesn't bring the game world to life like it could have with just a little extra effort. It does enough though to make you envision, and miss that. I can only restate that this game leaves quite a few things to be desired. Nowhere a 9.5 out ouf 10. Rather a 6.5 or 7 maybe.

 

that's another thing - am i right in my understanding that you can only carry one type of "primary" weapon...so you can't carry a machine gun AND a sniper rifle, or an assault rifle AND a grenade launcher? I had an option to pick up a grenade launcher but it would have meant giving up my assault rifle. I don't really fancy running round with a rocket launcher, sniper rifle and only a pistol for close up work - especially when you can empty a magazine into someone's midsection and they're still standing (even the best armour in the world won't stop that much! I liked the original Far Cry system where you could carry only four weapons total, but of any type you choose....

I'm just reading the Gamespy review (3.5 stars out of 5) and I agree with it much more than the 90%+ reviews I've seen.

Maybe I'm being unfair but so far I've found it fun and tedious in equal measure. And what's with the AI which can shoot you through thick plant cover with perfect accuracy when I can't even see the person shooting? aaargh!

I'll press on with it some more but it's feeling like a chore. And the problem is that some gamers will give up if they know they have to push through 5 hours of tedium to get to the good stuff. If I get bored, Fallout 3 is out next friday so maybe I'll give that a look lol

 

The game looks like a solid piece of work made by people who know how to build levels and missions and devise something of a "story", but lacks inspiration, creativity and the things that make you drop your jaw and go "wow!" Well, big companies want to make money and not create pieces of art - though if they succeeded they would both set milestones and earn shedloads of money with it.

 

Why not just respawn them? Hell they despawned my car when I went into Mike's and I had to use that blue Jeep :s

and as for a score for the game - 6/10 from me

 

gamespy's review actually said the annoyance of machine gun carrying jeeps attacking you "is not too bad in the initial parts of the game" and gets worse in the second half of the game....great!

If only there were an option to dial down the random attacks so I can focus on the missions and enjoying the scenery on the road...and to require some sort of provocation before the bad guys open fire outside of a mission (or as one review mentioned, the option to bribe your way past check points)

I agree with karx11erx - the game world would be more interesting if it was slightly more populated - in the real africa even in the most war-torn parts there are non combatants, families etc, not to mention the wildlife. I want to see rhinos that can knock your jeep over if you annoy them....for example

Maybe some of us are being too picky ;-)

 

Following from my negative comments earlier, I am quite enjoying the game at the moment.

I can, however, wholeheartedly agree with the annoyance of the guards shooting at you all the time - why???

 

I have to say that after other games allowing weapons to be customised (fit a grenade launcher, scope, single/burst/auto firing modes)...being able to lean left or right from cover, lay prone for cover and better stability with weapons especially sniping...not being able to do those things in FC2 is a real let down. And why do we have to equip the map before using the monocular?

With the arms merchant missions - why destroy his competitor's shipments to unlock weapons to buy...when you could hijack the convoy and steal the weapons and not have to buy anything?

No torch or night vision?

there are good ideas there, someone clearly had some big visions for this game. But it seems like it's taken a few steps back while trying to step forwards. I'm finding it really hard persuading myself to play further into the game.

And look...I didn't mention the constant 'attacks for no warning' patrols again, hurrah!

I'd give it a 5/10 as it stands....it loses at least one point for falling short of the very high expectations. It has yet to make me get lost in it for 4 hours at a time so I forget to eat drink or sleep...my mark of a great game lol

 

I'd give it more than a five but i agree with you, whilst flawed the game it still has the gameplay that draws you in

 

I love this game!!

 

Why did you set Mike's Bar on fire?

*****, APR for life.

 

One of the bigger problems are the completly retarded enemies, they try to shoot you with a shotgun from a big distance and they also dont try to survive one bit, sure they take 100 bullets in the head (well, actually just a few, the others went somewhere else due to the mouse problem) but they only rarely take cover, if you blow up 2 of 3 jeeps at a checkpoint the third one is still stupid enough to stay put...

Anyway, I still like the game even though it does have its share of flaws.

 

I thought I was going insane with the mouse lag - nice to have it confirmed other ppl have the same problem! Now if only there was a fix....


It's like the mouse takes about 1/2 a second to get moving, and then 1/2 a second to stop again when you stop. Weird, hard to describe, but incredibly annoying. I hate to get up and start shouting "unplayable!" without a good reason, but I've been perservering and fiddling with eveyr setting I can find for a few hours now and have just given up. Which is a real shame, and I do hope that someone out there (or even Ubisoft themselves) will come up with a fix at some point....


(I did assume it was just my PC not coping to begin with. But turning all the settings down to low did nothing to help - mouse lag was as bad as ever)



Oh and agreed on the annoyance of checkpoints and terrain that funnels you through narrow routes bounded by cliifs. Where the game does open up a bit it's great, but the areas are rare. I can't tell you how my heart sinks when I look on the map and see the mission marker miles away, with 3 *totally unavoidable* checkpoints between me and it. I wouldn't opject if you could sneak around but there are always unclimbable cliffs preventing it >.<

Graphics look pretty good for me, save for the water which atm is a flat green plate. Not sure if there's sth ****ed up with my graphics or not there actually - does the water look **** for anyone else?

Also agreeing the choice of weapons loadouts possible is weird. Sniper rifles in the same slot as assault rifles??? So if I want some long-range firepower I then leave myself with only a pistol for shorter-range since slot 4 is filled with explosive weapons (grenade launcher etc). Seems a very odd decision.




Still, almost everything is made up for with the fire. If nothing else, it is going to take me a long time to get bored with starting wildfires and watching them engulf stuff. And the bazooka explosions are enormously satisfying. No puny little round fireball like some games, you actually get an enormous tree-felling explosion which looks awesome.

 

LMG's fall into the 'special' category and the m79 counts as a pistol
so you can carry m79 grenade launcher in secondary slot, sniper in primary slot and RPK/M249 in the special slot

 

Do I really have to wade through all of these shitty repetitive missions (i.e. go somewhere, take out target) early on in the game to get back to the storyline?



Those are my options. Any suggestions?

 

This could have been one of the best games of *all* time except there are far too many easily fixable missed oppurtunities:

-Checkpoints and Patrols: Its ridiculous how you *always* have to fight them. They could have added waaay more depth by simply having more variation with the check points. Maybe randomly assign a status to them where they are either a) hostile b) bribable c) open. Having these random patrols quite frequently just ride up to you, ram into you and wanting to kill you is rather annoying too.
-Civilians, Towns, Villages: Aside from Pala, there are basically two types of entities in the game: buddies and people who want to kill you. There are no civilians. It seems like a huge missed oppurtunity which could have added so much more immersion to the game. There could have easily been a smattering of villages and small towns added with some roaming villagers/townsfolk.
- More Open Areas: Yes its an open world game. But a large part of it really isn't. There's way too many areas of the map that are effectively corridors that are walled off by unclimable ridges. Its obvious they were artificially trying to force the player to battle through checkpoints. However, there are lots of open terrain, and its really awsome at those times. I think the corridor-like areas are necessary but they are too frequent as far as I'm concerned.
- Wildlife: This is a minor gripe but from what I can see there are only really 3 animals: zebras, small deer and goats. I'm pretty damned sure they could have easily added some more and some lions and hyenas too. I don't buy Ubi's rubbish excuse about the preds eating all the herbivores. Its called respawning. I feel animals were another huge missed oppurtunity that could also have easily been tied to some mission. Isn't poaching for ivory or lion skin a perfect part of a amoral mercs resume?

This game is so beautiful and well done that it makes me really dissapointed at how easily Ubi could have made this game twice as deep yet decided not to. Far too many missed oppurtunities.

 

The more I play the game the more I can see hints of brilliance, yet the brilliance is completely ruined by the monotony (and frustration) of constant checkpoints and randoms attacking you on jeeps. It adds absolutely nothing to the game play and only makes it much more frustrating to go between missions.

I've got so pissed off with it now that I'm now using an invincibility trainer so I can charge right through all of these bloody checkpoints and 4x4s. When I get to actual missions (which are fun), then it gets turned off. I'm only still playing this bloody game because I paid good money for it. All these checkpoints are is pure, frustrating (because I often get killed) filler.

I have no idea how you rate this game so highly Joe - indeed reading your review again you don't even mention this topic at all - I find that very strange.