Far Cry 2 (2008)

Beat on Infamous difficulty as Irishman Frank. As soon as I was able I purchased the bolt action sniper rifle and PKM light machine gun, and later the silent makarov pistol. I used those until the 2nd half of the game where I bought the As50 semi auto sniper rifle and m249 saw; skipping the dragunov sniper altogether. I did buy a few other weapons but never bothered to change up my loadout. I got the passive boosts for the guns I used, and the general ones like camo, ammo and health capacity. Never bothered with the repair upgrades. Stats at the end say I did 12/12 buddy missions, 22/40 side missions, found 692 diamonds and currently have 258 diamonds. I found 5 jackal tapes and 0 predecessor tapes (I did put in the code to unlock them). I picked up all of the diamonds I could find but never went out of my way looking for them. Singh was my starting buddy but he bugged out and I had to abandon him. Then I had Warren until the 2nd half of the game. Then I had the Chinese guy, but I deliberately killed him. For the rest of the game my main buddy was Nasreem and 2nd Hakim (who ironically was my 2nd choice of who to play as).

My strategy was to snipe from afar, circle around at a distance to find stragglers and then go in with the LMG for plenty of sneaking around and corner camping. Occasionally I would use the pistol or machete to silently assassinate unaware enemies. Did not use a whole lot of grenades or molotovs, but they were especially useful against assault trucks. I greatly enjoyed the combat and was impressed with enemy AI, and even more impressed with the foliage graphics and fire mechanics. I did find shotgunners laughably inaccurate while others were too accurate for supposedly poorly trained militia. They took too many shots to kill with anything other than a head shot or sniper rifle; it was like they all had body armor. 1 shot anywhere should be enough to stagger them to the point of being unable to shoot accurately for several seconds at least. Most of my deaths were from driving along and suddenly coming upon an enemy assault truck. Best way I found to deal with them was to park my vehicle sideways in the road so I have cover when I get out, and always have the LMG equipped. There was a point where I stopped driving and got around on foot; which is the only reliable way to survive assault trucks. But I don't have time for that; instead drive around like mad and load quicksave if I die. Speaking of saving, the game made a new save file every single time I saved, so I ended up with 100s of saves with the load menu taking several seconds to show the list.

The biggest problem I had was how much time the game wasted making me drive around the same roads and clear out the same guard posts over and over. I planned my routes, drove offroad and used the bus fast travel system as much as I could to avoid guard posts but it was still incredibly obnoxious. The open world design of this game is just not well implemented and the pace of the game is ruined with the long boring stretches between firefights. Making every cleared safe house and guard post (with the guards not respawning) a fast travel location would make this game immensely better.

7.5/10

Five minutes in this country and it is clear - things are about to go very bad.

I haven't been playing games recently, but decided to dig into this. It is super annoying and incredibly hostile, but I am also finding it thoroughly engrossing. I love the environment, the map, the malaria and my dumb broken-ass gun. I don't love the enemies that respawn when you turn your back to them.

I assume sequels worked out the kinks to craft a more enjoyable experience that doesn't hate the player. Still, I kind of adore how defiantly un-fun this game is.

A game for fools and cab drivers.

Okay I finished this game. I found the game gets a bit more enjoyable towards the end, although generally the quality is consistent throughout. I don't think the plot was particularly complex. The entire thing basically revolved around this one guy you have to kill. But that's fine by me, as long as the gameplay is enjoyable. The gunfights were pretty solid. I bought that huge-ass sniper rifle at the end of the game. It felt completely ridiculous walking around with a goddamn anti-materiel rifle, but when I was testing it out I saw a guy hide behind a stone pillar. I was like "no way this is gonna work", I fired a shot at the pillar, and bam, dude was dead. So yeah I decided to keep it.

Sniper is an enjoyable way to play this game. Towards the end I got pretty good at spotting trouble and ending it before anyone knew what was happening. Anyway the whole game is basically "go to X location, kill someone, go to Y location". One guy said that this is a game that should be played for an hour at a time, and I agree. All that driving around gets tiring. However the gameplay mechanics and everything made the game enjoyable for me, despite the repetitiveness. I mean one time I was on a roof shooting people and one of the guys literally said "he's on the roof", I was just like O_O. I wish devs would work on this kind of stuff a bit more.

Also props for making an interesting game set in Africa. I can't recall any other games I've played which have done that. The dev team apparently travelled to Africa and decided to completely redo their level design, and it shows. I've never been to Africa, but I've been to Cambodia, and the vibes from this game would sometimes take me back there, particularly the stalls set up along the roads lol.

As for replay value, not much honestly. There's no 100% in this game. I played the game, finished it, and pretty much will uninstall it and be done with it. However I look forward to some more Far Cry in the future. Anyway, here's a picturesque location I found near a safehouse which had a nice trail:

Been playing this one the past month or so. From what I understand, this is seen as the best game in the series. The others are apparently okay, but lack some cool stuff from 2. Anyways I actually played this a long time ago back when it was released on the PS3. The main problem with that is the claustrophobic FOV. The PC version doesn't have that problem. The default FOV seems a bit bad, but it at least adjusts for widescreen. I don't like having to spin my character to look at each individual corner of a room.

I've been playing on the hardest difficulty, and it is actually quite difficult. I eventually settled on a sniper/smg combo. Close combat on the hardest difficulty is quite difficult, but sniper rifles can still kill in one shot, and you can clear out checkpoints from a distance without anyone even seeing you. Ambushing convoys is fairly straightforward, sometimes you can wipe them out with just the IEDs. Any close combat turns into a reload-fest, however.

A lot of things in the game confuse me. I have no idea what the purpose of the buddy system is. Occasionally I will use it if I can't be assed loading a quicksave, but so far I'm 50% through the game without really needing my buddies. I don't know why I keep doing the extra missions for them. I think the PS3 version didn't have quicksave, which may have made buddies more useful. However I am glad to have the quicksave ability, especially on the hard difficulty.

The game does have a lot of small details which add to the game. The fire system, bullet penetration and destructible environments are good fun. The overall plot confuses me, but I understand the basic premise of it, which basically is that you try to do good things, but ultimately when everyone is trying to screw everyone else, it's kinda impossible, and you always end up in someone else's scheme. Even if the actual plot is not too memorable, I think it does a good job explaining how a society can end up in a cycle of poverty, at least on a basic level.

A lot of the game is driving from point A to B, and the checkpoints can make this a bit wearisome at times. However you can avoid the checkpoints sometimes, so it's not too bad. But attacking multiple checkpoints between every single mission can get annoying. Oh and getting attacked by vehicles randomly can also be annoying, especially when they have mounted grenade launchers that can one-hit your car.

The graphics hold up well in 2018. The vegetation is really well done, and it feels like the people who developed the game really put a lot of work into it. I haven't played another game which depicted jungle environments as well as Far Cry 2. Even the physics of plants and trees swaying in a firefight feels very polished, and it can really give you an idea of how confusing jungle combat can be. The visuals can be very busy in a firefight, with vegetation constantly moving, and it can become very difficult to distinguish the enemy from the background. Often you won't see an enemy until you are standing on him. This is something I imagine is very difficult to implement in a game, but Far Cry 2 does it amazingly well. The only thing I don't like is the strong HDR when you enter indoor environments, but you can reduce it by messing around with the settings.

Currently I'm about halfway through the game, and I'm hoping to finish it off soon. Then I'll post some final thoughts on the game.

The terrain is very nice

Also the draw distance is amazing. I was able to snipe this guy.