![]() You also get a grasp on how the civil war is affecting the people who live there, if not from what you see but what you hear from your informative cabbie.īut Far Cry 2 takes its immersion even further, even beyond a minimal HUD. For the best part of ten minutes you soak up the surrounding scenery, the atmosphere positively radiating from the screen as you spy a raging fire, animals grazing (although sadly none of the carnivorous variety – something Far Cry 3 is slightly over-reliant on) and guards patrolling the roads. The opening taxi ride to your hotel, while not as iconic as Half-Life’s tram ride through Black Mesa or BioShock’s descent into Rapture, does a grand job of setting the scene. Undisputedly though, where Far Cry 2 excels most, more than any other game before or since, is in immersing you in its world. ![]() Persistently aggressive AI can be an absolute pain in the backside, true, but AI that gives up the chase too easily can be just as disappointing, if not moreso. Watching the wildlife prey on one another like David Attenborough and using it to your advantage is about as interesting (although far from dull) as Far Cry 3’s emergent gameplay gets, because in all but eradicating it’s predecessor’s oft-over-criticised imperfections it has unintentionally taken out what made that title so nail bitingly tense and memorable. With hindsight, the closest thing to an emergent story I ever witnessed in Far Cry 3 was seeing a tiger hunt a wild boar before turning its appetite onto a nearby group of pirates, which is all well and good, but pales in comparison to the epic heroics of my Far Cry 2 tale. That, my friends, is a story, and it’s beyond anything you’ll ever encounter in Far Cry 3, and not just because C4 doesn’t stick to surfaces, thus eliminating that classic tactic. Anyone unfortunate enough to not get pumped full of lead got cooked instead. After putting some distance between me and my pursuers, I pulled a 180 o turn, plastered some C4 onto the bonnet of my jeep, waited for the enemy convoy to roll into view (the AI will always find you even if you’ve broken line of sight – impossibly clever, remember) and hammered the accelerator with the intent of a head-on collision, before bailing out at the last moment and detonating the explosives on impact, the resulting explosion setting the surrounding plains alight as I picked off the remaining stragglers with gunfire whilst desperately trying to avoid the flames myself. Now, I could tell you a number of anecdotes relating to GTA, Assassin’s Creed and Fallout, or I could tell you about the time how once, in Far Cry 2, a botched attempt to sneak through an enemy outpost (like any of them are successful) turned into a massive shootout of Heat-level proportions before escalating into a jeep chase across half of the 50km 2 map. They also inject a large dose of excitement into the emergent gameplay too, and as with any good sandbox game, it’s the emergent moments that form the backbone of the oft-legendary water-cooler stories you come away with. After a certain amount of time you can’t help but begin to wonder if it would be worse off if these issues were fixed as you soon learn to accept and appreciate them as a fundamental part of the experience as the shooting and fictional African state open-world setting. It’s one of those rare releases where the faults, however deep they may root, genuinely add to it. Those preliminary hours hold some of my most frustrating gaming memories of all time, but the proceeding twenty-plus hours also hold some of my greatest, which is something I cannot say the same about regarding Far Cry 3.Īnyone who persevered through those aforementioned flaws can attest that – in a weird and twisted kind of way – they enhanced the Far Cry 2 experience. Indeed, it took until my fifth attempt at Far Cry 2 before I actually started to enjoy the title proper, and even then it was five hours in before I actually got into the swing of things. Now, let’s not start off on the wrong foot here – I love Far Cry 3, it’s just, well, Far Cry 2 is better, in spite of and sometimes because of its notorious glaring flaws: impossibly clever AI, borderline broken stealth (thanks in part to the impossibly clever AI), and outposts that replenish its supply of guards the second you turn your head away made it near unplayable for some. However, it’s true, and that’s a fact, even if you don’t realise it. Read at your own discretion.Ĭonsidering the world is singing Far Cry 3’s praises – with some claiming it to be a Game of the Year – you might read my view as somewhat controversial. CAUTION: Spoilers for Far Cry 2 and 3 lie ahead.
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