An open letter to Far Cry 2 players
by phill
photo credit: shanewarne_60000
EDIT: Since a lot of people seem to be making their way here as a result of looking for ways to ‘scout guard posts’, I’ll tell you: you just need to find the medipack dispenser, ammo or fuel pile and walk up to it. There’s one in each guard post and that will change it from being locked to being indicative of what you can find there. Good luck, and now onto my rant.
Dear Far Cry 2 participant,
First let me make it clear that I am writing this letter to save you from yourself. No doubt you have already chosen your main character from a swathe of (admittedly roughly cobbled together) mercenary personalities and ridden the traditional story-based FPS landscape tour to its Malarial conclusion. You’ve probably even completed the first mission, taking time to marvel at the way fire spreads and consumes everything, and the majestic bloom of an LPG container explosion. Having bought some trust from the local power wrestlers, maybe you’ve taken on a few missions, upgraded your weaponry, and enjoyed the pleasure of killing a bunch of Africans for the fun of it.
It’s all incredibly detailed and fun, but there’s something that’s bugging you. Something that threatens the enjoyment of this game. You’re wondering what it is that could be throwing your groove. Could it be the voice acting? No, that might be rushed and the dialogue relatively uninspired, but it does its job. Could it be the A.I.? Well, they may get stuck on walls occasionally, but that just gives you more of an opportunity to investigate the behavioural effects of fire. What could it be then, this tick under your skin? I’m here to tell you.
It’s the pace of the game.
Unlike most FPSs Far Cry 2 is not a game where you can make speed your priority when getting from A to B. No no, you must make being alive your priority. There are checkpoints, snipers, road patrols, sandbagged turrets, fires, viruses, dehydration, exploding radiators, weapons convoys, and of course the very rich, very influencial arms dealer who has persuaded every single person in the country to want you dead. To put it lightly, you are going to have to be rather careful. Gunning your buggy through a waypoint because you can’t be bothered getting out and taking care of business? Not the way to play this game. You can and will scout every single guard post and then plan the best way to get through them. Or you will die*, as simple as that.But never fear, there is a joy to a perfectly executed ambush or assault, when the fire that you’ve started half a click away sweeps in to scatter the guards, and you snipe two of them before moving in with a shotgun to blow the legs off the remaining few and watch them desperately prop themselves up against a shed to try and take you out with measley pistols. It’s poetry, really. And it makes getting to the objective that much sweeter to know you’ve left a trail of the weak in your wake.
Far Cry 2 is a procedural sandbox game. The guys that designed it had to take into account everything a player could do to try and make it sensible for the player to interact with it. That means that respawn times can be a touch high, and the road patrols can get a little annoying. But would you rather be stuck out in the middle of the desert trying to run to your objective after being ambushed, than have to take out a machinegun-toting jeep to get yourself some wheels? The notion of survival is enhanced by the ability to only save your games at safehouses (in the XB360 version, in the PC version you can quicksave, but I wouldn’t get in the habit), lending further to the need to preserve yourself. It’s a harsh landscape, and a harsh game on the more difficult settings, and personally I like it. FPSs have gotten away for too long with the run and gun mechanism, and it’s good to see the Far Cry tradition of more thinking gameplay being continued.
So please. Do the game justice. Don’t race around trying to do everything at once. Take your time, enjoy the moments of astoundingly rendered beauty present in this game, and adjust your all-guns-blazing technique for something a bit more subtle. I promise you’ll enjoy the game a whole lot more than if you smeared yourself in baby Rambo oil.
Sincerely,
Phill
*This statement applies only to those people that play games on the hardest difficulty, i.e. the way they’re meant to be played, softies.
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Comments
That’s all well and good, Phill – my big problem with that is the respawing of the guardposts (and enemies in any area) once you’re out of eyeshot… Completely kills the immersion and somehow takes away from the reward you should feel when taking out the guardposts.
If I take the trouble to wipe out a few posts along a road on the way to my mission should’nt I be rewarded with an easier trip back – at least for the next day or two (game-time). Otherwise performing an action without reward simply gets tedious… (Why or why do game devs not realize this fact yet?)
I do like most of the elements of the game (but the AI needs work) but that one thing so far (after only playing for several hours) is already starting to hamper my enjoyment of it…
It’s a good point, I’d like to see someone mod the game to reduce the respawn time. Or perhaps add some element such that if you raze a guardpost to the ground (including ammo points/medic packs) the guardpost wouldn’t respawn so quickly. The downside being that you wouldn’t have the convenience of ammo/gren/health points around the map.
Not long after writing this rant (maybe four or five hours of play time), I did start to get a little bit tired of the whole guardpost thing, so I can sure appreciate your point. I dare say by now some enterprising modder has already done the hard work for us and written something to take down the spawn times a notch, but like you say, developers should realise that repetition does not equal gameplay, even in such a variable environment.
Thanks for taking the time to comment mate, now get your hands on Fallout 3 for something a bit different if you haven’t already :D