![]() ![]() What’s more, they often did this at great personal risk, even to the point where they would could die permanently during a firefight. If you died in a fight, they would essentially act as an extra life, picking you up, dusting you off, and then fighting alongside you until the coast was clear. A major feature of the game involved rescuing other mercenaries from the country’s military factions, and these mercenaries could then be recruited to fight alongside you. There are a couple of reasons that Far Cry 2 is worth returning to, however. Much like the first Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry 2’s biggest flaw is how its missions are overly formatted, offering little in the way of variety beyond what the player creates themselves. The constantly respawning checkpoints is the most obvious of these, but the sequels are also much better at smoothing out Far Cry’s feedback loops. The later games in the series have added more weapons and equipment, introduced much more visually appealing environments, and also sanded off some of Far Cry 2’s rougher edges. The biggest problem with Far Cry 2 is that many of its most interesting features have since been refined and improved by its sequels. This would often result in me having to relocate a limb or put out a fire somewhere on my virtual body, but that didn’t stop it from being an effective way of clearing out checkpoints. One of my favourite tricks was to chuck some C4 into the back of my car, drive it straight into a checkpoint, leap out and then detonate the explosives. I think many of the criticisms of Far Cry 2 are reasonable, but pointing out the inconvenience of being struck by malarial fever in the middle of a gunfight misses the point in at least two different ways.Īll of these little details were designed to feed back into Far Cry 2’s emergent combat, to create scenarios that allowed players to plan their approach, but still had the capacity to surprise when the lead began to fly. The fact that your character had Malaria and would have to take pills when symptoms appeared was one frequently aired grievance, even though all that’s required of you is to stock up on anti-malarials every few hours and take one when symptoms arose. It’s hard to stress just how incredible this stuff was at the time, and why I still find it annoying that some people complained about it. When you get shot by an enemy, you have to physically pull the bullet out of your leg to heal. When you shoot an enemy, they’ll reel back and yell ' Ah fuck, I’ve been shot!'. ![]() When you start a fire, it spreads across the game’s arid grassland realistically. When you bring up the game map, it’s a physical map that you hold in your hand. When you get in a car, you physically climb into the seat. This little animation also clues into Far Cry 2’s overarching design philosophy, which was to produce an open world shooter that was as seamless and immersive as possible. Hence to see your Far Cry 2 character reaching out and interacting with objects like that was really powerful. It was amazing! Before 2008, in most first-person games doors would magically open when interacted with, as if the player was controlling them telekinetically. But my overriding memory of experiencing the game for the first time is that the player-character would open doors with their hands. There are loads of different elements of Far Cry 2 that I love, and I’ll talk about them in due course. It casts you as a mercenary who arrives in the country on a mission to track down and kill an arms dealer known as the Jackal, who has been fuelling the conflict by arming both sides. Not simply because of the many innovations it introduced which later entries would improve upon, but also because it’s a game that actually has something to say, rather than merely pretending it does.įor those of you who don’t know or who have simply forgotten in the interceding decade, Far Cry 2 takes places in Africa, specifically a fictional central African state ravaged by civil war. I do, however, think that it is the most important one. Personally, I agree that Far Cry 2 isn’t the best game in the series (that would be Far Cry 3). Some people maintain that it is the best game in the Far Cry series, while others despise it so much they’d like to go back in time and erase Clint Hocking’s memory if they could. You’ll struggle to find a game that has such polarised opinions on it. Division has been Far Cry 2’s enduring legacy. ![]()
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