FarCry2

Why does just about everyone in this game want to kill me? I know travelling in these small African nations can be dangerous, but this is just ridiculous!

Can't we just talk about this? Work out some mutually beneficial arrangement? Like if I have a crate of beer, I can go through your checkpoint? Or you give me a stamp on the back of my hand and it's all sweet?

Do I really have to slaughter you all repeatedly (with my sniper rifle) every time I want to pass through?

As you might have worked out by now, Farcry 2 is about as far from real as you can get. But, when you deck yourself for a night mission with silenced weaponry, attack an entire village with your blade alone, or strap bombs to your car for an explosive 'leap from the car attack', you won't really care.

Who needs real life? The world is so much cooler when I can fix every vehicle with one tool.

I think you are met with this hostile behavior because invincible "Puki" travelled the same roads before you, dressed in the same cloths.. ;)

I'm seriously thinking about buying this, but should I get it for 360 or PC, I have a 4200+ athlon with a 3850 ati card.

Pure FPS so I would still go for PC on this one, my current rule for FPS games is that if I can run it w/o a hardware upgrade then PC other wise 360. Although TBH I've played so many FPS games over the last 5 years or so I've not much appetite for another one. I already have "Bad Company" to play for the 360 (on loan from a friend) and it's been sat on the shelf for 3 months.

Darkheart

I didn't like the demo of bad company on 360, felt like I had no real control. Call of duty games have spoiled me.

Get the PC version of FAR CRY 2 as it is much better than Either Console!

I know what you mean about everyone wanting to kill you. I find that a bit annoying too. I also find it annoying that no matter what time of day and what weather, the guards are 100% alert and can see you creeping up from 300m away. Their movement AI is pretty good (apart from driving - eesh!) but they're also blind stupid and keep on attacking even when you're clearly going to kill them. It would be cool if the last guard standing got scared and tried to run away, things like that.

After Fallout3, this game is irritating me. I've come to the conclusion that some form of fast travel is essential with these big sandbox games - I seem to be spending most of my time driving in FarCry2..

There's not enough payback for the effort of driving right across the map and taking out a difficult position. After winning a difficult fight, I enjoy finding some good loot. But in this game, it's always diamonds. The enemies drop weapons, but the game makes sure these found weapons are usually near to broken.

Also, what's the point of telling me I've 'scouted' an outpost/checkpoint if it's magically restocked with guards a half hour later??

And just how many bullets can a guy in a singlet take to the upper body before falling over? Quite a few apparently.

Surely its more fun to just slaughter everybody?

Well, its most fun to drive through their camp and experience an interesting car chase. It's a shame they don't seem to radio ahead for help or anything, though; it's too easy to escape them.

Car chases would also be more interesting if friendly NPCs were more friendly and more helpful. Like, got in a jeep with you and shot out the window or the like.

I have my issues with FarCry 2, and it definitely isn't perfect, but it must be said that the thing has outlasted Spore on my hard drive by a significant amount. Escuse me while I go and cry in a corner about the Spore that never was :(
On another note, The Witcher has outlasted both of them by ten fold.

Eh, too much complaining about nothing. The game is brilliant. Sure, there's a bit of driving and walking, but honestly I find that refreshing in an fps. It's a guilty pleasure "take the badguys out any way you want" game, and Farcry 2 does it better than anything else before it.

I've had the experience a couple of times now, where I've done just that - driven through the checkpoint and they've come after me in a jeep with mounted machine gun. I've stopped, they've collided with me and I've changed position to the mounted machine gun and poured enormous amounts of lead at the machine gun guy. But he seems to be able to take this as the machine gun itself (or its slim column) seems to have fully protected him from my bullets - or the driver while getting out of the car - is invulnerable.

It's all a matter of 'granularity'...

You're right Picklesworth, it's not perfect, but it hasn't stopped me going back to it again and again...

Ok - I've started doing more missions from the faction leaders in Pala and it's getting more interesting.

Also, there is a 'fast travel' of sorts - the bus stations allow you to 'teleport' between them, which can make getting around a bit quicker.

Completely agree - from what I understood about the game, it appears to have been dumbed down and 'cutesified' in order to appeal to as broad a playing base as possible.

I quite enjoyed the microbial stage but the rest left me cold.

Heh Spore was pretty much exactly what I imagined when I read the spiel and married it with current technology. The way the game turned out was quite predictable. Just liked the Black & White and B&W 2, and to some extent Fable.

In Fable I was looking forward to seeing trees grow over time, suntans and hair cuts. In the end there was nothing new in the game despite being a solid and fun if lightweight RPG.

I would have prefered B&W if it had been more like the business end of Total war, without the diplomace etc, and a big titan pet to lead your armies to battle. Instead in Spore and B&W we get simple games that try try and bridge the gap between casual and hardcore and fail miserably on both counts.

I kind of like Far Cry 2, if they could have reduced the spawning or invented a reason for people to move back in over time at least in key positions in the map it would have been way better. Half of Africa is in civil war and yet they kiss and make up whenever you walk on the scene, they all join up against you at every opportunity.

It is a shame because with a bit more effort they could have made great steps to improving the game.

Also, regards FarCry2, I've lost track of the ins and outs of the story and don't really care.

Much of it seems to be 'go out and kill A, who will be replaced by B, who you'll kill at the request of C - at a later date'.
The buddies are a good idea and could have provided a bit more of an emotional 'hook', but they're really just extra lives and mission dispensers.

Anyway looks like I'm up to the final mission. No doubt it'll all be solved by my killing X.

Yeah but when you take away all the wandering around and graphics away thats pretty much all any game is these days. Fallout, Oblivion, WOW, all are pretty much the same thing. Simple linear gameplay mechanics in a free roaming world where most of the rest of the game might as well be MGS FMV if you don't like shooting randomly generated enemies.

Yes - most sandbox games take the form of a 'smorgasbord' of game events triggered by the player wandering around a virtual landscape. A thin layer of player choice and some low-level emergent gameplay helps to hide the game's machinery.

Not many games out where the world is modelled as an independant dynamic system that the player has to sink or swim in. X3 is one that comes to mind, although (to me) it came across more as a tricky spreadsheet with a space sim frontend ;-)

The point of sandbox games is that there's freedom to make your own fun. And, there's a lot of 'free choice' fun to be had in Farcry 2.

That is why I have had Operation Flashpoint on my hard drive since 2002.

I was hoping that Far Cry 2 would provide the same experience but from your descriptions, that doesn't seem to be the case.

FC2 is completely different to Opflash. I'm a huge Opflash fan also, but I'm glad FC2 is different. It's less serious, more (as mentioned above) guilty pleasure orientated.