This isn't meant as any kind of flame, but I felt that I should share my own experiences with the game along with everyone else and Ledsen's excellent post stating why he likes it seemed like a good foundation to start from.
Ledsen said:
I'll copy-paste my post from another thread here; I'd be interested in your view on the things I love about this game. The post is an answer to a guy who had only played a few hours and wondered if it would get better, which is the reason for the first paragraph.
You don't get the Dart Gun until several hours in. You probably don't understand the gameplay, you get frustrated by checkpoints, you probably don't use the boats. You still don't know that the Malaria is totally unimportant and gets less and less frequent the more you play. You don't have any weapon upgrades, you don't have the best weapons, maybe you don't understand that you can get new weapons for free at the weaons shed etc. All of these things make a huge difference. You won't "get" the game until you've played for a while. Maybe you never will "get" it, but if you don't give it a chance you'll never know. Read on.
So, why do I love Far Cry 2? First of all, The atmosphere. Far Cry 2 is the most atmospheric game ever made, and probably the most graphically impressive game I've seen this gen as well. Even after 25 hours (when the bug got me and I had to stop playing) I was still awestruck every time I started the game and stepped out into the land- and soundscape of the African savannah. It's just that incredible. I feel like I'm actually there in the jungle, fighting for my life. The trees are swaying in the wind, the foliage rustles and bends as I pass, and the lighting... I don't think I really have to say anything about it if you've played the game. Driving my jeep around at 5-6 in the morning with sunlight streaming through the trees... just wow. I can literally spend hours just walking around, mouth agape, marvelling at the world UbiSoft have created. Most people complain about having to drive everywhere. Well, I love it, because of the atmosphere. You're supposed to be slow and methodical, enjoying and immersing yourself in the world. Don't rush. Also, there are five bus stops, one in each corner and one in the centre, this is enough to make each trip to a mission only a few minutes long.
The atmosphere is probably my number one reason for loving this game, as you may have surmised. The other is the freedom. There are so many ways to do the different missions that they never, ever, get old.
I will agree that such options exist, but in my experience, they act only as precursors to the ground battle that inevitably nearly every encounter boils down to. You can't be Sam Fisher and assassinate your mark silently without calling down the praetorian guard. The AI tends to Rambo its way to the player so that a sniper crouched and hidden some yards away becomes victim to a car that rides up to them before disgorging its cargo of clone soldiers.
Much of the travel forces the player into ranging across the savannah and in advertising this big, huge world that Ubisoft has put together. But not everyone will want to play tourist. Not everyone will want to stare at the graphics for several hours before actually doing something. This is an element of the gameplay that failed to hold my attention after so long and became a bothersome exercise.
Ledsen said:
Will you go in guns blazing, running them over with your jeep, throwing grenades around you indiscriminately and hoping they won't have time to react until it's too late? Will you bombard them from afar with rockets and sniper shots before you mop up the survivors? Will you don your stealth suit, wait until night and pick them off with the Dart Gun (you can't get this until a few hours in), never alerting an enemy to your presence and hearing them mutter panicked prayers (yes, they do this) before you swoop down on them like a ghost from the darkness? Will you start fires with your Molotovs and your Flamethrower, causing them to panic and run around confused while you close in with your assault rifle, picking them off one by one? Will you sneak around them, hoping they won't notice you as you crawl through the undergrowth? If you're on a mission, will you sneak through the enemy camp, adrenaline pumping, to reach and kill your target as fast as possible, after which you run for your life, stealing a jeep and racing out of there without taking any more lives? All of these are viable tactics that you can use, and I only mentioned the ones I could come up with on the spot. You can stick to one of them, mix and match or just improvise.
I felt that the options gloss over the fact that most firefights descend into open warfare thanks to the all-seeing AI which is quite good at picking up where the shots had come from. I played through the whole game as you did and by the time I reached the twenty hour mark, I was growing sick of its omnipotence or how one-sided the world was in trying to kill me, working against the idea that there was a civil war out there. When I got the grenade launcher attachment for my jeep, I'd saturate every mission zone before moving in. I did the same thing with checkpoints because by that point, the firefights were getting repetitive and I was losing interest. Why try anything else knowing how the AI would eventually boil the fight down to?
Ledsen said:
Also, to adress the complaints: Yes, the checkpoints do suck sometimes, but you can avoid them. Only the center of the map has thick jungle, and in many other cases you can go around, either in a vehicle or on foot (which, again, gives you time to enjoy the atmosphere, look for diamonds, etc). You can use a boat, which many people seem to forget. Boats are fast, fun and give you an easy way to avoid jeeps and checkpoints. You can also drive past them in a normal car or sometimes in a jeep if you're good enough.
The enemy AI. Yes, they have hawk x-ray eyes and laser precision, which sucks, I admit. This is one of the few things I would like to change. It gets much better when you get the stealth suit (which allows you to remain unseen when stationary and crouching) and the Dart Gun (a silenced sniper rifle which is, like, totally rad, dude). Personally I enjoy the emergent gameplay so much that the AI seldom bothers me.
But the rivers don't go everywhere. They made themselves a decent alternative but only in the second half of the game for me.
Most land-based mission objectives were more easily reachable by roads, unfortunately peppered with checkpoints. Heading out into the jungle on foot is certainly an option, but not one I explored often since traveling off of the beaten path offered little else aside from
and diamond briefcases. Emerging on the other side without a vehicle only worked to make me realize how much more walking was required. And that's the thing...I want to DO something, not be forced into staring at the gorgeous backdrop simply because it's there. I'd feel more nervous if there were wildlife in the game looking to eat me, or if there was a chance I'd fall into an underground drug lab.
This is supposed to be a country torn apart by civil strife, two factions fighting each other while pretending to protect the people. Yet they will only fight you? They'll fight each other but only when scripted. A tenuous peace holds within each major city, but what about out in the wild? I've only seen one or two instances where members of one faction accidentally ran into someone else, and that was because those guys were trying to chase ME down. I also thought it was too convenient an excuse that both sides will give you a mission while always saying that their forces will also shoot you on sight.
Then there's the face-to-face with your buddies after completing a mission. They have cell phones just like you do. They even use them to contact you when they want to subvert a mission. But conveniently, they lose signal after you travel halfway across the landscape to find their lost papers, briefcase, or kill someone that has angered them, forcing me to travel back and Groundhog Day my way through more checkpoints and patrols.
The best is when a random mercenary rides up to your jeep in a car and actually takes the time to get out and shoot you. Really? The mounted machine gun or grenade launcher isn't enough of a reason to NOT do that? After so many of these, it felt as if I were watching a pre-packaged tragedy on four wheels unfold in every encounter.
I also had little choice in who I wanted my best buddy to be. Using another example from my playthrough, Singh was the first buddy I rescued and supposedly my 'best' one with the secondary as backup. In one particularly nasty gun fight, Marty Alencar rescued me and became my best buddy...which is all well and good...but I thought that my choice of Josip Indromeno would want to work with another veteran like Singh. But because of the way the game ranks your buddies (it was my turn to rescue him when he was in trouble after getting my arse out of the fire), Marty took the lead relegating Singh to backup rescuer and taking him out of the loop since he never returns to the bar. I can't call him up on my cell phone and say 'hey, let's do a mission together?'. The only solution that I could see was to 'Die' often enough to get him back into the running, but that's not an efficient option nor very believable.
Ledsen said:
So to sum up: The atmosphere and the emergent gameplay, which you will develop over time as you get more weapons and skills, triumph over the annoyances, which you will also learn to avoid and handle much better the longer you play. The good parts get better, the bad parts get less bad. This is why I love Far Cry 2
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I had something of the opposite experience. After finishing the game, and appreciating the well deserved ending, it was more out of relief that I was done with it than out of a sense that this was a prime example of emergent gameplay. I still had fun with it despite how negative I sound above, but I thought that the flaws outweigh what it excels with.
