1821

Yeah, I went up to a cell phone tower because it had a little ! once and no hand icon came up over the box, didn’t receive a call. Maybe I screwed myself over there.

1822

But those come from the main missions when you work with a buddy (we think), not from the side missions the buddies initiate.

1823

I think the buddy reputation affects how quickly they can come back and save your arse if you go down in battle a little bit later. I can not be completely sure, but I know I would be suprised on occasion walking into a safehouse and unexpectedly seeing a buddy there.

And while talking about things with the game we don’t like. I didn’t mind the respawning checkpoints. Most of the time, I decided to avoid them. The game’s focus was on realism, and I was thinking, if I was effectively outgunned, would I really want to risk my life getting shot to bits by being an prick and storming their little teaparty? The revelation came to me one day when I came across a checkpoint. I was on a hill, looking down at them. I had the really awesome sniper gun (the black one), because I liked the way it sounded when fired. Anyway, I am crouching there, scoped in, ready to headshot a guy taking a casual leak, when I thought to myself “what’s the point?” It was a bit like an epithany. From there on, I avoided them where I could, unless I really needed the ammo or grenades.

But what I didn’t like was the weapon loadout system. Maybe it was to balance gameplay, but what I would have preferred was to be able to select up to three/four weapons, with some sort of limit imposed. If I wanted to walk around with four handguns, then I should be able to, right? And being able to dual wield would have been nice. And throw knives.

1824

I probably was just on a mission when trying to activate the assassination towers. They seem to work fine now. shrugs

Still liking it, but since I do a lot of side quests between each main mission, I end up retreading a lot of ground.

1825

I wonder if I should revisit this game, I never got very far due to the dislike of the in game driving.

1826

Then no. There’s lots of driving. Lots and lots.

1827

You don’t have to drive if you don’t want. There’s the boat and the bus.

1828

I have the same problem in Crysis. In Far Cry 2 I use the 360 controller, so I like the driving. But in Crysis the control scheme on the 360 controller is unusable, so I mostly try to avoid driving. In that game I use Maximum Speed to get around faster. It isn’t as fast as driving, but at least I’m not pressing W to drive around roads. Ugh.

That could work. Though he’d miss out on some pretty cool stuff. Like when your vehicle gets upgraded and you get to drive around with a “Thunk (Boom) thunk (boom) thunk (boom)” gun. God I love that thing. But I can see how driving in Far Cry 2 would suck if I had to use the keyboard.

1829

I like driving and I use a keyboard. I guess you might have a bit more fine tune control with analog, but as long as I’m watching where I’m going it’s usually not a problem and when it is, I feel like I’m fighting the environment rather than the controls. Well, except for when damn rocks jump in front of me when I plow through a bush. Those rocks are quite rude.

One cool thing I like is how your buddies gain history with you when they rescue you, not just when you help them out. I thought it was neat, though originally I misunderstood what it meant by history as I assumed I’d learn more about my contacts as I got more “history.”

I really like how reactive the environment is, even if it isn’t as dynamic as Crysis (probably) at least Far Cry 2 runs great on my system. Crysis barely ran at super lower resolutions (1280x1024 or 1024x768) on my machine. Nothing like throwing some motlovs to catch the guards with burning dry grass or looking over the blackened charred spots after a fire fight.

I do kind of wish a company had the balls to do what Far Cry 2 does here with the environment, but then also go for realistic damage modeling on the enemies (inspired by the infamous soldier of fortune). Doubt it will ever happen though. You’re painting a target on your game.

I do wish I had started on the difficulty above normal, as normal seems a tad easy.

1830

my issue with driving was the behind the wheel perspective, I forget if you can do like a 3rd person over head, I am gonna reinstall and give it another shot before Civ 5 comes out. I do remember the game looking damn good.

1831

This is one of those moments when I wish we had a ‘like’ button. Except for the fact that I freaking love this.

-xtien

“What’re you gonna do with all that money…?”

1832

That’s really creepy Dingus. Do you stalk the game forums looking for movie references? You don’t actually play games right? :)

P.S. Off-topic tit-bit: After lurking at Qt3 for 2 years, what finally got me to try to register with the forum was a Sorcerer thread in the Movies sub-forum. Sorceror was a movie I caught at random on either TBS or TNT. I’d never heard of it, and I was kind of blown away by it at the time. I’d never even met anyone else who’d heard of it until that thread at Qt3.

1833

There’s another thing about FC2 that was pointed out to me in a talk at GDC by Anthony Birch.

SPOILERS

In the final battle, there can be as many as 5 or as few as 2 of your buddies opposing you. So, if you kill your buddies before they go MIA, you will make that final battle easier for yourself. You can meet a maximum of 8 buddies in the game.

So if you kill your buddies, the first three you kill wouldn’t have betrayed you. You have to kill at least three before you start whittling down the number of guys at that last battle. So being evil makes your life easier, but you have to be pretty evil before you start to see any benefit from it.

1834

I still consider this the best sniping game ever made. Not because of the technical details of the sniping, but the combination of atmosphere, the way the world is laid out and open nature of it combined with careful attention to detail by the designers, and the AI, which is simply wonderful. The fact that they hide, dash behind cover, try to flank you carefully and use concealment, plus the fact that they try and rescue their buddies and when wounded can even hide behind things slowly bleeding to death is awesome just makes for a great sniping game.

1835

The gunplay really is superb.

… I almost want to play it again after playing some console shooters.

… … ok, reinstalling.

1836

Just bought the good sniper rifle tonight and switched up my loadout. It’s nice doing assassination missions from the next zip code.

1837

The dart rifle is my favorite. Sneaky death from afar and no one even knows where it came from, though the range is a little shorter. I took down a whole compound with the dart rifle.

1838

I love that in some locations you can pull off the assassination through your lens without killing anyone other than the target. Awesome sauce :)

1839

Ya, I really like using the iron sights and the way muzzle flashes obscure your view. It really adds tension to the battles. Everything about this game is just done so well.

1840

Thats why I’m surprised we haven’t heard more about a sequel. Did it really not sell that well?? Its almost been 2 years now, and its still only a vague “yeah FC3 will happen. Probably Africa again, maybe some Antarctica levels…”

Problem is, its Ubisoft, meaning it’ll come out with that rotten DRM, so I will seriously need to look at the console version, though I’d hate to move away from M+K controls.