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| Source // PlayStation |
I liked my time with Far Cry, difficult though it was, but it wasn't my first taste of a Far Cry game. That would be in the form of its sequel, Far Cry 2, developed by a different team entirely and making its way onto the PlayStation 3, where I could actually play an open-world first-person shooter.
Like other titles in the genre before and since I spent a sizeable amount of time roaming a fictional African country consumed in war, and causing just as much - if not more - carnage by my own hands. There must be something about the immersion of a first-player game that hooks me, and if it's the attention paid to the little things, then Far Cry 2 is an example of showing us how it's done.
Grab your bottle of malaria pills and pick the least rusted weapon you can find, because we're about to be thrown into the furnace.
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| Source // PlayStation |
Fond Memories
I want to start this post off with some memories. I don't know which event it was that first showed the world Far Cry 2, but the only memory to come out of those trailers and presentations was the concept of fire.
We all know about fire. It burns awfully hot and tends to spread out if you don't deal with it. We kind of know about Africa, too. Dry, hot, lots of brown grass and green trees, fuel for fires, and vast expanses of land for those fires to spread into. Why had no video game done fire like Far Cry 2 before? Was it too difficult? Were there games to have already done it but to no great fanfare?
Whatever the case, this mechanic - that fire burns and spreads - was a key selling point to me. This was the era of video gaming where 'random' events would happen in games to make them more believable. Wild animals would roam around the place, bandits would ambush you. Stories would just emerge out of the corner of your eye, be they in Oblivion, Fallout, or Far Cry. I was excited.
It's not the only mechanic, of course. I only really have general memories of Far Cry 2 - what it looks like, what its gimmicks were, and that I liked it enough to hunt down the collectables scattered around the map.
But there is one strong memory, one random event that sticks out to me.
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| Source // MobyGames |
I was on a river, in a boat, much like this scene that you see above. Somewhere on this river was a little pier, and it wasn't friendly. Most places in Far Cry 2 seem to be occupied by one gang or another, and they all want you dead. This was no different, and so I cleared them out after a minute or two of fighting. And then I heard someone crying out in pain.
I searched everywhere around this pier. It wasn't an enemy soldier, they were all dead. There were no civilians here, either, but I was hearing words. Someone was trying to get my attention but I'd looked everywhere. And then I looked up.
The river was at the bottom of a canyon, again, much like this image, and I was scrambling for a vertical route up the walls now, trying to keep this screaming within earshot. Somehow I managed it, and somehow I pinpointed the cries for help to a guy, lying on the grass, in agony. A guy I'd known. A fellow mercenary who had helped me out when I had gotten shot down, and it was now up to me to help patch him up or put him out of his misery.
How did he get here? Why was he injured? What did I do? I'm sorry to say I can't remember. The fact that this weird event happened in the first place is a stronger memory than the outcome, and now Far Cry 2 exists in my head as "that great game where this one strange thing happened..."
Let's see if we can explain that.
Fun Times
While I played the PS3 version for a great many hours, I've only got the PC version these days, which I haven't touched until now. It's a tiny bit buggy, but not to the point of utterly ruining your experience, so I read, and there are fan patches and mods to make it as great as I remember, should I need them.
For now, though, we'll stick with what we've got and pick our character. They're all mercenaries of one form or another, hardened men who are in the business for the money, probably. Frank is an obvious choice for what I hope are obvious reasons, but there are 8 more you could choose from, and it's worth remembering their faces.
I think I might have checked a setting that doesn't quite make sense, my field of view looks a little fishy. Anyway, this cab ride takes you on a brief sight-seeing tour of the world of Far Cry 2. Animals don't care about traffic, mercenaries man checkpoints, planes aren't flying in or out of the region, wildfires just flare up and burn through the wilderness. It's a lovely place, really, were it not to be solely occupied by fools and cab drivers.
As we arrive in town, our screen turns a sickly yellow as we start to fall foul of the biggest killer, malaria. With no medicine in sight, our time is limited, and we're bundled into a room somewhere as someone rifles through our belongings. Someone called the Jackal...
Well, we were close. The war will continue as the Jackal leaves us to die. He does stab a machete into the wall and leaves a gun on the table, though. Thoughtful chap. Almost like he knew what would happen next. The screen fades out, the sound kicks in, and violence erupts in the town outside. Are you just going to sit here or fight to survive?
I want you to know that I don't think I caught a single decent screenshot in my one hour with Far Cry 2, so use your imagination or go look up some videos. Our mini-tutorial begins with escaping the town, and you can go about that however you like.
Finding a machine gun and an open window, I jumped out onto a rickety metal roof and got shot at by an awful lot of folks. I shot back as best as I could, but - by design - this was a fight I was never going to win.
I come to in a storage cupboard and are prompted to press H to health myself, whereupon I stab myself in the leg and regain a point of health. Interesting choice of action, and one of many healing animations that make Far Cry 2 stand out above other games.
You'll see your character put fingers back into position, dig bullets out of their arms, pull foreign objects out of their legs... it's always gruesome, it doesn't always make sense in the context of how you took damage in the first place, but it is one of many things that makes Far Cry 2 visually distinct.
Like Dead Space, Far Cry 2 uses diegetic sources for its maps and the like, where you whip out a GPS unit and a sheet of paper, ignore the computer-generated overlays that update in real-time, and try to work out where you are in a real way.
With only two hands, we can't multitask, so the map goes back in my pocket and out comes a wrench of some description to repair the car out front. Again, doesn't really matter how it was damaged, a few turns of a bolt brings it back to life - if you can spare the time it takes to do even that.
We're asked to drive down the road to a hut we can make use of as a base of operations - a place to rest, gather a few supplies, save our progress and so on. Of course, like most places in Far Cry 2, there are a few people to deal with before we can do any of that.
The action in this game isn't flashy, not in skirmishes like this at least. I'm playing on Normal difficulty, so I'm a bit of a bullet sponge, but to a degree so are the enemy. I got through most of my magazine on three guys, and while I'm not saying all thirty rounds hit, it felt like a burst would find a home in the chest of one target, a second would be needed in the head, a third after that...
Anyway, the hut is now mine, and we can get some rest and advance time, the sunlight moving across the sky, the blocky shadows changing position. It's not an incredible looking game, I don't think, but actually, it's quite nice. Quite brown and earthy, especially compared to the first Far Cry, but believable.
The realism continued as the next mission came in over my cheap (but rugged) mobile phone. Down the road some more is a lumbar mill that needs dealing with in whatever way we please. Go and scout it beforehand with our monocular then you do you.
So I did me.
Move and shoot like an idiot and you'll die. You can't heal instantly, you don't regain health outside of healing animations, and enemies will keep shooting at you if you keep standing in front of them. If I had more information about them, I'd probably have tried to go stealthy, but I don't, so I get behind the barrel of a gun and start shooting.
Locked in a building here is a buddy, whose face will be familiar to you if you were paying attention in the character select screen. All the characters can be found in the world of Far Cry 2, and all are voiced, apart from the one you end up picking. They'll help you out in tricky situations and will provide alternative ways to tackle a mission, depending on how favourable they find you.
If memory serves, this buddy - maybe even this entire set of first few missions - depends on how you tried to escape town. Pick a different direction and fall on the other side of town and we'd be meeting a different buddy entirely right about now. At least I think that's how it worked.
Whether it did or didn't, these aren't the kind of buddies who will walk around with you, so we say goodbye and sprint back to the car before more enemies return.
One of the main factions are the UFLL, and it seems that so long as you agree to a patdown and removal of weapons at the door, they'll let anyone in to see the guys in charge. Within thirty seconds we've been handed a document and a bunch of diamonds and tasked with a mission to destroy some special forces equipment, and probably the people using it.
As Far Cry 2 is an open-world game where anything can happen, it accounts for the problem of who shoots who by making you an 'undercover' UFLL agent, so you're never really on anybody's side. The only help you'll get is from your mercenary buddies, as and when you find them.
As I'm checking the map for where to go next, my buddy (I should really learn his name by now) calls me to suggest an alternative means of approach. He says that if I just head out into the desert without a plan I might as well be going on a suicide mission. If we instead go and track like a little Belgian man in a villa somewhere, we can persuade him to call in the wrong coordinates and create some confusion in the ranks.
I like your thinking, buddy, so out comes the map and towards the blue objective we go.
Along the way, however, are a few checkpoints armed with members of who-knows-what faction. Everybody wants you dead and they aren't the sort to ask questions first. The very fact that you're in the country is enough for them to open fire, and they'll do so at checkpoints, or from the back of a truck, and once one starts firing, they won't hesitate to chase you down and bring their mates along for support.
You've got space on your person for four weapons, a pistol, a light weapon, a heavy weapon and so on. I was given an RPG, but that's not going to help me right now. I've got grenades and Molotov cocktails, too, but I don't want to set the vegetation on fire with me standing in it.
I could unload round after round into the vehicles and hope they explode, but ultimately, what happens is that I flounder around like an idiot until my screen turns red and I die. Or come incredibly close to it. Through the bloody blur, I see him. My guardian angel. My other buddy.
Getting me back on my feet while laying down some suppressing fire, he hangs around until I've had time to stab some medication into my arm. Health fully restored, weapons reloaded, the fight soon ends in my favour, and my buddy disappears.
This attention to realism, or at least to not instantly cutting to a game over screen and asking if you'd like to reload from the last save, is what makes Far Cry 2 resonate in my memory. Yeah, you should have died, you were an idiot, but people are looking out for you, and we're giving you another chance. Slow down, assess the situation, approach enemies with a bit of caution and preparation and have another go.
I can't even blame my failure on malaria.
Final Word
That was my first hour back in Far Cry 2 since more or less its release more than ten years ago. It was a little clunky, some of the controls could do with some personal remapping, and the lack of an aim-down-sights toggle was top of that list, but Far Cry 2 was as eye-opening as I remember it.
A lot of games just gloss over all of these details, but Far Cry 2 leans on them hard. Those healing animations take time. They take you out of the action because that's what happens when you use a Leatherman to dig shrapnel out of your arm. Malaria doesn't care where you are, it'll strike you down at random intervals. For the early part of the game (I think you eventually beat the disease and don't have to worry about it anymore), it's a hindrance not to be ignored, but a hindrance that in any other game wouldn't exist.
Many games limit the amount of equipment you can carry for the sake of realism, and Far Cry 2 is no different here either, but it has the added nuisance of not letting you look at the map while you have a weapon out. One or the other, just like in life (ish). Later Far Cry titles would have an ever-present minimap because that's what people expect nowadays, and you both gain and lose out because of that.
The detail and realism continue as your weapons degrade over time. Again, it's a mechanic we see to this day in many titles, but how many of those games foreshadow the impending destruction of your weapon by having it jam at the worst moment imaginable? It's getting dirty and unreliable, but it's all I've got so I'll keep using it, knowing that at some point it will literally explode in my hands.
Annoying, perhaps, but it's what makes Far Cry 2 so unique. Where other games have hands that reload weapons and throw grenades, Far Cry 2 has hands that emote. You don't speak as a character in this game, but your hands do an awful lot of talking, and what they're saying is that even with some old game design choices that wouldn't be seen today, Far Cry 2 should be played.
It's hard to explain. It's not Far Cry as you know it, but it is. It's not a hardcore simulation, but it is. It might not make a whole lot of sense, but it does try to speak to the player and get them to question what it means to exist in a place like this, in war.
In my hour of playing it again, I didn't see any failing weapons. I didn't see any emergent events. I didn't even set fire to the plant life and watch it spread out, uncontrolled. But, with a tweak of the settings and maybe a mod or two, I really want to.
Far Cry 2 is a game that anyone familiar with the genre can get into, and one that can surprise that player as well. Even with its quirky design, it stands out as one of the better Far Cry games and might be just what you're looking for it you've grown tired of what the later games in the series offer. I know I'm more likely to fire this up before touching the ones I've not played, that's for sure.
Fun Facts
Where's Jack Carver from the first Far Cry? According to Ubisoft, the players they asked "didn't know who he was [and] didn't care." As such, you're little more than a pair of arms in Far Cry 2.
Far Cry 2, developed by Ubisoft Montreal, first released in 2008.
Version played: Far Cry 2, PlayStation 3, 2008, via memory.
Far Cry 2 Fortune's Edition, PC, 2009.