Far Cry 2

I finished Far Cry 2 yesterday, pretty close to the 1 year anniversary of when I bought it. It took me a YEAR to finally get through this game for reasons I'll get into a little later, but first I want to put down why I think this game is so unique and rewarding.

1. The Tutorial Sequence

Annoying tutorial sections are pretty much ubiquitous in games nowadays, especially since the phasing out of instruction manuals in recent years (Metal Gear Solid is the only franchise I can think of that still has real instruction manuals). Usually you have a simple mission or objective that explains the basics to you, or sometimes the "tutorials" are hidden in the game's menus and it just drops you right into things. 

Far Cry 2's tutorial sequence is an excellent mix of both options--the game begins simply by dropping you into a cab in an unnamed African state and giving you a short tour of your new surroundings, while also hinting at some of the game's themes and systems - your route takes you past a brushfire (beautifully rendered thanks to the Dunia engine), displaced refugees, an uneasy encounter at a checkpoint, and your contraction of malaria. All of this happens before you even need to press a button.

The tutorial begins in earnest shortly after this point, and has you perform the following actions:

• Obtain weapons (FC2's weapon loadout system is explained here)
• Repair a car (you'll be doing this a lot)
• Take said car to a Safehouse, murder the men guarding it (now you know how to unlock Safehouses)
• Take a nap in the Safehouse cot to regain health and set the time of day (now you know how to save your game at Safehouses)
• Get back in your car, take it to a small enemy outpost
• Scout out the outpost with your map & monocular, tagging certain entities (vehicles, mounted weapons, snipers, etc.) 
• Clear out the post and meet your first Buddy (now you understand the Buddy system)
• At some point you'll probably pick up an enemy's weapon - at this point the weapon degradation system is explained.
• Meet the Buddy at a bar and also receive a task from a journalist (You remember the guy from earlier who nearly killed you, and recognize his voice on the tapes. You're intrigued)
• You leave the bar and notice the weapons shop nearby. You go in, an have the convoy missions setup explained to you, and also how to buy and use weapons
• Your GPS diamond tracker turns on and you find your first diamond cache
• You return to town, and you're informed that the tutorial is over. The main points are quickly recapped and missions are explained. 
• The tutorial ends with a reminder of your overall objective - "Find and kill the Jackal."

That may sound like a lot, and it admittedly gets a little overwhelming. But once you get past any initial confusion, thats it. The game's systems have all been laid out for you - now your free to do whatever you want, and there aren't any surprises like new enemy types or radical environmental changes - this is it. 

2. Emergent Gameplay

Thanks to these mechanics and systems, Far Cry 2 is pretty much the king of emergent gameplay. "Emergent gameplay/narrative" is a term used to describe game experiences (gameplay) and plot elements (narrative) that aren't authored. Games like GTA and Oblivion also feature a lot of emergent gameplay, and it's basically a buzzword for situations or moments that happen as a result of the player interacting with the game's systems. For example - one mission in FC2 required me to go to a trainyard and destroy a rail car full of natural gas. I arrived at the yard and started picking off enemies stealthily, but it wasn't long before it devolved it until a full-on gunfight. And right in the middle of things, I ran out of ammo for my rifle and was forced to pick up a rusty shotgun from one of my fallen enemies - to make things worse, I was wounded and had no way to heal up. Things became extremely tense as I crept around the area in a desperate game of cat and mouse with the remaining enemies, but I managed to take the rest out and complete the mission. My relief was almost palpable, and remember that all of that happened because I ran out of ammo. That is "emergent gameplay". 

And since FC2 is so open-ended and immersive (I forgot to mention that you have no HUD, and get around the world by navigating using a physical in-game map) it acts as a natural catalyst for these stories and moments to be created.

3. Themes and Message

Another interesting aspect of this game is your role as a player - at the beginning of the game, you choose from one of 9 different characters. The choice has no statistical difference as each character plays the same way, but the characters you didn't pick show up in the game as "buddy" characters that you can work with. What's more, these buddies will often offer you alternative ways of completing missions - and as you can imagine since you're a mercenary working for African warlords, these alternatives are usually even more morally questionable than the primary option. However, carrying out these alternatives always results in an easier mission, so you have to choose between shorter and more difficult tasks, or longer and easier ones. Incentives for working with your buddy include upgrades for your Safehouses, and increased reputation with them. Taking the "buddy way" also involves you having to rescue them from a dangerous situation - and if you don't really want them around anymore, you can murder them or just leave them to die out in the wilderness.

If the buddy system serves to reinforce your position as part of a band of morally challenged killers who only look out for themselves, the rest of the game will drill the message of "war is pointless" into you pretty thoroughly. Several times throughout the game, the warlords task you with doing something to prolong the conflict as they don't want to it end (nor do they want international scrutiny, so they arrange for token peace agreement to dispel attention from the rest of the world). Many of the missions have similar objectives to each other (drive somewhere, kill some guys, blow something up) and several times I felt like I was getting nowhere. The ending really reinforces this, as your and the Jackal's efforts achieve almost nothing. 

So yeah, Far Cry 2 is really cool. It's not easy to play and it actively pushes against you - you never feel entirely comfortable - but as you push through, the mechanics of the game are very rewarding once you put in a few hours. Just don't get it on console - the PC version is far superior.