As the hype cycle for Far Cry 5 begins its spin cycle, there is one type of comment that I can count on seeing whenever the latest trailer is being discussed: How frustrating/bullshit Far Cry 2 was. I totally understand this point of view (because the game is absolutely unforgiving which can be grating), but I have a problem with the common examples people cite for this position, like:
- "Your guns would jam all the time but it never happened to the enemies."
- "Your character suffers malaria attacks which can literally kill you if you don't have any medicine, which you have to keep track of."
- "Once you drive outside of a town, literally everyone you encounter shoots you on site."
- "Every time you clear out an enemy outpost and drive away, the enemies would instantly respawn 30 seconds later. Makes no sense!"
Now, there are a lot of things I wish I could change about Far Cry 2. I wish I could fix the hilariously sped-up dialogue that sucks all the gravitas from the plot whenever you have to actually talk to an NPC. I wish I could alter the driving behavior of the vehicles, which all seem to have been designed to get bottomed out on the smallest possible impediments. I wish I could cut some of the main faction missions so that the actual plot of the game doesn't disappear into a hazy jungle of indiscriminate war crimes so quickly. The difference between my complaints and the common criticisms I see levied against this game are that most people have problems with fundamental systems (weapon degradation, the checkpoints) whereas I am fine with those as they are and mostly just wish more time to polish the overall experience would have been available to Ubisoft Montreal. The reason I'm pointing this out is so that you can plainly see that I am biased towards liking this game and treating its decision with some charity. So let's go through these complaints, starting with the easiest:
"Every time you clear out an enemy outpost and drive away, the enemies would instantly respawn 30 seconds later. Makes no sense!"
This is a very strange thing to hold against the game in my view. Far Cry 2 is an open world shooter, so of course you can expect to spend most of your time invoking stand-your-ground laws on foreign soil. Shooting = content in this game, so the infinitely respawning checkpoints doesn't seem that egregious, especially since the game does have an actual end to the campaign that forces you to begin a new game or load an older save file if you want to continue your mayhem. Yes, it is frustrating that the checkpoints re-populate basically the moment they are out of your field of vision but we have to remember that this was 2008. The only other open world shooters the team had to go off of was the original Far Cry - the first S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game and Crysis wouldn't drop until 2007.
People are definitely less forgiving of this system now that Far Cry 3 and 4 showed us how the concept of these checkpoint/outpost areas that were secluded little combat arenas could be handled (along with a change in the random patrol encounters) that were much less stressful. Although I would like to point out that one of the solutions discussed by the FC2 team was to have the checkpoints never re-populate, which is what happened with the outposts in FC3 originally, before everyone realized how boring open world shooters are when there are no enemies left.
"Once you drive outside of a town, literally everyone you encounter shoots you on site."
This seems like kind of a strawman but it really is something I have seen repeated often. I suspect this is more offensive to most peoples' suspension of disbelieve - it's just very "game-y" to them that every enemy would be immediately ready and willing to gun the player down. But... you're a mercenary, just like them. Doing bad shit, just like them. I dunno, maybe this one is dumber than the checkpoint respawns thing.
Another thing that people mention that is related to these checkpoints, is the frequency with which you are forced to blast through the same checkpoints during a single mission. This is a bit more subjective and problematic as just having to get through 1 more checkpoint on the highest difficulty can mean 30+ minutes of lost progress, which sounds sufficiently blood pressure-raising to be pretty memorable. Personally I can only think of 1 mission that 100% forces you to slog through the same checkpoints multiple times, but I can understand people who feel that this happening at all is ridiculous. Luckily the environments are designed in such a way that you can often juke or sneak past checkpoints (especially at night), but this would require you to get out of your vehicle, look at your map, and figure out the best route. Maybe too much effort than many are willing to expend.
"Your character suffers malaria attacks which can literally kill you if you don't have any medicine, which you have to keep track of."
This one is a bit tricky. I'm curious to know whether most players who stick with FC2 just go about their business believing that they have a finite supply of medicine or clue in to the fact that your medicine is actually infinite for the vast majority of the game. Yes, you actually have infinite medicine while out in the world, free roaming, on a mission, whatever. The only times (that I know of) when the game actually puts a limit on your medicine supply is after a certain threshold of main story missions have been completed, usually after 3 or so. At that point instead of having the option to pick up another main mission or a side quest, you will be forcibly given a mission to "find someone who can provide medicine", which is marked on your map.
Aside from that, the malaria attacks are pretty widely spaced (1 every 45 IRL minutes) so it's unlikely you will experience more than 2 during a single session. Even if you are caught without medicine (this is a very difficult scenario to engineer by the way), if you pass out you just wake up at the church in Pala or Mosate Soleo, depending on how far along you are. That said, I'm not sure how successful this mechanic is in the end, since you either 1) have medicine and thus can just ignore it or 2) don't have medicine and lose a lot of progress for kind of shitty reason.
"Your guns would jam all the time but it never happened to the enemies."
The magnum opus of Far Cry 2 message board criticism and the grievance I have the least amount of sympathy for. It is frustrating that the enemies don't suffer weapon mishaps like the player but to me its just another gameplay element that contributes to the generally hostile atmosphere of FC2.
I really want to emphasize the amount of work the game does to shield you from this mechanic. The opening tutorial of the game explains that weapon stores always have an infinite number of "clean" copies of your bought weapons so you can never run out. The game's currency, diamonds, are scattered everywhere around the world, frequently in pretty in-the-way areas so you won't ever be hurting for funds to buy guns with. And then the guns themselves reflect their level of wear and tear visually: the longer you keep any 1 single weapon on your person while putting it through regular use, the grimier and dirtier it will get. In addition to the weapon stores you can buy storage crates for your safehouses to house singleton copies of weapons that are available out in the field, further reducing the need to rely on a single dirty AK for multiple missions. And if your gun gets super rusty and totally disintegrates? Yeah, it sucks and you could die. But you will probably also have to dive for that rifle that guy you just killed dropped, which will probably jam at the worst possible moment, forcing you to toss a molotov as a distraction that ends up causing a brushfire that sets off a nearby ammo pile, etc. The emergent gameplay possibilities are endless!
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My intent with this wasn't to put the "cajualz" on blast for not liking the thing I like, just to vent a bit about the common complaints I see leveled against this game and how most of it is really overblown. Of course you are totally 100% within your rights to continue not giving a shit about Far Cry 2 (mea culpa: it took me over a year to even consider playing Nier:Automata) but hopefully this makes at least someone consider it or even just doing some more research on it before writing it off completely. Especially if you are bored to tears of the modern, whistle-clean Far Cry franchise as it is now.
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