nicked on 25/11/2014 at 08:07
One thing I liked more about FC2 was how minimal the UI was. There was no flagging people with binoculars, no constant markers pointing out every collectible and objective. Hell, even the minimap was an actual bit of paper you had to get out and read yourself. What it meant was that every encounter was pregnant with the possibility of emergent surprises, explosive piles that you hadn't seen catching a bullet, fire spreading in unpredictable ways and forcing you to reevaluate your strategy, the need to remain ever vigilant because there was never any way of knowing whether you'd really killed all the bad guys, or if there was one guy lying round the corner, not quite dead, pistol at the ready. The AI buddy system meant you could develop a genuine relationship with characters that in story terms were utterly interchangeable, simply because you told your own stories with them helping you out, rescuing you, being rescued, and usually ultimately dying in a way that felt meaningful to you as a player because of the completely unscripted relationship you developed with them.
Compare to Far Cry 3 which technically, on paper, is a "better" game. It's way more accessible and significantly easier. But it suffers from Ubisoft having Assassin's Creed-ified it. Far Cry 3 is way more game-y than Far Cry 2, with the minimap and objective markers flying about the place.
It has a proper story, unlike Far Cry 2's thin connecting points. But again, it suffers because of it. Rather than emergent scenarios helping you invest in the AI, you are shovel-fed a scripted story about some truly obnoxious characters acting in nonsensical ways. Rather than the subtle undercurrents of Far Cry 2 that gave you the feeling that you were just as much of a monster as anyone you were killing, without ever spoon-feeding the story or judging you on it, we get on-the-nose soap opera story beats featuring broadly-painted caricatures who only make sense in the context of a game and would be utterly unbelievable in any real world scenario (seriously, bad guys wear red and good guys wear blue?!? Come on...).
The gameplay as well seemed far more "designed". In Far Cry 2, the emergent gameplay seemed natural and came from your own actions. It led to genuine "water cooler" moments where you'd tell a story about how you tried to take out an encampment by setting fire to the grass on one side, only to find your buddy had been shot and was about to burn to death because the fire had blown in the wrong direction, or you took out a base using a grenade launcher and thought everyone was dead, but you didn't properly check, and one guy came charging in waving his AK-47 when you thought you were safe. Far Cry 3 on the other hand designed it's set pieces carefully, so all the water cooler moments were the same. "Yeah, I found this enemy base and they had a tiger in a cage, so I shot open the cage and the tiger mauled everyone in the base." "Yeah man, I did the exact same thing. Five times in a row..."
I would never hold it against anyone for preferring FC3 over FC2. It's a significantly easier game to like. But it's also significantly easier to forget. Far Cry 2 made me feel like an out-of-his-depth expendable mercenary caught in a civil war that I had little understanding of, where right and wrong were relative terms. Far Cry 3 made me feel like I was playing a first person shooter.
faetal on 25/11/2014 at 08:49
I agree with Nicked. Don't get me wrong, I really liked FC3, but once I'd made all of my wallets and pouches and what not and progressed to the second island, I lost the motivation to continue playing. The whole thing feels a bit samey after a while. That said, I haven't completed FC2 either, but I do prefer it by quite a margin. Much of it is because of the setting, but also, it feels way less gamey.
Thirith on 25/11/2014 at 08:59
IMO Far Cry 2 was closer to something like Stalker than to any of the other Far Cry games, and it's that sort of thing that I miss: the more forbidding, less eager-to-please experiences. Like the Stalker games, FC2 was flawed, buggy and at times badly designed, but it shone in ways that are rare in gaming. I wouldn't mind a game that's more in the vein of FC2 but with better polish and QA. It doesn't even have to be a Far Cry game - they can keep that name for the more fun-oriented sandboxes.
henke on 25/11/2014 at 10:03
Mmm, yes. Good points nicked. I'd forgotten how much I liked the AI buddies until just now. And the minimal UI was great as well. I still think FC3 & 4 are just as open to emergent gameplay though. There's still as many random elements like spreading fire and guards/wildlife in unexpected places that force you to think on your feet. Plus they give you a lot more tools to deal with any given situation than FC2 did.
And FC2 is certainly less gamey than the later entries, which I'm split on whether it's a good or bad thing. I don't love the indicators and seeing enemies through walls and having all the baddies draped in distinctive red clothing, but I also don't think the games would play as good as they do without all that stuff.
Thirith on 25/11/2014 at 10:27
@faetal: I don't think it's about what is inherently better. They're two different approaches, and each has its benefits. It's just that the more gamey approach of Far Cry 3 and its successor are more common IMO; it'd be great if there were more variety in the different approaches.
faetal on 25/11/2014 at 11:23
I'm only really speaking of my preferences.
Tony_Tarantula on 25/11/2014 at 22:57
Quote Posted by henke
Tony, have you
played any of the CoDs? Last one I played was MW2, and it had a campaign that took you from one part of the world to the next with pretty much every single level. It starts off in some shanty town, then it's in Russia, then a brief interlude in space, then some suburbs in America. All with amazing production values. It's probably true that the gameplay doesn't change much from game to game, but to say that "minimal effort" goes into these games is just not true.
Actually yes, I did.
Note that I didn't say "all COD's", merely that the franchise is an example of that business strategy. You can notice a sharp drop in the amount of effort that went into the series after MW2, with a spinoff series that was outsourced to a cheaper studio and beginning with MW3 the series started to heavily re-use assets from previous titles. Black Ops 2 even recycled in its damn cutscences.
henke on 26/11/2014 at 06:20
Ah. I'll have to take your word for that.
Yeah FC4 does reuse some assets. Only place it really bothers me is the cars. There's a new van, but besides that these pickup trucks and cars mostly look the same as they did in FC2 and 3. What I wouldn't give for a Trans Am. Get some Smokey and the Bandit action going with the Royal Army.
faetal on 26/11/2014 at 08:42
[video=youtube;vrzLg2M1KP0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrzLg2M1KP0&t=1m16s[/video]
froghawk on 26/11/2014 at 14:04
The only FC I've played after the first one is Blood Dragon, and while I really enjoyed it for the brief time it lasted, I can't imagine wanting to play hours of that without the humor and cool setting. The gameplay didn't seem emergent to me - just repetitive. If they release a similarly creative DLC for this one then I'll probably check it out.
