Jeshibu on 15/7/2020 at 08:57
Quote Posted by Thirith
In case you haven't played it (and you probably have),
Far Cry 2 is janky, but it's the kind of jank that the
Stalker games have. It also feels distinctly different in tone from the other games. There's a lot there that is annoying, but it's definitely not the climb-tower-clear-out-camp-rinse-and-repeat loop of the games that followed.
Far Cry 2 is the kind of game that you may well hate, but if you're attuned to what it's doing, you may develop something of an obsession with it. Though if you were to play it, there are a couple of mods that make it less immediately annoying and a better version of what it was aiming for, if I remember correctly.
My problem with it was that while it didn't have climb-tower-clear-camp repeat gameplay, it did instead have those fucking checkpoints filled with assholes that would chase you in their car and force you to stop to gun them down. This combined with driving distances that would eventually inspire GTAV makes for grating gameplay with no real investment to justify the annoyance.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
The other problem is Far Cry 2. Yeah, yeah, but hear me out. FC2 is not
fun, but it had a point to make, it was definitely political, and it knew that the game making the point was going to undermine itself if the systems had no way to etch loss into the player. The buddy system gave the war a real cost because they
would eventually die; the weapons jams and malaria drove home just how desperate the world you were waging this war in was; and yet, it also delivered many of the systems that FC3-FC5 have run with to date, from fire propagation to the ecology of animal attacks. What have those games added to FC2's design? I'd argue that they've tried to wedge 'fun' in and dull the seriousness while not moving the format forward in any useful way. I haven't played FC5, and I'm not going to, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - but I'm fairly sure that you can't, for instance, permanently lose a buddy in the course of play.
What's all this got to do with Far Cry 6? The formula's four games old now (FC1 was really just a neat linear Crytek shooter), and frankly it's beginning to grate. Here's yet another politically charged scenario with a literally incendiary trailer, but surely Ubisoft will refrain from making a point about this in yet another attempt to have its cake and eat it too. But I guess we can live with that. I can get my icon hunting fix from better games - some of them from Ubisoft at that - so what's really new here? If it's a new locale, what of it? If it's more quality of life upgrades, what do I care? If it's even more icon hunting, there are better games - some of them from Ubisoft, no less - that contextualise and put more effort into the side activities. So what, really, is new apart from a generational advance? I hope there's a decent answer to it, because Far Cry as a franchise is just old, tired, and rote at this point.
What was FC2's hot take? "War/colonialism/greed bad"? There's a lot of games that say that while not making me want to throw every disc the game's ever been on into the sun.
Anyway re:FC6, I've played enough of The Ubisoft Game recently to not really care for more. AssCreed Odyssey is too damn long. And you're right, Ubisoft's pretense at taking on hot button issues in their promo material, while expertly dodging taking any sort of stance in the game itself is getting old too.
Sulphur on 15/7/2020 at 09:00
FC2's hot take is that you, the protagonist, are a stand-in for colonialism and your easy aligning with whatever sides were convenient to you were simply for personal gain that accelerated the country's rot. Colonialism is bad, and it's not a new thing not least because we've read Heart of Darkness, but that's a side that the game makes clear it takes and criticises the actors in it, instead of the non-stories of everything that came after it.
Thirith on 15/7/2020 at 09:20
Quote Posted by Jeshibu
My problem with it was that while it didn't have climb-tower-clear-camp repeat gameplay, it did instead have those fucking checkpoints filled with assholes that would chase you in their car and force you to stop to gun them down. This combined with driving distances that would eventually inspire GTAV makes for grating gameplay with no real investment to justify the annoyance.
Last time I played the game, about half a year ago, I found this to be much less of an issue, though I don't know whether that was sheer luck (i.e. it simply didn't happen as much because RNGesus loves me), the game itself had been tweaked by updates or, most likely, the mod I used (Dylan's Realism Mod). Most of the time I just raced through the checkpoints and was fine.
Starker on 15/7/2020 at 14:47
Quote Posted by henke
The last time a Ubisoft game had an engaging story was Beyond Good and Evil in 2004 and IT'S NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN AGAIN.
I actually quite liked the story in Valiant Hearts.
Sulphur on 15/7/2020 at 15:02
Thanks for reminding to play that.
Also, PoP: Sands of Time had the best most fun Ubisoft game story, and that includes BG&E. Fight me.
Pyrian on 15/7/2020 at 19:57
I just enjoyed the core gameplay of Far Cry 2 so much that all the various issues were just... Well, whatever. Like, all the checkpoints that respawn the moment you go around the corner? I was having fun with them. (Also, once you learn the waterways, and especially in the second map, you can avoid the vast majority of them if you just want to get somewhere.)
faetal on 16/7/2020 at 00:33
This thread is making me want to install FC2. Which mods?
henke on 16/7/2020 at 05:30
Quote Posted by Thirith
*cough
FarCry2cough*
(At least I think that the overall combination of gameplay, setting and story was compelling.)
Yeah, I really liked the bleak tone of Far Cry 2, but I wouldn't go as far as calling the story good. I was more engaged by the gameplay than the story.
Quote Posted by Starker
I actually quite liked the story in Valiant Hearts.
I thought someone might mentioned that one. It didn't really grab me tho, stopped playing halfway through.
Thirith on 16/7/2020 at 06:13
Quote Posted by faetal
This thread is making me want to install FC2. Which mods?
I'd go for the aforementioned Dylan's Realism Mod. It tweaks things (e.g. how likely it is that the dudes at the checkpoints pursue you) without changing the game into something entirely different. I wouldn't know any of the other mods, though I've heard good things about
FC2 Redux. There's a bunch to check out at the Nexus: (
https://www.nexusmods.com/farcry2)
Quote Posted by henke
The last time a Ubisoft game had an engaging story was Beyond Good and Evil in 2004 and IT'S NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN AGAIN.
Thinking about it, there've been quite a few Ubisoft games where I've liked parts of the story, individual characters or moments. There've been quite a few of those even in the most reviled
Assassin's Creed games for me. But when it comes to combining all the individual moments into a coherent whole, Ubisoft usually fails completely, especially in its big open-world games. It's definitely difficult to pull this off at the best of times, but I would say that Ubisoft is among the worst of the AAA developers in this respect.
faetal on 16/7/2020 at 09:14
I thought the Assassin's Creed games were good, but should have ended with Revelations rather than taking the infinite sequels approach.