There were quite a few games in 2008 that a lot of us simply didn’t get a chance to play. Particularly towards the end of the year, game publishers showered upon us blessings in the form of Fallout3 (not in India, though), Far Cry 2, Prince of Persia, Left 4 Dead — the list goes on. Playing all these games in a short span of time is an impossible task. But when the opportunity to play them does present itself, grab it with both hands, for none of those games are to be missed — for their own unique reasons of course.
German developers Crytek (although the founding members are all Turkish), created something really special with the original Far Cry. The game was ground-breaking in every conceivable way — it had brilliant graphics, it incorporated elements of open-ended gameplay and it even had its own editing tool which the mod-development community could use to create maps, weapons and whole environments. So one would automatically assume that a follow-up to something of Far Cry’s magnitude would be just as brilliant right? Well, it is brilliant without doubt, even though Crytek and the original development team had absolutely nothing to do with it. You see, Ubisoft bought the Far Cry franchise from Crytek, and had their Montreal studios develop the sequel. The result? A first-person shooter right out of the top-drawer.
A Question of Linearity
What is the greatest kind of action game? Something like GTA, or is it something like Call of Duty 4? What if someone were to put both together? That’s exactly what Far Cry 2 is. I mean, that’s an extremely dumb way of putting it, but in essence, that description is pretty accurate. The game takes the best elements from both those games and fuses them seamlessly. I think the big void in the first-person shooter genre is open-ended FPS-es. Linearity works well on a lot of levels, but a linear shooter can never offer variety, and has to be ground-breaking and intelligent for it to have high replay value. Far Cry 2 is all of these things, and it’s a lot more, simply because it’s open-ended and presents a number of options, allowing the gamer to decide what he wants, and doesn’t want to do.
The Jackal
The Story in Far Cry 2 isn’t complicated on the face of things, but there is a lot of depth to it, and it paints a realistic and gritty picture of what Africa is like. The government in Africa has collapsed and the whole land has plummeted into a civil war with the two central factions UFLL (United Front for Liberation and Labour) and the APR (Alliance for Popular Resistance). People who were not able to leave are hiding in their houses, while on the streets, people are getting gunned down. If that wasn’t bad enough, more weapons seem to make their way into the hands of militias despite an embargo. What’s worse is the fact that a lot of these weapons are advanced and modern, making killing all that much easier. And there is just one person responsible for all of this: a man known only as ‘The Jackal’.
As the player, you can choose from several mercenaries to play as. Each merc has a different nationality and back-story. You can even play as Qurbani Singh, a Sikh mercenary of Indian descent. After you pick someone to play as, you’ll be given your objective: find and eliminate ‘The Jackal’, who has been
successfully hiding from federal agencies
for years.
Locked and Loaded
There’s a superb introduction to the game in the form of a non-interactive cutscene(you can look around, though) rendered using the in-game engine. Not only will you notice the great looking graphics immediately (you will need a reasonably powerful PC), you will also notice the attention to detail in virtually everything that you experience in the first couple of minutes. Once the cutscene is over, your character contracts malaria, and some more of the story is revealed to you. Once the build-up is done with, you’re let loose on Far Cry 2’s incredible environment.
Dunia
The game puts the player in an area that is roughly 50 square kilometres (rendered using the brilliant ‘Dunia’ graphics engine), in which he/she can do as he pleases, with the ultimate objective of killing ‘The Jackal’. You’ll need to work for both the UFLL and APR, who pay you in the uncut diamonds (the game’s currency), with which you can purchase weapons, upgrades and manuals (which level-up skills). You’ll also have to occasionally do some work for ‘The Underground’, which consists of priests and doctors trying to get the sick and wounded out of the hot-spots. The Underground is your only source of malaria medicine, so the missions are essential for your character’s survival. You can also do a variety of missions ranging from working for arms dealers, which unlocks weapons, assassination missions, with which you can make more cash on the side, and even working for other mercenaries, which will increase your reputation, giving you access to better gear and missions.
All the game’s elements work brilliantly in tandem, giving the player a very satisfying open-ended FPS experience. You might occasionally find some of the missions difficult, and might replay them a few times over in the same way. But the second you realise that the game is open-ended, you’ll think up new strategies to play through these sections. Few games are more satisfying and rewarding than Far Cry 2. Another common complaint is the repetitive nature of some of the missions. The thing is that each of the ‘mission types’ require to player to do the exact same thing over and over again. But this is common to quite a number of RPG games, whose elements Far Cry 2 incorporates via it’s weapon and skill upgrades. Besides, the side-missions are entirely optional — you can choose to not do them.
Verdict
Far Cry 2 is an open-ended FPS. How many games can make that claim? It’s also got
gorgeous graphics, great story and 50-plus hours of gaming in store for you. The only downers are repetitive side-missions and high system requirements.