I just finished playing Far Cry 2, a First Person Shooter from Ubisoft (one of my favorite game publishers), and I have to say I loved this game. It received decent reviews (a Metacritic score of 85), and yet I have to confess I nearly passed on this one. At first glance, it looked to me as no more than just yet another FPS. Also, user reviews weren't that great either. For example, Gamefly members rating for this game is a mere 6.4.
However, I just kept reading good things about this game here and there on the web. In particular, Mitch Krpata from Insult Swordfighting has had a lot of great things to say about this game, and so I had to see what it was all about. And boy, am I happy that I did. As it turned out, this game has joined my all time favorites list. And yet, if you asked me, it'd be really hard for me to put the finger on what's so great about this game, or why I enjoyed it so much. See, this is an extremely simple game. Very simple premise. Very plain, unsophisticated story. Standard FPS mechanics. Yet, there is some magic about this game that is very hard to describe.
The first thing that I would say is that it is a very liberating game. This is an open world game. You are thrown in an unnamed African country that is in the middle of a civil war, and are tasked to kill the guy (The Jackal) that is fueling the war by supplying weapons to both sides. Very quickly things go bad and you're left on your own, in the middle of these two factions, with only one thought in your mind: to kill The Jackal. And that's it. From there on you're free to play the game at your own pace, taking missions as a mercenary for-hire to get money for weapons and medicine - ah yes, you get sick with malaria. The environment is vast and you can traverse however you prefer: walking, swimming, by car, or by bus (which is the only form of fast-travel in the game). You can complete the missions however you want and, eventually, there is huge collection of equipment and weapons at your disposal. It just feels very empowering to play this game, and for some reason it just doesn't get old.
Another interesting thing for me is that, even though this game's strongest point is not supposed to be it's story, I felt more engaged by the story of this game than I have with many other "story-driven" games in a long time. The reason, I think, is that somehow, what happens in Far Cry 2 feels authentic. I don't know how to explain it, but I think one of the reasons for this is that it never tries to idealize the player character. You're no hero in this game. And no, you're no anti-hero either. You're a double-crossing mercenary who's only looking out for himself and with one thing in mind: to kill the bastard (The Jackal) that got you in this situation.That feels real, and it feels as an authentic story of survival.
I'm not sure I'm still making justice to this game, but like I said before, it's really hard to explain why Far Cry 2 is so good, and a lot of people might not even get it. In any case, I enjoyed this game a lot, and am really happy I gave it a chance.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
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