Games I'm Playing (Far Cry 2)

Without question this is one of the most visually stunning games I've ever seen. I actually bought a whole new box from Dell so this would look as pretty as possible, and it does. The fire effects are exceptional, and it will be very interesting to see what could happen with engine licensees.

That said, again, like Fallout 3, the game suffers from consolization. Someone seriously needs to spend some time tweaking the PC interfaces of these games. Extremely minor things would make a big improvement in these games (Hi, could I have a NORTH arrow on my GPS?)

There have also been a lot of complaints about the respawning guard posts in the game and the complaints are totally valid (if a bit over-stated).

Ironically, this game actually seems geared toward taking things a little bit slowly. The (also) oft-complained about necessity for travel becomes much less of an annoyance if you just plan to go in and complete a mission or two (an hour or play or so) rather than try to chew off big chunks of the game.

I am very thankful that on the PC the ability to save anywhere exists and I do think the game would be much more frustrating without that. Though even there, at least one doesn't appear to be restricted to saving only when *not* on a mission (I'm looking at you GTA!)

Personally, I also love the fact that weapons jam. And if you pick up a weapon out of the dirt it's not going to be very reliable. It always annoyed me that you could run around in most games, grabbing guns off the ground and just going with them. Seriously, if the gun was just 'dropped' by a guy who was sent flying through the air courtesy of Grenade Airlines, or was just burned to death by a raging savannah fire, would his weapon work like it had just rolled off the assembly line? I don't think so. It would be nice to see more of a gradation in weapon quality, like those which received a baptism of fire being much less reliable than one that was dropped by a guy sniped from 500 yards away onto a clean platform, but that might be asking too much.

I haven't finished it yet, but so far, a pretty strong game once you get to the point of looking at the game as what it is rather than what you want it to be.