Opinion: On Far Cry 2's 'Slow Burn'
October 30, 2008 8:00 AM | Chris Remo
[In this in-depth analysis, Chris Remo looks at fan and critical reaction to Ubisoft Montreal's Far Cry 2 to examine the emergent gameplay elements in its 'slow burn' structure that make initially frustrated gamers later become enthralled.]
Ubisoft Montreal's just-debuted Far Cry 2 is not an inviting game. Like the war-torn (and presumably fictional) African state it depicts, Far Cry 2 is brutal, sparse, and often gives you little guidance.
Right from the start, your vulnerabilities are made clear: weapons you find on the ground rust and jam; you periodically suffer the effects of malaria; damaged vehicles require basic engine maintenance; and serious injuries demand improvised surgery, often with pliers.
On top of that, combat encounters (often approached with those rusted, jamming-prone guns) are fairly straightforward FPS affairs, and with the amount of mission-to-mission driving required in the game's enormous open world, their frequency can grate.
Many gamers have gone online to post initial frustrations with the game -- an understandable reaction from the perspective of somebody unaccustomed to its structure and design ethic, particularly in the context of an FPS.
But in the week since its release, there has been an interesting phenomenon unfolding. I have seen more and more posts by people announcing that Far Cry 2 finally "clicks" with them, that they have internalized the game's structure and systems, and have been rewarded with unique, memorable moments.
For me, those have been Far Cry 2's stock in trade. Game designers often speak about the dominance of the personal player story over the designer's authored narrative. Indeed, that potential is powerful, and clearly more relevant to games than any other entertainment medium. But practically speaking, to me, relatively few games truly exploit that potential.
Far Cry 2 has been an exception. What at first seemed like unfortunate sparseness now feels to me like a canvas for emergent gameplay (those well-worn buzzwords). There's your recurring sickness; the unreliability of found weaponry; the combination of almost uniformly dry environments, video game-y inflammable objects, and fire that propagates convincingly.
The game's persistent component parts feel designed to convey a convincingly (but not flashily) coherent world, but even more importantly to increase the chances of memorable things happening.
In addition to progressing the game's main quest line, you can help out your buddies with their own tangential objectives, sabotage arms dealers' competition to open up new weapon options, or perform hit jobs for that old game chestnut, the deep mysterious unnamed voice.
I find myself constantly telling people stories about my own Far Cry 2 experience. Sometimes they involve the game's rather basic plot, and sometimes they don't. This is not something I usually find myself doing.
There was the time, very early in my playthrough, when I got out of my 80s-era hatchback to track down a diamond in the jungle using the game's No Country For Old Men-esque homing beacon, forgot where I parked the car, passed out from malaria trying to find it, and was safely awoken by the buddy character I had recently rescued.
Or the time I was patiently scouting out an enemy encampment with my sniper rifle scope and startled by nearby sudden movement, reflexively snapping my crosshairs over to the source -- and finding my sights trained on a young gazelle that had wandered out from some overgrowth.
Or the time I had just blown up an entire base in a domino-like chain reaction, with a single well-placed rocket; turning to leave, I found myself blinded by the reflection of the high noon sun on bright white sand dunes -- and out of the shimmering brilliance trotted a pair of zebras.
These events, just a few examples of the many Far Cry 2 moments I take pleasure in relating, are not even particularly remarkable in and of themselves. Part of the game's success is its sense of restraint -- another area that works against it in the short term, but for it if you decide to take advantage of what it has to offer.
Unlike its predecessor (with which it shares only the most tangential thematic bonds of environmental openness and...shooting), there are no supernatural or science fiction elements to Far Cry 2.
Certainly, the player can soak up more bullets than the enemies, and the AI is not going to win any strategic matchups, but when it comes to the setting and the feel, few exaggerated liberties are taken -- a surprisingly (and, to me, unfortunately) uncommon approach in video games.
Africa is not rendered in a particularly stylized way, and the events that take place are often only as over the top as the player makes them (and that potential is there, if you want it).
This is video game Africa to be sure, but closer to real Africa than most video games would bother to go. One doesn't really appreciate Far Cry 2's attention to detail in that regard until the time has been invested to generate enough of the unique moments that result.
Far Cry 2, headed up by creative director Clint Hocking (a vocal proponent of exploration and player-driven experiences in games), is not for everybody. It has its flaws -- the frequency at which enemies respawn, for example, is frequently and justifiably called out.
Some of its impressive features, like its self-constructing narrative, are handled quietly enough that most players may not even notice them at work. And, in the end, some may find its fundamental gameplay building blocks too repetitive to hold interest to completion.
But Far Cry 2 does succeed where many games do not -- and very few shooters even attempt to go there. On the other side of the design spectrum as the Half-Lifes and Call of Dutys (extremely impressive games in their own right), Far Cry 2 doesn't so much attempt to define a memorable experience and effectively communicate it to the player.
In fact, the game tries to define a set of rules and an environment in which memorable experiences are likely to happen, and simply lets the player loose in its world -- a fascinating prospect.
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4 Comments
I wonder if a lot of people's problems with Far Cry 2 stem from the assumption that it obeys the same rules as other FPS games, that the paths are there to follow and everywhere else is just scenery.
I rarely take the roads and only then when I'm between checkpoints. Most of my time is spending wandering through the wilderness and in doing so I've never even noticed enemy respawning and in the majority of instances I engage in combat on my own terms. It's a difficult mentality to get used to especially when games like Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 go out of their way to bring the action to the player; to actively avoiding the established path is not something we are used to doing in most FPSs.
I wonder if the moment when it “clicks” for some people is when they see that often the obvious routes are not the best and that just because a road is there doesn’t mean it should be used.
Far Cry 2 takes pains to present a world that is openly hostile and attempting to face it head on will lead to frustration and a life that is, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Justin Keverne | October 30, 2008 8:32 AM
I'm finding the game constantly surprising me, bringing things into play that I hadn't anticipated and forcing me to react. For instance, I just came from a session where I had to get a fuse from a scrap yard so I could blow up a bridge. I approached it from an unobvious angle, and found myself facing the back of a sniper. Killing him, I took his rifle and proceeded to utterly decimate the forces in the scrapyard. I swapped my rifle back out and went in to mop up the stragglers.
Or there's the time when I fired my rocket launcher and heard a scream behind me as the guy who had sneaked up on me got a face full of flames. It really is startling sometimes.
The Poisoned Sponge | October 30, 2008 9:28 AM
I've been raving on and on about this game to anyone that'll listen for ages and I think the reason I "got it" so quickly is because I played in really long, marathon sessions.
I'm also seeing all manner of people commenting and twittering about how it took them a certain amount of time to get into FC2.
Ben Abraham | November 7, 2008 5:19 PM
Your post is right on. For a game that is 95% unscripted, it has produced the most "John Woo" moments of any video game I have ever played. Yesterday I was on a mission where I was attacked by an assualt truck. It was far down the road and I had my trusty sniper rifle, so I wasn't concerned. I blew out the driver from his seat with a bullet through the windshield. When the pinto gunner foolishly dropped into the driver seat to take his place, I did the same thing to him. As the warm feeling of satisfaction embraced me, I heard the unnerving engine revving sound which signaled a vehicle attack. There was another assualt truck barrelling at me from another direction. The pinto gunner was pumping me with machine gun rounds. I managed to take him out with a single round from my rifle. As I began to set my sights on the driver (*O sh!T*) my magazine ran out of bullets. The reload animation felt like an eternity as the driver came straight at me full throttle. I began to feel panicked because one hit from the vehicle meant instant lights out. I managed to squeeze two rounds. One missed as he swerved. The second found its mark on the driver's head. I exhaled deeply as the driverless truck with shot out windshields stopped several feet from my position. It was an action movie moment, and it happened it real time. This would have been a scripted moment in lesser games, but in FC2, it happened organically. No scripting. No predetermined routes. No rails. This is why I love this game so much. Every time I play, I am treated to at least one of these *O sh!T* moments that blows me away.
pinto4402 | June 25, 2009 5:02 PM