Looking Back At Far Cry 2

Gamasutra has an interview with Ubisoft's Patrick Redding about the development of Far Cry 2. He explains his team's reasoning behind some of the decisions they made while trying to innovate in the very well-established first-person shooter genre. Ubisoft is also trying to crowdsource a guide for the game. "We don't want to be necessarily spoon-feed everything to people, because that gets insulting. It's also tiresome if you're constantly interrupting them to remind them things about that system. I like to learn things through trial and error, and I know a lot of players are like that. But accessibility isn't just about it being easy to pick up the controls. It's also making sure that you're supporting a certain kind of readability, giving the player a certain kind of feedback. Maybe the way to put it is that it might be less a function of the kind of low-level mechanics of the game at the control level, and more about how you're using the output of the game as good feedback for the player, so they at least are clear on the causal link between what they're doing and what's happening."

Comments

Re:This. Game. Sucks.

[scalarscience]

I preordered it on Steam and am forcing myself to complete it so it's not a total waste of money (it is pretty after all with a modern gpu), but find myself cursing "Grand Theft Africa" as I watch the hours slide by and little progress being made (or apparently going from 18% to 50% completion yields....the same thing that I faced at 10% completion, just with more weapons available?)

Things that bug me:

1. In firefights having to wait for one of the (how many are there again?) *ultra-realistic* 'healing animations' that are so incredibly immersive, and yet horribly repetitive seems to me one of two sources of difficulty in this game! I know that I can sprint for cover to dig the bullet out real quick, but while taking on an airfield of badguys I can either go 'stealth' and quickload if my cover is blown too early, or face the facts: the inability to actually 'heal' when being sprayed with random AI fire in a firefight is one of 2 things the difficulty setting actually affects. Even on the 'Notorious' setting (or whatever the highest is) the enemy AI isn't very difficult to take on aside from these 2 points. But having to 'heal' yourself, what a challenge!
2. The other is apparently a 'kamikaze' sensitivity setting, which makes AI drive like tron cycles beelining it straight for me anytime I'm in view and there's a vehicle on hand for them. Turn difficulty down, they take longer to get to the cars but seem to take the same amount of damage and use the same poor tactics against me. Turn difficulty up, yay for suicidal driving! Of course if I can sidestep the car/truck in time taking them down as they exit the vehicle is pretty simple (they are suicidal after all) but that's assuming there isn't a mounted gun. They seem oblivious to the fact that when *I* use the same top-mounted guns they overheat and catch on fire before I can take down 2-3 bad guys. For them it seems to have infinite amounts of wear & tear as well as ammo...
3. (ok there's more) Its not just them mowing me down or hitting my car with small arms fire, the need to constantly repair your vehicle due to suicidal AI driving is annoying as well. I can shoot their vehicles with a top mounted machine gun, and my gun catches fire before their vehicle is even smoking. Yet small arms fire from them apparently renders my vehicle inoperable within seconds, assuming they didn't sideswipe me at 75kph while I was trying to exit my vehicle.
4. Lastly, the save system. PC users get the 'concession' of being able to save without going to a 'safe house', but quicksave will litter your save dir with HUNDREDS of save-games, rendering any attempt to view your save/load game screens an exercise in how to make a nice healthy pot of coffee...