TOM FRANCIS
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Far Cry 2: What I Do Like

Last one of these, I promise. For those who don’t follow the comments, something pretty remarkable happened in the Impersonation Of A Buddy post. The guy who actually made Far Cry 2, Clint Hocking, showed up to explain how some of this stuff works and how it came to be. I say he made it – more specifically he was the creative director of this vast team of people.

He was also a designer, writer and level-designer on the original Splinter Cell, and the designer, writer and level-designer of the best Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. For that reason, and for his excellent talks, I am a fanboy of his. So this is very exciting. I can’t even conceive of the good grace it takes to read criticism of a game you made and say something other than “Fuck off.”

Anyway, I started this post first but it’s taken longer to finish because praise is always harder to nail down than criticism, and I’ve had no spare time lately. So here are the things I like next to screenshots that have nothing to do with them:

These could happily be the entire game as far as I’m concerned. Screw Far Cry 2, they could have made Convoy Intercept 2. There’d be convoys of thirty cars, convoys with tanks, convoys you have to steal without destroying, convoys where you have to kill one guy but not the other, convoys you have to scout without being seen.

I’m happy to just keep intercepting these easy three-car convoys the arms dealers ask you to, I’m just saying, I’m up for that extra Convoy Interceptin’ challenge should it arise. I like to make roadblocks, find vantage points where they won’t see me until it’s too late, or vantage points where I’ll see them from far enough away to snipe the drivers, or vantage points far enough away from the IEDs I’ve laid that I’ll survive the blast with most of my limbs.

Of course, a single hand-grenade can complete any of these missions with ease, but I like to make life difficult for myself. One time I found a tree that leant over the road I knew the convoy would pass through, and stood atop it to snipe at the drivers. I failed wretchedly because I’m what I call a Parkinson’s sniper, but I discovered on the fly that a well-aimed petrol bomb will burn out a van’s driver even if it doesn’t come close to destroying the van.

Tim describes an amazing moment in his review where his best buddy is wounded, and he’s used up all his syrettes on himself, and so she all but begs him to shoot her – which he does. I was cocky that this would never happen to me – I started out on the hardest possible difficulty mode, then switched to Medium because stealth wasn’t working. So I’ve always got 4 more syrettes than I’m counting on.

Then, yesterday, my usually reliable friend Paul had already sent up a distress flare by the time I got to him. I sniped everyone quickly, hurried to him, and injected him with a syrette. Nothing happened. “It’s.. not enough…” he moaned. I used another. “I need another…” I used another. He didn’t say anything this time. I used another. My character, without my consent, stroked Paul’s unfocusing eyes closed, and laid him down. I… I had another! I could have saved him, damn it!

This part of the buddy system really works. I didn’t even like the guy, and it certainly wasn’t my fault he got himself killed, but the moment’s rendered so physically and handled with such a gentle and unexpected “Fuck you” from the designers that it managed to affect me regardless.

I’m not talking about blowing stuff up, that’s great in every game. Every time a car explodes a little piece of me does a happy jig. I’m not even talking about when you blow something up, and that starts a fire, and that fire blows something else up. I’m talking about when, after setting that chain of events in motion, you throw three more grenades, then fire a rocket launcher at a three-car pile-up and petrolbomb a gunpowder cache. Not BOOM, but BOOM BOOM BOOM Ker-THOOM KRAKAKAAKAKA-KOOOOM phwooosh SKANG! That’s new.

This started out as a point about the scenery, but I realised I actually don’t have much to say about the scenery – it’s the baking, blazing, dazzling sun that makes it special. I’ve spent some time in Zimbabwe, and the sun in African countries is a different one. Far Cry 2 isn’t exaggerating: every time it sets, a spectacular explosion of orange light floods the world. And when it’s high, it’s all you can see, feel or think about. Somehow their tech guys have found a way to render this ubersun, it actually feels brighter, hotter, harsher than the sun in other games – especially Crysis’ feeble Maglite-in-the-sky.

There’s a river that runs through a mountain, steep rock on both sides, and every time I pass through it in the game, a part of me feels the blissful cool of the shade – the way coldness seems to radiate from wet stone in hot countries. I think one of the reasons I’m so often fawning about a game’s art and harsh on its design is that I truly don’t understand how it works. I don’t know how they made me feel that coolness, what arcane renderers or filters triggered that sense memory. But whatever they’re doing, Ubisoft, pay them to keep doing it.

I’m always in awe of design decisions that solve a problem by not solving it. How could anyone build an underwater city, Ken Levine? “It was not impossible to build Rapture under the sea, it was impossible to build it anywhere else.” Wow. Doesn’t even attempt to answer the question, but it sure shut me up.

How does my guy survive bullet after bullet, explosion after explosion, burn after burn? Well, sometimes he has to stop to pull the bullets out, cauterise the wound or, in the case below, yank a rebar out of his own stomach. Doesn’t even attempt to explain my survival, but it sure shuts me up.

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