I've only played a tiny bit, but it's fun so far. I'm not sure exactly what play style I'm supposed to aim for, as you can stealth your way up to bases but then everything's out in the open, so I guess it's geared towards surprise raids.
I haven't checked to see if I need to patch the Steam version, but there are some further tweaks I can make with the Far Cry Configurator to draw distance and stuff. I remember Dan having to do that even back at release. I'm going to try to utterly max everything out, see what happens. For now it's not as gorgeous as I remember it looking, but it's already impressive in the amount of foliage and openness. It's really cool getting your objective marker, using binoculars to tag all the mercs, then plunging into the undergrowth and wading through rivers to sneak in from the side.
This is another game with autosave only. It's probably necessary to stop the player from save-spamming their way through and to properly consider their approach, but it does also serve to discourage being too careful because crawling prone through the jungle takes a while and you don't want to do that every time!
As for the gameplay change about halfway through, I remember it being really cool at first, with some great moments like realising the Trigens can jump across stairwells at you, but the bigger bullet-sponge guys later on aren't so fun. I certainly don't expect to get to the end of this game!
-
I'm really enjoying this. There are the occasional annoying moments when it forces you into a shitty situation, but by and large the 'take any approach' style works really well. I'm currently stuck trying to hit an exceptionally tough camp, so I've put it down for a while to recharge my patience levels.
It looks especially lovely now I've tweaked the advanced settings a bit more. Birds flock in the distance while hoverflies buzz past your nose, and it's really well-designed so everywhere you look you get a striking view. Also, the cheesy 80s acting from Jack and the mercs is brilliant.
-
I'm playing on normal, and currently finding it tough but manageable. I've encountered a few Trigens now and it's actually a nice change of pace. You go from hunting mercs in the jungle to firefights with them in big maintenance bunkers to monsters leaping at you in science facility corridors. It's gone from a Lost vibe to a Jurassic Park vibe.
I've been itching to get back to it, which I haven't had with a game for while!
-
It's getting very tough now, the Fat Boys have shown up amongst other things. Judging from a walkthrough, I'm only on mission 11 out of 20. I'm definitely not going to make it to the end!
In fact, I'm actually not sure how much of this I'll continue on for. It's regularly turning into a corridor shooter now, and now the trigens are outside it's not so stealthy there either. I wouldn't mind but they are really tough - you could often get face to face with a merc or two and scrape through, but get within 20 feet of a trigen and you're toast. I think I might need to adjust my play style to be more cautious, and try to shoot trigens from as far away as possible!
I do have the night goggles now, though, which introduce a nice new mechanic to the game thanks to the draining battery - balancing keeping them on to spot any trigens running around, with keeping them off to recharge for as long as you dare.
I'm on the mission where you first see the gun-toting trigens. You come out into this big square fort thing where there's a big battle. I legged it out of there and found a glider, which I used to get all the way to a beach. I have to make my way up a path but there's a fair few trigens. It's pretty tough and the latest save-game is at the glider so I have to fly that down each time; I've only had a couple of tries at it.
It's garnered a lot of goodwill with me, so I'm going to stick at it, but I do get the feeling that I've seen the best of it already.
-
I'm on mission 14 now, the one where you start on a dinghy, get onto a small island and pick up some explosives then have to blow some comm towers up. It's definitely nice to be back out in the open air fighting mercs, but so far it's not particularly different to any of the other outdoor levels...
-
Mission 14 was pretty cool thanks to the layout that has three towers on a group of small islands and lets you go at it however you want. My tactic of choice is to snipe the gunner and pilot off a boat, then drive it past shore mowing down all the landlubbers. Unfortunately, it ends with a bullshit bossfight that requires you to shoot a helicopter six times with nowhere to hide on a boat that is sinking. It is incredibly difficult, especially because it requires pinpoint accuracy and speed with the rocket launcher, which lends itself to neither of those things. I finally got past it and returned to awesome outdoor shooting around some old temple ruins, hiding behind big Aztec heads and stuff. But now I'm in the temple and it's turned back into a really tough corridor shooter. It's not going to take much for me to give up on this game now - that boss-fight almost had me - but I'm still enjoying it enough to keep going.
-
I've just got to an on-rails bit where Sexy Bikini Lady drives a jeep and I shoot the gun, except it's the hardest one I've ever played. Even on a run where I do really well and take down every enemy vehicle really quickly, I still get killed very easily. I think this may be my cue to quit. However, I'm taking a break from FPSes for a couple of weeks, so I might leave this installed and see if I somehow breeze through this section when I return to it.
-
I couldn't be bothered to try that level again. In summary for Far Cry, though: still awesome, even the trigens are a nice change of pace, but whenever it forces you to do a particular thing a particular way, it sucks (which I suspect is why a lot of people don't like the trigens, as they generally appear in the corridor sections).
Rating: Green.
No comments:
Post a Comment