Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Far Cry 2 is almost upon us, and I’m seething with anticipation. PC Gamer’s Tim Edwards telling us that it effectively kills off the entire linear shooter genre doesn’t do anything to ease that. His review in the latest PC Gamer UK is worth reading. If he’s right – and I dearly hope he is – that will stand up as one of the best game reviews of 2008. Of one of the best games.

While Far Cry 2 is very definitely just a shooter, Edwards’ review suggests that Stalker’s “wide corridor” model (that I loved so much) is going to be made to look shabby by this seamless 50km world, as executed by a talented, well-funded studio. I can’t wait to get to grips with the kind of freedom in an FPS that has previously only really manifested itself in GTA games. This latest trailer doesn’t make the longing any better, showing off loads of the open world stuff, including character dialogue, gun-play, speeding vehicles, and the ubiquitous fiery explosions. The dynamic story-telling perhaps doesn’t lend itself well to trailers, but trying reading our previous interview with the lead designer to get your head around that a bit better.
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I don’t know about you lot, but all that Far Cry 2 coverage left me with a few questions about the game. So I dropped a line to Mr Clint Hocking, a creative director at Ubisoft Montreal, and the lead brain on Far Cry 2. He’s a clever sort, and was patient enough to talk about how non-linear storytelling works, how your NPCs buddies operate in the game world, how bits of a car can be your undoing, the potential for exploration in a 50km tract of videogame Africa, the “visceral punch” of the injury system, and how people will overlook the awesomeness of a guided missile system.

Read on for a verbal monsoon of all things Far Cry 2. This is a game worth paying attention to.

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Well, it seems like it, anyway. I promise not to post any more. Unless it’s tomorrow.

This clip (conspicuously marked CONSOLE FOOTAGE, but hey so what) shows off some forest sequence with sniping, sneaking, and killing. And some interface! See that intriguing map and compass bit. Oooh.

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UK-based blogchums Videogaming247 were clever enough to remember to go to Leipzig (unlike us) and consequently they’ve come back with special Far Cry information. Ubisoft Montreal are, apparently, already in the initial stages of the third Far Cry game. Here’s the interesting bit:

“There are still things we want to do with the African setting, and I think it’s safe to say we’ll continue to explore it. That said, we might find something new and compelling about the Antarctic setting that wants us to make the next game there, but honestly, we’re still at the preliminary stages.”

If Far Cry 2 ends up being good I rather hope this third game has a brief iteration time, rather than being another four-year project.

Could the best bit of Far Cry 2 be the map editor? That’s what my secret Ubisoft contact has been reporting – and now there’s a trailer to back up his ludicrous claims, which you can see after the jump. The lengthy mapping footage shows a map being put together with a gamepad – a sequence which inadvertently reveals that there’s a hang-glider in Far Cry 2. There are also “over a thousand” miscellaneous objects. Excellent news.

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I can’t think of why Ubisoft would have released even more Far Cry 2 footage except to show off what their new tech can do. It’s running at some chronic level of detail in this trailer, which also has a jolly good soundtrack. It’s the trailer equivalent of driving round town in your new Ferrari, or something. I still think this could emerge as GOTY.
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Lots of excellent new in-game footage here, with some detailed commentary by Clint Hocking. It turns out that you can even take a little nap to fast forward time. (And in the game! Aha!)

EDIT: You can check it out here since the embedded version seems to be broke.
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“A completely real, no bullshit open world.” The presentation from this year’s Dreamhack shows the sophisticated AI in action, the scale of the open world, the way the missions are implemented, the freedom of the open world, the combat, the vehicles, fixing broken vehicles, the wildlife, the physics and fire-propagation.

Game Of The Year, anyone?
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Certain game experiences seem to suggest other, older games, and leave me longing for them. Age Of Conan, which I’ve been playing a great deal for the PC Gamer review, somehow left me longing for Oblivion. There was something about the way that Age Of Conan tantalises you with elements of single player gaming that left me quite hungry for a proper RPG romp, and so I reinstalled the last Elder Scrolls game and plunged in.

To tell the truth, I’d been meaning to go back and play Oblivion a some point this year after being reminded of it in PC Gamer UK’s Top 100 meeting. Tom Francis had talked about the moment he’d be most fond of in replaying the game: coming out of the underground tutorial into the bright, beautiful gameworld. “You get this incredible feeling of freedom,” he said. “It’s wide open and it feels like anything is possible.” It’s a feeling that, in some ways, is only possible in a game of Oblivion’s calibre. That kind of feeling could be an antidote to the pressures of real life, and definitely an antidote to too many hours in a traditional MMO. I wanted to recapture that, although I had wondered whether Francis’ was simply being hyperbolic. Was Oblivion better than I remembered?
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Far Cry 2 is making my 3D card creak with fear. That, in turn, is making my wallet weep tiny tears of fear and shame. Yes, it’s going to be beautiful, but when my machine choked on the enormity of Crysis, how is it going to get on with all the visual cleverness that is contained in the recent techdemo of Far Cry 2?

Oh, who cares? Far Cry 2 looks technologically extraordimentary, and if it’s half as good as the recent flood of info seems to suggests it’s going to be well worth augmenting my PC with expensive sandwiches of silicon for. After the jump: vegetation in the wind.
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Far Cry 2 looks at least a couple of kinds of incredible. “You’re free to go anywhere you want at any time,” says creative director Clint Hocking of the stupidly detailed 50km2 slice of African terrain. “It’s about giving the player the opportunity to play the game the way he wants to play it.” Judging by some of the testimony and in-game footage we can see here, he might just be telling the actual truth. Mechanically, at least, it’s looking rather like an expanded version of Stalker, with plenty of open space and the ability to tackle things as you see fit. I’ve said it before, but my money is on this being the best game on PC this year. After the jump: that video diary.
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