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Far Crap

12/04/2009|Matt "Steerpike" Sakey|News8
Home » Home » News » Far Crap

steerpike_PermadeathFar Cry 2 was one of the biggest disappointments in gaming history. Anyone who disputes this is… wrong.

And yet Ben Abraham, an unassuming gamer, chose to play through the shitgasm that is this game with a caveat: die, and he’s done. His goal was to get closer to the relativistic experience of a game, to suffer with his character for real rather than through the lens of a monitor. Ben’s been blogging about this for some time, and has finally released his slightly-less-than-400-page opus on the subject, a novelization of his experience rich with photos and including an intro from lead designer Clint Hocking.

None of this changes the fact that Far Cry 2 was a massive blunder in literally every single respect, but it’s an intriguing read. Find the 104-megabyte PDF here.

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12/04/2009 Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

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Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

Tap-Repeatedly Overlord Steerpike is a games industry journalist and consultant. His earliest memories are of video games, and hopes his last memories will be of them as well. He’s a featured monthly columnist with the International Game Developers Association, and is internationally published in an assortment of dull e-Learning texts and less dull gaming publications. He also lectures on games at various universities.

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8 Responses to Far Crap

  • Avatar
    Meho 12/05/2009

    Wow. Didn’t know about this guy. Sounds intriguing and… well, scientifically interesting. Let’s see.

  • Avatar
    lokimotive 12/06/2009

    That’s interesting. Had I taken the same approach I probably wouldn’t have wasted 40 hours of my life on that piece of crap. It’ll be interesting to see how he reconciles the realism of Permanent Death with the annoyance of enemies popping up at checkpoints ten minutes after you left them.

  • Avatar
    Jason Dobry 12/10/2009

    I don’t know.  I couldn’t stand four hours of this crapfest, so I’m not eager to read 140 MB worth of literature on the subject. What’s the tone? Is it sardonic or just a summary? If he’s making fun of the game and it’s humorous, I’d check it out.

  • Avatar
    Matt "Steerpike" Sakey 12/10/2009

    No, it’s a pretty serious tone. He treats it as an exercise, sort of like a new way to experience gaming. Thing is, though, as a certain Jason Dobry has been known to point out, there’s a limit to how much “realism” is fun. Even if Far Cry 2 had been fun in the first place, what would be gained by ruining your game with a single misstep?

    After all, there’s a reason we chose to BUY THE GAME rather than become mercenaries in war-torn Africa. It’s because we don’t want to get shot and die horribly.

  • Avatar
    Barry Kelly 01/02/2010

    Hey, it seems like you enjoyed mindless games like Max Payne – what can be said for taste?

    Far Cry 2 was the best game I played in a very long time, far better than the disappointment that was Crysis. Far Cry 2 played like a creeper in the best traditions of Thief for me – navigating the territory, planning an approach from across the map, avoiding roads and checkpoints, oftentimes achieving objectives via sniper rifle, in and out before the locals even knew what happened.

  • Avatar
    Barry Kelly 01/02/2010

    Oh, and anybody who actually shoots up the checkpoints more than a half-dozen times in the entire game is a moron, completely missing the point, IMHO.

  • Avatar
    Matt "Steerpike" Sakey 01/02/2010

    Hi Barry,

    Games are supposed to be

    (a) Fun
    (b) Well-designed
    (c) Evoke emotional reaction

    For me, Max Payne did all of those things. Your claim that it’s “mindless” is both subjective and irrelevant to the discussion at hand. One fellow’s mindless is another fellow’s deep art.

    Far Cry 2 was, to my mind, not fun; it was repetitive and dull. It wasn’t well-designed, certainly not like Thief, because it depended on suspension-breaking tropes like in-front respawning, the idiotic malaria subgame, desperately flawed mechanics (such as the fact that vegetation obscured your view but didn’t conceal you from foes), and complete lack of coherent narrative.

    It did evoke an emotional reaction in me, namely, irritation. I paid $50 for a game that both Clint Hocking and Pat Redding should be ashamed of their involvement in. So that’s one for three.

    People who don’t see or do things your way aren’t necessarily “morons,” by they way. They may simply appreciate things differently. If you have nothing nice to say…

  • Avatar
    Jason O 01/06/2010

    The moment that I put the game down forever.

    After loading up the game, getting a mission, studying the map, spending fifteen minutes actually driving up to the mission, another ten minutes hoofing it on foot to get in position for my assault I thought I was ready. Since I’d been attacked so aggressively I did a 360 degree sweep of my surroundings real quick before I started my assault. No one in sight.

    As I turned back to my quarry, I hear that tell-tale noise of an engine revving up and then I am insta-killed by a truck running over me.

    Where did it come from? It would had to literally spawn out of thin air to have done that! All that careful planning and tedious work ruined by a teleporting truck!

    I gave Far Cry 2 more chances than most games to win me over. I put dozens of hours into it, progressed halfway through the storyline. All I received for my efforts was punishment and tedium.

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