farbot.com

I started playing one of the oldest games on my shrinkwrap stack this week, Far Cry 2 on the PlayStation 3. This game was released in October of 2008, right alongside LittleBigPlanet if memory serves, and I believe I purchased it in early 2009. I think I'm at just 5% complete with the single player, so I'm just starting out. Here are some notes on my early impressions of the game.

Playing at the Easy difficulty level is a welcome option since it appears no single player Trophies depend on completing it on any particular difficulty.

Having to choose a person to play as, plus the bits of the game that take control away from you briefly such as when a malaria pill wears off gives me a stronger sense of identity. This plus the occasional grisly first-aid you perform to stabilize your condition shows more of the character to the player (e.g. pulling bullets out of arms, etc).

The first person perspective and graphical style gives me a strong Oblivion feel to the game. Thankfully there is no juggling of your inventory, and the controls don't seem complicated. The characters do look better than they did in Oblivion, to be sure, but their movements are somewhat similar, especially how corpses react to the environment.

The foliage is nicely rendered and looks and sounds realistic as you move through it. I have seen some fire move through it rather convincingly as well.

I've been impressed with the graphic nature of the gunplay and AI.

• the death cries of your opponent are believable
• soldiers scream when cut with the machete
• soldiers shout out for help when gunned down but aren't dead yet
• enemy AI seems to check out problems relatively convincingly, coming in slowly, but telegraphing their actions by notifying their friends along the way.

Not being able to save anywhere is a clear negative for me. Having to liberate safe houses, however, definitely adds an additional element of grittiness above and beyond the game world.

Respawning checkpoint soldiers, while a welcome source of ammunition and basic supplies, gets old relatively quickly and doesn't get you any of the all important supply that acts as a time pressure on your gameplay -- malaria pills.

Cars do take damage, and without one you're stuck walking quite a bit. It's easy to get surprised by a roving band of enemies who happens to put enough lead into your vehicle to disable it relatively quickly, and then be stuck walking. This, combined with having to save at safe houses, keeps the game from being easy to put down quickly as I sometimes need to do during my evening play sessions to address real life issues.

So far I like what I've played and what it has to offer. The time pressure of the main character's malaria is keeping me moving on, and is something I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt as I play along.