I know, I know. This is a week of enormous wallet-destroying power, and I should probably be playing Street Fighter IV or something. I’m saving myself for tonight’s release of Noby Noby Boy, actually, but in the meantime I’ll be enjoying something a little bit more mainstream. Surely you won’t deny me the pleasure.
And besides, Far Cry 2 is about the best the industry is currently offering to the typical testosterone-filled gaming male at the moment. It’s a confident and meticulously designed work that is happy to eschew the status quo for a better way. Here’s why I think Far Cry 2 is the future of the shooter.*
*: Note that I am talking about the single player elements of first-person shooters only. The internet would have you believe that most people play their shooters online these days. This is a lie. The internet is where people play online shooters, so it’s not exactly an unbiased sample.
Almost every major single FPS built in the last decade is based on the scripted linear rollercoaster design of Half-Life. By my estimate this style of game played itself out in, oh, 2007 or so. It will probably take the industry another five years to realize this. Far Cry 2 realizes this right now (okay, four months ago) and finds a strong solution in open-world design.
Open-world shooters, like everything under the sun, aren’t new. 2007’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl nailed down a great formula for the genre, and 2001’s Operation Flashpoint also played with option-filled environments and non-linear mission structure. The legacy almost certainly goes back further, but Far Cry 2 is the first one that ranks as anything more than a fringe success and really paves a way forward for the genre.
It’s not a sandbox game. Instead of giving the player a great variety of things to do, Far Cry 2 relies on the visceral nature of handling weapons from a first-person viewpoint to keep the player involved: it’s actually a purer shooter than STALKER, which also had an ever-present inventory management system. Far Cry 2 does know one thing that STALKER also knew, however: that the best way to keep an open world interesting is not to fill it with varied activity, but to make the world itself cohesive and believable, with a long and relevant history and a real sense of place. Build a place players actually want to explore, and you barely need anything else.
Which isn’t to say it’s easy to give a player that, but Far Cry 2 manages it. The fictional African nation it takes place in feels endlessly exotic or ugly, lived in or untouched—every part of it gives you a sense of being in a real place. The game draws a linear story through this vast world, but experiencing it as a player is a more meandering experience as the war or your radar pulls you off the road and towards your next genuinely valuable conflict diamond. It feels completely different from and far fresher than something in the Half-Life vein, where you walk down a corridor while an action movie plays out around you.
Related Links:
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F.E.A.R. 2 and Crafting the Bigger Sequel That’s Actually Better
Half-Life 2: A Dystopian Comedy