Posted By: Ryan Murtha Posted On: 07/17/08 (Viewed 604 times)
Far Cry 2
Published By: Ubisoft Developed By: Ubisoft Montreal Release Date: Q3 2008 Genre: Modern First Person Shooter Players: TBA ESRB Rating: RP more product info »
At the end of this year, we’ll be getting a follow-up to 2004’s hit first-person shooter, Far Cry. But if you’re expecting another trip to a tropical island, think again. Ubisoft’s Far Cry 2 sticks you in Africa, in the middle of a war between two factions – The Alliance for Popular Resistance and the United Front for Liberation and Labour – and the flames of war are being fanned by a man known as “the Jackal”.
Far Cry 2 is powered by the Dunia Engine, which handles everything from AI behavior to the incredible fire effects, and those two aspects of the game can be demoed at the same time. For example, if you see a field of vegetation outside an enemy safehouse, you can use a flamethrower to set the field ablaze. If you can peel your eyes away from how realistically the fire spreads (take special note of how wind direction affects the spread), you’ll see the baddies come rushing out of their safehouse to see what’s happening, at which point you can take them out in all the commotion. This is also a very good example of how open-ended the game and the missions are – they can be tackled in any way and at any time of day you see fit. If you’re the kind of guy who wants to go to war with a take-no-prisoners attitude and guns-a-blazing, then you won’t mind playing during the daytime hours of the game, when the enemy mercenaries are awake and alert. But if you want to keep things quiet and low-key, using tranquilizer darts and a machete for silent killings, then the nighttime is for you. And there is no sense in playing the game and standing idly by while you wait for your preferred time of day to roll around. You’ll have access to your own safehouses where you can catch some Z’s and wake up when you’re ready to go. But again, these are just a few options on how to tackle the game’s encounters. It’s all about freedom, and there’s plenty of it to go around in the 50km + worth of virtual playground.
Because you have quite a bit of ground to cover, getting lost in the wilderness is entirely possible. Like a cub scout, though, you always come prepared with a map and compass for those times when you don’t know which way is which. To assist you further in traversing the deserts and savannahs, you’ll have access to a variety of vehicles, which seem like a necessity for FPS games these days. Dune buggies, jeeps, boats, and even hang gliders are at your disposal, and that last one is particularly interesting. Imagine soaring off a cliff and witnessing the landscape in all its glory below. As we alluded to before, that landscape isn’t just there as a setting – it can be used to interact with, and not just for the sake of environmental interaction. Just like the field of flaming flora, trees to can be burned to cinders, or even knocked over. They are actual pieces of the world; they don’t simply fall and disappear as if they were just set pieces. They have physical properties and will even kill an enemy should they fall on one.
Staying on the topic of realistic damage, not even the weapons in Far Cry 2 are safe from becoming useless piles of junk. The more you use a certain gun, jammings and lock-ups will become more frequent, and rust and other signs of wear and tear will begin to show up on it. It’s not just your weapons either – the enemy, too, will experience the same problems as you, so it might be a good idea to be aware of what you pick up off of fallen dudes. This kind of attention to detail is obviously present in other forms as well. It’s amazing to see the individual blades of grass and tree branches sway in the wind, and you can see shadows being cast by trees on those blades of grass, realistically shifting with the wind. This Dunia Engine sure is powerful.
It’s a good thing this sequel wasn’t a yearly update sort of thing, or those kinds of outstanding visual effects might not be as, well, outstanding. The four-year gap between installments appears to have paid off for Ubisoft Montreal. Look for Far Cry 2 this December.
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