A little more on Far Cry now that I've reached the end.

• The 'activate' action is so, so finicky. This is especially annoying when you're picking up quest items underwater, almost out of breath, and a fish is biting you.
• Enemy perception as it relates to sneaking can be somewhat strange.
• Story arcs fall off cliffs. Kyrat fashion week (be firece!) ended with a cancellation... okay. Finish all the goods deliveries and CONSPIRACY, he wasn't even golden path. Now look at some papers. K. Do all the races, not even a thank you over the radio. 100% game completion? Nada. The best they manage is unlimited guns for hire (one at a time, though) which you don't really need at this point.
• The radio has just a few segments that thankfully change throughout the story progression. But there are very few, and they will loop while you drive. At least just give us some Kyrati tunes so I can sing along and not recite DJ banter.
• You get the mini-chopper early on, but never one of the Blackhawks you frequently have to down. Never a plane.

But really, those are all pretty minor, great game.


C4 has been fun since Metal Gear Solid. Vehicles have been fun since GTAIII. Yet, in my gaming experience the two have never had a roll in the hay.


At first, all seemed to be lost. The charges would just slide off any vehicle in motion. Sure there's MIRV potential, but how many outposts have just the right cliff?

But then I discovered (what may have already been explained in dialogue) that c4 attached while crouching would stick to anything. Cool!

C4 the truck:


C4 the helicopter:


C4 for healing:


The game length is pretty good - the main quest feels kind of short, completionist gets kind of tedious - so just about right. Missions get considerably easier and less stealth-dependent as you get the better equipment.


The toughest part of the game, for me, was defeating the final Shangri-La boss.


I did not realize until I was finished with the main game that there is a map editor. Whoa, adult legos! (No, not adult legos).

It is cool, it lets you make some extremely detailed maps. For a console the interface pretty superb, although it could use a snap-to system. The only real issue, and it's a big one, is the limited control of enemy spawn (how/when). The 'ai budget' only allows a dozen or so dudes on a fairly large map space (+/- with vehicles and wildlife) so maps have to be fairly linear.

The MO in the main game is to drop everybody without letting anyone get to an alarm box. In user-generated maps if you do this you're missing out on 4/5 of the fun. So you kind of have to design missions that people will feel are cheap so that an alarm gets triggered.

I had quite a lot of fun making maps. One of them was Rainbow Road-inspired. If you blew up your vehicle halfway through, no worries, I supplied a tuk tuk:



Wingsuit woo.


It's a shame the main quest was not co-op-able, but the side quests are great for teamwork. Hostage rescue in particular.


Escort missions are great for doing some demolition, even better is if you have air cover:


...


Most of the racing (Kyrati Films) missions are alike, some infuriating. One of them employs both the wingsuit and hovercraft.


So that's about it for Far Cry, Tuesday I'll be riding on a Claptastic Voyage.

He decided to chomp a cognac box.

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