Starting Far Cry 2 on the PS3
The introduction to this game is a little strange. Although you get a flavour of a country on the verge of civil war it is hard to understand why your assassination target would let you go and then when you try to leave the hotel it is not at all clear what the hell you are meant to be doing.
At first all the combatants ignored me and then I suddenly get shot down and we’re back in structured tutorial land. It also not at all clear when you get the safe house why you would continue to work for this organisation. Except that if you want to understand the controls and possibilities you need to do the missions.
I’m still inept with the right stick gun aiming and there has been at least one bizarre shoot out where the AI has been head down, shooting the ground in front of them while I try and unload a shotgun through a window at them to no real effect. The lack of a decent mouselook style feature is painful for immersion.
Graphically the game is beautiful and the vegetation and fires are amazing to behold. I bought the PS3 version because I felt the install DRM on the PC was punitive; I don’t feel short changed though (even if the resolution sometimes feels a little low).
It reminds me a lot of Stalker and obviously Boiling Point. However it is interesting to note that the game feels a lot more static than the PC equivalents. Stalker in particular induced a certain paranoia when searching buildings as you could never tell when a group would move in to an area you had already checked out.
