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Far Cry 2 Going Hardcore, Teaching Hard Truth about Guns

Nathan Grayson — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:01:31 -0600

In the original Far Cry, rigging a tree branch to clothesline a hapless foe was a deadlier alternative to, you know, shooting them. With guns. Unfortunately, Far Cry 2 de-fanged guns in a similar manner (minus the pro-deforestation propaganda) – something for which we nearly awarded it a seven out of ten. Good thing, then, that Ubisoft Montreal has announced a new “Hardcore” Far Cry 2 multiplayer patch that promises to make sure in-game guns’ bite outdoes trees’ bark (grooooan).

"The hardcore mode has been designed as an answer to a community request," Ubisoft community developer Atmon wrote on the game's official forums. "Some players were seeking and expecting a more realistic experience.”

A new damage model will be applied with increased damage for all weapons.
All weapons have been rebalanced on normal mode, and on hardcore mode.
Enemy names will disappear after the spawning invincibility period is over (A shield is displayed above a player’s head for a few second to show that he is invincible).
A new option will allow you to tweak spawning time (but not spawning rate).
A new search option will be available in multiplayer to allow you to find games that are playing on hardcore mode.

The patch hasn’t been given a drop date just yet, but we’ll be sure to give you a heads up when it does.

Far Cry 2

Norman Chan — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:00:00 -0600

Fifty square kilometers of African terrain. That’s how much open space you have to accomplish Far Cry 2’s primary objective: Kill the weapons dealer known as the Jackal, who has been supplying both sides of a bloody civil war in the game’s fictional setting. If the sheer size of the game world sounds daunting, just consider the fact that it’s densely occupied with dozens of towns, numerous encampments, and a whole population of NPC characters (potential allies and enemies alike). Far Cry 2’s expansive environment is undoubtedly its most notable asset, but what’s really impressive is that the game is filled with enough compelling action to actually make use of it.

As a stranger in unfamiliar territory, it’s clear that you can’t just shoot your way across the country to find your target. Getting to the Jackal requires you to form allegiances with mercenaries and guerrilla factions to earn enough prestige and currency (in the form of diamonds) to work your way through the loosely scripted story to the climatic showdown. A buddy system helps you along the way—you befriend a cast of NPCs that become both your quest givers and sidekicks in the inevitable shootouts. In fact, the game is structured a lot like Grand Theft Auto, but with GTA’s urban jungle swapped out for a real one. This role-playing-lite experience was definitely enjoyable and let us progress at our own pace. Our only gripe is that the NPCs’ voice delivery sounded rushed at times.

Your tasks are varied enough to facilitate different gunplay styles. Though tasks typically fall into the “assault the enemy base” or “retrieve a valuable package” categories, the range of mission locations—walled fortress, riverside swamp, oil pipeline, to name just a few—gave us plenty of opportunities to experiment with tactics. The guns-blazing strategy indeed works, but we preferred the more stealthy approach, especially since we could complete any mission under the shroud of the midnight sky.

In fact, many of the thrills come not from the shootouts, which are pretty challenging given the smart enemy AI, but from the planning we had to do before making our assaults. Scouting out the mission area, planting explosive traps, and picking out easy targets before executing a plan added tension to each firefight. The anticipation of carrying through a well-thought-out strategy—whether everything goes according to plan or not—is a huge part of what makes this game fun. And even when nothing goes according to plan, we were given plenty of opportunities in later missions to try similar approaches (the missions do get somewhat repetitive by the end).

And in between missions, we loved being able to drive around and explore the country, looking for new safe houses and scenic vistas that show just how much effort was put into designing such an amazing world. A functional river system with motorboats, rickety bridges, and gorgeous waterfalls makes the game world very believable. But we also had to prepare ourselves for a fair amount of walking if our vehicles were destroyed after a battle.

Far Cry 2’s level of immersion goes beyond what any first-person shooter has ever achieved. From the lack of a HUD to the streaming level content (meaning no load screens), we at times forgot that we were playing a game. It also doesn’t hurt that this is one of the best-looking games ever made—if your system can support it. But with its fully realized game world and the exciting combat scenarios, Far Cry 2 is one of our favorite shooters of the year.

10 Most Pirated Games of 2008: Spore Takes Top Honors

Nathan Grayson — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:02:48 -0600

Yuck. It's one thing to give the spotlight over to piracy and other dirty deeds on a bi-daily basis, but after seeing it all culminate, well, we're going to need to lie down for a little while.

Torrent-tracking blog TorrentFreak recently scoured the undersides of gaming's most illicit tables, putting together a list of piracy's greatest hits. The bottom line: Spore, as expected, took home the golden failboat ticket, while three of EA's other titles made the top five.

Meanwhile, big names like Call of Duty 4, Fallout 3, and Far Cry 2 also felt significant disturbances in their sales. Check out the full list below:

Spore / 1,700,000 / Sept. 2008
The Sims 2 / 1,150,000 / Sept. 2004
Assassins Creed / 1,070,000 / Nov. 2007
Crysis / 940,000 / Nov. 2007
Command & Conquer 3 / 860,000 / Mar. 2007
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare / 830,000 / Nov. 2007
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas / 740,000 / Jun. 2005
Fallout 3 / 645,000 / Oct. 2008
Far Cry 2 / 585,000 / Oct. 2008
Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 / 470,000 / Oct. 2008

Remember kids, only you can prevent PC game piracy. Otherwise, we'll light you on fire. Don't mess with us. We're crazy.

ATI Releases Driver Hotfix to Improve Performance in Far Cry 2 and Stalker Clear Sky

Paul Lilly — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:15:17 -0500

ATI recently updated its Catalyst driver package, and now the company has released a hotfix to address problems gamers might have been having in Far Cry 2, Stalker Clear Sky, and Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway. Specific fixes include:

Performance boost in Far Cry 2 with DX9 and CrossFire
Performance boost in Far Cry 2 with DX10 on both single-card and CrossFire setups
Performance boost in Stalker Clear Sky with DX10 and DX10.1 on both single-card and CrossFire setups when running "higher resolutions"
Addresses a corrpution issue in Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway on the 'Black Friday' level

The hotfix applies to both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista and XP starting with ATI's Radeon X1600 series and moving on up to the Radeon HD 4800 graphics cards.

Image Credit: Ubisoft

WASD: Modding is (Sort of) Dead, Long Live User-Created Content

Nathan Grayson — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:39:37 -0500

"Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Fable 2... uh, LittleBigPlanet," I nonchalantly listed, sliding my scroll bar up and down a ludicrously large list of games that'll begin hogging shelf space next week. Instantly, a deafening shout of "OH! LittleBigPlanet!" flew straight and true, right into my unsuspecting ears, from the other side of a view-obscuring television. "You're so buying LittleBigPlanet!" My friend's voice continued, registering at somewhere around War-crime on the decibel scale.

Yeah, LittleBigPlanet's kind of a big deal around the gaming scene's more console-y bits, but what's it mean for PC gamers? Well, in these parts it's not quite a revolution, but it's pretty damn close.

Over the past couple years, "user-created content" has crept onto many game developers' billowing lists of PR-friendly buzz words, and with good reason. Whether it's Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion's character creation system or Spore's, well, everything, people love to spill their creative frustrations onto videogaming's canvas. (And drawing new Mega Man levels on graph paper is so nineties.)

Now stop! Take your finger off the scroll wheel; the comments section isn't going anywhere. Yes, PC gaming gospel states that we must fling ourselves into Internet forums, kissing the ground, and praising mods -- and games like Oblivion and Spore did not invent user-created content -- but guess what? Mods are old news, no matter how crazy-awesome they might potentially be.

Why? Consoles. Consoles. Consoles. Like it or not, aside from a few shining examples, game design has parked its heart in simpler interfaces and ease-of-use. PC gaming, its cash cow now six feet under for a number of reasons, simply isn't worth the effort these days. As a result, real mod support -- sloppily attempted in only a single console game -- watched its bungee cord snap as it plummeted right off developers' priority lists. After all, mod tools don't just appear out of thin air; they siphon extra time and cash away from other areas of development. When user-creation tools can offer a menagerie of similar (but less versatile) powers to a wider range of people, mod tools sadly get kicked to the curb.

For instance, when asked about possible mod tools for the upcoming Far Cry 2, creative director Clint Hocking instead chose to emphasize the game's map editor, saying, "One of the really great things about the Far Cry console games is that they had a really usable map editor. It wasn't super powerful in the way the Crytek engine was or the way our Dunia engine is. It wasn't full featured like that. But it was really usable and it allowed people to create very good maps very quickly. So we're going to have a map editor that's sort of a version two, upgrading all of the functionality in that and integrating a lot of fan requests."

Additionally, games like Fallout 3, Diablo III, and (probably) Rage won't see official mod tools because, between console ports and user-creation tools, mods are less of a priority these days.

However, things aren't nearly as bad as they sound. Sure, games like LittleBigPlanet -- as well as map editors and things of the like -- aren't versatile enough to pop out the next Garry's Mod or flood us with copyright-kamehameha-ing Dragonball Z clones, but spectacular projects like Half-Life 2: MINERVA are well within the realm of possibility. On top of that, whereas modding is a niche within a niche, user-created content could very well expand into its own genre.

Simple -- and downright fun, in LBP's case -- tools allow anyone shoot a bolt of life into their wildest dreams, while Youtube-esque community tools raise the player-crafted wheat onto a pedestal where hungry, chaff-devouring flames can't touch it. Suddenly, hammering together a series of wow-worthy levels isn't a soul-draining, year-long project enticing only to those with a hard-on for compiling code; it's accessible, while still remaining a mere notch below modding on the versatility scale.

And of course, the modding scene will never evaporate completely. It'll just find itself with a few hundred pairs of eight-sizes-too-large jeans, if you catch my meaning.

So ultimately, don't think of user-created content's comeuppance as an end to yet another thing that made PC gaming special. Think of it as a change with tremendous, but different potential -- not for PC gaming, but for videogames as a medium.

SecuROM DRM Reaches Space Phase, Decides to Conquer Far Cry 2

Nathan Grayson — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:24:50 -0500

You didn't think escaping the three least popular letters in the alphabet would be that easy, did you? Today, Ubisoft Forum Manager "bukowski113" confirmed Spore DRM's "The Empire Strikes Back," placing yet another title under SecuROM's much-maligned rule. According to his forum post, Far Cry 2's DRM will work as follows:

You have 5 activations on 3 separate PCs.
Uninstalling the game “refunds” an activation. This process is called “revoke”, so as long as you complete proper uninstall you will be able to install the game an unlimited number of times on 3 systems.
You can upgrade your computer as many time as you want (using our revoke system)
Ubisoft is committed to the support of our games, and additional activations can be provided.
Ubisoft is committed to the long term support of our games: you’ll always be able to play Far Cry 2

In short, it's more or less unchanged from Spore's variation on the theme. We'll be buying Far Cry 2 anyway, though. After all, we just enticed a bunch of readers into taking up their pitchforks, so we feel we've done our part in the protest. DRM is bad and should be hated!

Like that.

Far Cry 2 Pre-Order Missions Add "Hours of Gameplay" For Pre-Orderers, Deprive Everyone Else

Nathan Grayson — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:15:40 -0500

Hate the blissful feeling that accompanies plucking a brand new game from the patch on launch day? Think digital distribution is just too convenient? Well then, you'll be one of the backward-thinking few who actually appreciate Ubisoft's Far Cry 2 pre-order deal. Simply stroll over to your nearest participating game store, place a few dollars in the cash register, and unlock "hours" worth of crucial gameplay! Have a looksie at what's on the other side of the hoops you'll soon be jumping through:

The Georgian: The Georgian informant has gone into hiding at the Fuel Depot in UFLL territory, find him and discover what your predecessor learned from him about the Jackal’s location.
The Bolivian: The Bolivian informant is on the run, trying to escape the country by stealing a plane from a small airfield in APR territory. Try to get to him before your predecessor does.
Special Delivery: Your employers have more information for you about your predecessor – learn the location of his new dead drop and raid it to find information about his secret meetings.
Le Francais: A French smuggler and arms dealer who may have been providing arms to the Jackal has been tipped off, and your predecessor is trying to stop him from crossing the border. Find out what Frenchman’s price is.

For those of you who don't pre-order, or who plan to (legally) download the title, we don't really know what to tell you. So far, the "bonus" seems to be limited to retail channels, but we'll contact Ubisoft for more info.

In the meantime, however, don't worry too much. We already pre-ordered the game months ago.

No Far Cry 2 Demo Planned

Paul Lilly — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:51:30 -0500

Unless a playable demo manages to leak onto the web like the trailer for the upcoming Max Payne movie did, Far Cry fans won't be catching a sneak peak of the hotly anticipated sequel, Far Cry 2. Slated for release sometime before Christmas, Ubisoft's first person shooter isn't being developed by the same team that conceived the original game, and will sport a new game engine. Because of the changes, gamers are holding their collective breaths on whether or not the follow-up can maintain the same appeal that made the first game such a surprise hit, but it looks like that won't be known until it ships.

Far Cry 2's creative director Clint Hocking explained the decision not to release a demo saying there's no way to offer a teaser without giving up a significant amount of game play. "I don't know too many people who are willing to give away a 12-hour game or free," Hocking said.

Bummer.

Image Credit: Ubisoft