Re: Decent FPS shooter bundle, worth a look!

On Tue, 26 Nov 2024 16:05:07 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:

JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

On 25/11/2024 20:30, candycanearter07 wrote:

Ant <ant@zimage.comANT> wrote at 19:30 this Monday (GMT):

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, 25 Nov 2024 09:43:06 +0000, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

>
>

I liked Crysis and Crysis Warhead. Crysis 2, erm ... am I playing the
same large open spaces shooter!

>

Yeah, "Crysis 2" was such a significant change to the style of
gameplay. I hate to point a finger and scream 'consolitis!" but with
"Crysis 2" it was quite obvious that was what had happened; many of
the game's features had to be cut back to fit into the limited memory
space of the prevailing consoles, and the gameplay simplified so you
could control it from a gamepad.

>

It had its moments and at times it still felt like Crytek's earlier
games, but overall it was such a radical change that it was really
hard for me to judge "Crysis 2" on its own merits.

>
Remember Far Cry 1? That was a fun game!

 
 
I never touched the series, but from what I've heard online it was
decent.

>

Far Cry was a great game as long as you had a PC to get the best out of
it. After that, well Ubisoft took it in-house. Erm ... 2 I found at best
mundane and at worst tedious. 3, that has the accolade for having you
play the most annoying character ever. It's hard to like a game when the
most enjoyment you get out of it is cheering on the bad guys when they
kill you.

>
I got FC2, but I never bothered.

I have a love-hate relationship with "FarCry 2".

It's combat is one of the best ever made.* Between the gun-play and
the AI and how it all reacts with the environment, it's a really
intense and really fun experience.

I also really enjoyed exploring the world map; the various setpieces
were well put together. I liked the fact that the game made an effort
never to pull you out of the experience by making you navigate through
menus; everything from healing to map was 'in game'.

The visuals were fine for their time; they could use a little work
now. Being a mid-2000s game, it's all very dingy and brown. Some
updated textures and a good ENB can fix that, though.

But the game wasn't without its flaws. The story was lacking. It
wanted to be this great "Heart of Darkness" sort of story, but it just
wasn't very well told. It didn't help that there weren't any really
memorable characters, and the setting -although visually lush- was
narratively barren.

And then there was the god-damned respawning. Every enemy outpost
automatically respawned its enemies five minutes after you left the
area. It ruined the game. Traversing the map became a tedious slog
because you were constantly fighting the same battles over and over.
It made your already-fragile weapons deteriorate even faster. You were
incentivized NOT to explore. Making the runs for your malaria medicine
became a chore, not because of the malaria mechanic but because you
were forced to run the same gauntlet of enemies over and over again.

The game was fun, except for that incessent respawning.

On the plus side, Ubisoft learned from their mistakes with later Far
Cry games. Unfortunately, they made up for the respawning enemies by
creating grindingly huge worlds with even less reason to explore it.

But hey... at least the game didn't feature mutant monsters. "Far Cry
1" was excellent until it introduced the mutants.






* well, that's how I remember it. It's been five years since last I
played it ;-)