Shades Of Twilight

Image via Wikipedia

Recently I thought I will be stuck playing Fallout 3 till December. However, as fate would have it, Fallout 3 started crashing on me and I could not move anywhere outside of Megaton. If I loaded a savefile from prior to entering the town, I crash at random places in the Wasteland.

Thus this makes playing Fallout 3 a chore. When a game becomes a chore, I stop playing it. I’ll get back to it once a few patches come out to address the problems.

So I turned back to Far Cry 2, which I had installed a few days before Fallout 3. Unkowingly, Far Cry 2 is pretty addictive. I had the same “just 1 more mission” feeling when I am playing it, and don’t feel like stopping even if it’s 3am and I need to get up for work the next day.

One thing I don’t like about Far Cry 2 though – the “stealth” part of the game is almost non-existent. Check out the video below:

I went around behind the rocketeer, used a machete (or in local slang, a “parang”), and cut the guy down from behind. By all accounts, it was a silent take-down. Yet, a little further along in the video, you can see the alarm being raised.

This video is taken on my second character though. I restarted the game after I completed it the first round, and went on hardcore mode. In my previous game, I had the full complement of stealth gear – camo suit, MP5 with silencer, Dart sniper rifle (silenced) and a silenced pistol. Yet, when I go into a small town on a mission, and take a guy out, the alarm will always be raised.

Yes I even tried to take out a guy tucked away in a corner, usually a sniper up on a roof. Within a few minutes of the guy dying, someone will “know” that I’m nearby and everyone goes on alert.

This is even more apparent when you take a side-quest from a radio-tower, and the target is located inside a cease-fire zone. You walk around confidently, trail the target to a secluded spot, and then you kill him with the machete. Definitely a silent take-down. Yet, alarm will be raised and as soon as you exit that secluded corner, everyone is firing at you.

Overall though, Far Cry 2 is a fun game. Too bad about the stealth.

You know, sometimes there are no good games released for a while, and you’re stuck playing the older games which you’ve got.

Then there are other times like these, where a few good titles are released within the span of a few days from each other. Far Cry 2, Dead Space, and Fallout 3 have all been released, and now I’m just scratching my head and wondering if I should get them all.

For starters, I got Far Cry 2. I remember playing some parts of Far Cry 1, but I didn’t finish it. At the time I remember that it was slightly confusing and I have no idea what I am doing, just running around and shooting stuff. There wasn’t any sense of me “accomplishing” anything.

Far Cry 2, upon first load up, was impressive. The game auto-detected my graphic settings as “LOW” (dammit!). Then again, the embedded graphics chip on my motherboard usually isn’t in the “supported graphics card” list anyway. So I went in manually and tweaked everything up to medium, except for shadows and post-processing. No noticeable hit on my framerates, as you can see from the video clip below:

However, I did notice that it starts to stutter and slow to a crawl (like in Assassin’s Creed) when there are lots of particle effects on screen – smoke, and fire. Unfortunately I can’t do much about those. I have already set post-processing down to low and it can’t go any lower than that.

Currently I’m still at the beginning stages of the game. I haven’t gone much further than just exploring the immediate surroundings and taking out the outpost during the “tutorial” part of the game. I have already entered the first “town” but didn’t stop in there – just zoomed past it to get to the weapon shop which, by the time I get there, is already closed. The weapons dealer has already gone for the day and the trade terminal in there did not list anything that I can purchase at this stage.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Far Cry 2 gameplay video blowout
• Far Cry 2 Is Not Ubisoft Trying To Outdo Crysis [Ubisoft]
• Fallout 3 is so much fun to explore