I got it for PC, the AI *is* AIDS as someone said earlier in this thread; however the graphics are pretty amazing. I'm gonna play it through and see if the story is any good, given the first game I would think it will be.
I don't know if I would go that far, they seem pretty intelligent at times. They try to flank me often and seem quite effective at hunting me down if they catch a glimpse of me. Also they react quite realistically to situations like sniper fire. But I am disapointed at how they just stop looking if you are rescued by a buddy. Now and again they get stuck against rocks and stuff too. It seems pretty mixed. Another negative is their superhuman sight.
You could ask the same thing about Assassin's Creed: http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/930278.asp Terrible AI, phenomenally repetitive, awesome technology behind it. It's just the "newness" factor. Most people reviewing the game haven't played similar, but highly superior games like STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, or more open-ended games like Crysis, so them being blown away by the technology and openness of Far Cry 2 makes them forget what actually makes the game fun. Just like Assassin's Creed, both gamers and the gaming media will probably change their opinions as more gamers get further into the game, and more reviewers play the game without the hype surrounding it.
IGN (which I think is pretty trustworthy) gave Assassin's Creed a 7.8 (7.5 for gameplay), so they're aware of its problems. Yet they gave Far Cry 2 an 8.9, with 9.0 for gameplay. So idk...
lol...has anyone come across the thing with the AI were they will be looking at the opposite direction of you, but they are still shooting you at the same time? There was one point that this happened for about 50% of AI for me. It actually is a pretty good game though, even though I guess it can be repetitive. I like how you have to be really careful with your ammo. I just had this awesome mission were I had to assassinate one of the leaders of a faction in this house that was ontop of a cliff/waterfall. Once I killed him, the house got completed surrounded by people shooting the shit out of it. So I basically sprinted out of there and jumped off the cliff straight into the water. Sniper rifle seems to easily be the best weapon for almost all situations in this game, so I use that along with a rocket launcher in case a truck is chasing me. It does take ages to get from place to place, but I have found that if you either stick to the rivers (on a boat) or just drive on a railway track then you are way less likely to get involved in fights on the way to your destination.
I downloaded this over the past few days and just started playing it tonight. So far I am somewhat impressed. The graphics are stunning and run way better for me than crysis did at a similar detail level. My computer is getting outdated fast but this game runs well even on higher settings like 4x AA, high or very high on almost everything (I have an AMD 3700+, 2GB good ram, and an 8800GTS 512mb card). I haven't really gotten too in depth with the combat yet so I can't fairly make a call on the AI, but it does seem kinda weak so far. The open world gameplay is intriguing and a nice change of pace from the super linear shooters I am used to, but I could see it get frustrating too. Luckily they have a bus system that allows you to get across the insanely big map instantly without having to drive across the whole thing. Its really interesting to see all of the random wildlife, I have seen a zebra, some deer, elephant, etc... its a nice touch. Also the wildfire thing is freakin awesome. You can throw a molotov cocktail in the grass and it spreads into a huge inferno, engulfing the trees and grass totally in flames. Overall it seems like it could be really fun but I don't know if it will end up being a disappointment or not.
I'm pretty sure it was an elephant, it was really far away when I was driving around in the desert type area and I was being chased by some douchebags and about to die or else I would have investigated further.
I thought it was pretty bad, actually, but I may give it another chance. After the great intro where your character is driven around to take in the admittedly beautiful countryside, you basically just end up driving your car around to what seems like random locations--there is nothing gripping about it, there is a severe lack of narrative and it doesn't feel as free as, say, GTA or Oblivion, the voice acting is utterly atrocious, the repair/healing system is tedious... it blows me away this is getting such high reviews. The destructible environments are neat... which is why after about an hour of gameplay I just ended up getting out my flamethrower and watched fields burn.
Yeah I have only played to slightly after the part where you go to that city and the 'set you free' to roam around and kill that dude, but I could see some of that stuff you mentioned becoming annoying. I'll admit that if I bought that game I would probably be disappointed.
Thankfully I didn't buy it, though, I considered it after how fucking amazing Far Cry was. Glad I got to play it first... She let me loan it, and now I feel bad she bought it, hopefully she'll get some decent money back selling it. It feels like a mash-up of every FPS released over the past number of years EXCEPT Far Cry... it's weird.
That's the main reason I want to play it, too. Well, and I want to wander and explore, much like I did in Oblivion. But I love the whole thing with destructible environments in Crysis, and I assume this is mostly similar. Although, I watched that semi-interactive demo on the website, and at the end the guy launched a rocket into this fortress to blow up an ammunition supply. It was pretty awesome seeing all the pieces of boxes and barrels come flying out (and bodies lol), but I did notice that the structure of the fortress itself remained intact. I'm still looking forward to the day when they invent a system that allows all things to be destroyed or moved subject to the game's physics system, even the terrain. There should be a way of defining an object in the game as having certain properties that define how it reacts to impacts, heat, etc... When you blow up a land-mine, it should dig out a crater. and lots of little instantly-generated rocks should be left lying on the ground. In the example from that demo I mentioned, you should be able to blow up a bomb in the slope that the building rests on and cause a massive landslide that would take the building out with it.
We don't have that type of hardware power, quite yet. Next generation I can see a lot of that stuff you mentioned becoming a reality.
You could do it if you lowered the graphics quality. Take Morrowind... you could probably run that kind of physics engine on those graphics. It might be worth it for someone in the business to do it, at least as a demo of where things could go in the future. There actually was some Star Wars FPS recently that included "terrain deformation", but it looked like it was more of a gimmicky thing than a realism thing. I've said before that I would absolutely love to see the next Elder Scrolls game have all of the underground areas merged with the above-ground map, and have deformable terrain. Trapped underground somewhere? With a well-placed fireball you can blow a hole back to the surface in another part of the map. Or you could die, since all of the rocks created in the explosion would have mass values to them that could cause damage. It would totally revolutionize the gameplay. There are some shortcuts they can take to reduce the hardware requirements. For example, instead of forcing the game to permanently remember all those fragments from every explosive incident in the game, it could sort of merge the fragments with the main terrain surface upon impact by moving a few vertices up the z-axis a bit. It wouldn't be too hard to calculate how much is needed to do an exact transfer of volume.
Bad (and when I say bad, the issue is patchy, as reviews have noted the AI can be exceedingly clever at times) AI does not have to be a game breaker.
Q: What's more fun than driving around to random locations in a borderline uncontrollable car for long periods of time, crashing into all sorts of rocks and trees on the way, getting out, having a repetitious shootout with a bunch of guys, and repeating it a ton of times? A: ANYTHING. MY god, I'm so glad I didn't buy this game. After waiting through the fucking intro which took up a good 10 minutes of my life, I finally got the pistol and right from the get-go realized that this game would bore me to tears. It's such a long game because you're forced to drive around in that fucking car to all your missions. No thanks.
Lol ya you do, but then it would take you forever to get anywhere since the map is so big. Think trying to cross oblivion on foot lol (not that insane but similar)
Ok, after about 15-20 more minutes playing I am already seeing the extreme repetitiveness of this game. What a shame, it has so much potential to be awesome.
Well I think quantified review systems are inherantly broken anyway, so I couldnt give a toss about the score in most circumstances.
I do cross Oblivion on foot. That's the best part, seeing all the random stuff on the way between places. I used fast-travel maybe once. Back on talking about 3D graphics improvements... I'm kind of surprised that all of the 3D graphics used in games are still based on polygons. I used to play around with a 3D renderer called POV-Ray years ago that could render non-polygonal 3D objects, like spheres and other things with curved surfaces. They were mathematically smooth curves; you could zoom in on the edge of the object infinitely and never see corners. These objects rendered just as fast as using polygons to simulate those curves. I'm kind of surprised that games haven't incorporated this yet, considering how advanced the graphics are now.
I meant as opposed to using a horse which I usually did. I switched to the fast travel after a while though because it became tedious to go travel that far all of the time. I should play that game again. I had a file on my old roommates 360 of about 40 hours of gameplay but it broke and I ended up getting my own 360 but I haven't started a new game yet. I'm also interested in fable 2 but I am broke so its not very likely right now. I agree that it seems weird that they still use mostly all polygons. They obviously have to create much more complex geometry to get the desired smoothness of textures these days, it seems like they could get better results both in terms of smoothness and ease of computing with other geometric figures like spline curves and sphere variations
I had 150 hours on my friend's 360, it rrod'd. I have it on my PS3 now, but the main quest bugged 18 hours in and I don't feel like playing through all of those quests again. Starting the Fighter's Guild is such a pain in the ass.
I have some good and some bad memories of the game so I have mixed feelings about picking it up again. (Not to mention I am completely swamped with school right now so its not like I have endless free time to waste on it.) I liked the arena thing, that was a lot of fun, but I also remember spending hours just listening to people's dumb stories
At this point I expect I'll just wait for Elder Scrolls 5 rather than play Oblivion again. And I hope ES5 will revolutionize graphics and/or physics models much like Oblivion did (and hopefully will be less buggy).
