Having just spent a good thirty hours of the past week putting this fucking thing to rest, let me give you the fucking skinny-
Good:
- You can start fires and the fires spread and consume all kinds of shit scary fast
- Any and all kinds of explosions are fucking phenomenal. Get the breach-loader grenade launcher to replace your pistol as soon as possible.
- Environments look fucking great. From the dense jungle to the desert to the savanna, it all looks picture perfect and really sets the mood.
- All the first person animations are great too, be it hoping from the back seat to the drivers seat in a car, to pulling a rod of rebar out of your gut after an explosion.
- AI isn't really that dumb and actively tries to coordinate and figure out where you are when you're picking guys off from the bushes or whatever.
- You get a machete and it'll drop a nigga in one slice. Then you can finish him off when he's on the ground or he'll start shooting at you or try to crawl away in pain.
- You can run down zebras and water buffalo in a Jeep Liberty.
- It's basically Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now in video game form.
Bad:
- Pacing is disjointed and slow as fuck. 60% of the game is driving/walking from where you are to where you need to be, and getting into pointless skirmishes inbetween.
- All characters are forgettable at best, except maybe The Jackal, who isn't even a scary black dude.
- All the voice acting is fucked and doesn't match the subtitles. Also, NOBODY PAUSES TO TAKE A BREATH AFTER EACH SENTENCE, EVER.
- Continues the shit gaming trend of having 'cutscenes' be you locked in an area while a guy stands there talking to you and you walk around/spin in circles/wait impatiently for him to finish. Each and every mission begins with a sequence like this and it ruins any sense of immersion you have.
- Fucking guard posts.
- Fucking random trucks on the roads.
- Fucking unmarked guard posts in the wilderness.
- It doesn't do a good job of being Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now in video game form.
I'm glad Jack Carver isn't in this game because
spoiler spoiler spoiler your guy commits suicide at the end regardless
spoiler spoiler spoiler. I think Instincts actually had better gameplay mechanics. You could dual wield guns (and stash one in your belt if you weren't using it), actually go prone, roll on your back and crawl under buildings then shoot people through floor boards, you could set landmines or branch-whip traps then throw rocks to lure people over to them, etc. Plus you were Jack Carver as played by Stephen Dorff and you and your Hawaiian shirt fueled feral powers were nigh unstoppable.
Far Cry 2 wasn't bad, it just did a lot wrong that it should have focused on getting right. So much so that I don't want to play it again for a long long time. Plus I nearly got, but fucked up and missed, two fucking hard to get achievements and I'm not dumping another 30 hours to get them.
Here's the intro movie to the original Xbox version of Far Cry Instincts, just because
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTa2DtnC4awHere's the shitty 360 port:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9ep7bRzt0EYou tell ME which one looks better.
