Hacker News Reader

Comment by knolan | Hacker News Reader

It’s a great game that was let down by its rapidly refreshing outposts which made traversing the world a chore. Fortunately I believe there are mods to fix this.

The immersion really was great. I loved pulling out my map while driving and trying to navigate while driving; it was utterly impossible to do both tasks well at the same time.

The sequels threw out the baby with the bathwater unfortunately but it inspired great new immersive experiences in games like Metro. Even the Ghostbusters game did a great job of placing all the game feedback on your proton pack.

View on HN

Rapidly refreshing outposts were the primary source of fun to me: the fact that they respawned meant that there was nothing gained by attacking them, it was much more rewarding to plot a route on the map and sneak past.

In fact I normally printed out a map and annotated it with patrol positions to help plan my routes between missions, usually via rivers, quickly fleeing if spotted.

Most of the game for me was an exercise in navigating the map at night (sleeping until night if necessary) and getting into a good sniper position for my next target (being sure to be close enough it wouldn't reset).

I think respawning is justifiable as a mechanic, though it would be better for infinite reinforcements to arrive on an infinite stream of transports. That would probably be too harsh for the people who fight their way through the checkpoints though.

Thats very cool and certainly an inventive way of playing.

Yep! It turns out that by being familiar with the terrain you can nearly always travel anywhere without engaging anyone, often without even being seen. This component of guerilla warfare was well portrayed.

Traveling through obscure routes was the best part of the game IMO.

Your post made me remember how much of that game was spent driving for me and how much I enjoyed it. Rather than sneaking around I would often just drive at break neck speeds in creative ways like taking cliffs and busting through fences to shortcut past a dangerous hot spot.

After reading the article I was thinking of playing through it again, after reading these comments I’m 100% committed.

> I think respawning is justifiable as a mechanic, though it would be better for infinite reinforcements to arrive on an infinite stream of transports. That would probably be too harsh for the people who fight their way through the checkpoints though.

this is one of my major gripes with open world games like far cry. some of my favorite gameplay is either ambushing patrols or getting surprised and having to fight your way out. I had a lot of fun with the convoy side missions in far cry 4. it gets really boring in the late game though when your weapons are so powerful that it's trivial to dispatch the small groups of enemies you encounter. if I start picking guys off deep in enemy territory, there should be some sort of overwhelming response at some point.

my other issue is how the stealth mechanics tend to play out in these games. if an enemy sees me kill someone at an outpost, the whole place is at full alarm for sixty seconds trying to find me. but if I just hide behind a tree and wait out the timer, they give up and act like nothing even happened. it makes it feel kinda pointless to clear a whole outpost without getting detected. there's no need to destroy the alarms either when the "reinforcements" are only a couple more trucks with enemies.

If I remember right, there was also a point to point quick-travel system, which I used a lot to cut down on the checkpoint fights.

The problem of Far Cry (and I played all of them) is it’s repetitiveness.

Also they don’t spend that much time in balance so you may spend 90% of the game using the same weapon.

IMHO the best Far Cry is the one they did pretty much for fun, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. Great soundtrack and just pure fun. There are parts where they just gave up on any sort of realism and you just blast everything with a cool soundtrack, riding a dragon equipped with lasers.

Even the forced tutorial was hilarious.

For me it was the perfect "grown up" game. In a weekend or something like 10-15 hours, you get to access the full depth of an AAA gameplay, a satire of 80's action movie mashup story and constant self-conscious jokes.

Agree, but past 3 that they started repeating themselves very much :)

I specifically mean the Blood Dragon spinoff though. It's like a compressed Far Cry.

I also played Far Cry 4 and Primal, but got bored halfway through. If they only made them shorter!

Also compared to 3, you start already as a murder machine, you don't have that slow progression before being able to fight and fight well.

I haven’t played any of the others but I loved Far Cry: Primal. The Stone Age setting is (I think?) unique among video games. (I think there’s a Blood Dragon Easter egg in it too, incidentally.)

It’s funny how you can’t please everyone. My take on Blood Dragon is it was a cute gimmick that was unnecessarily dragged out over 10 hours of gameplay.

Far Cry 2 was the best FC for me, but Blood Dragon was a close second. Steam tells me I spent 202 hours playing it.

Life is often dull and repetitive so this can be a pro or a con depending on what aspects of the game you like, that raw immersion of the chore of survival is what hooked me.

No, I mean that in Far Cry 4 they literally copied most of the characters and repurposed them for the new skin of the same game.

I mean, yes - they had more weapons/new animations/etc, but the quality of the experience suffered.

Ah yeah they changed focus big time after the success of 3. I think they sacrificed some of the immersion and realism to focus on going mainstream and eventually adding multiplayer, the effect being that now both aspects are mediocre.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com