True.

I think more variety in enemies / NPCs would definitely work better with the atmosphere. The "this is a covert mission so our dudes will attack you too" is a pretty lame excuse for the world being full of hostiles. Wandering into friendly bases or established conflicts would be much better. 

But it's the flaws that make diamonds sparkle.




Sorry, that was a bit gay. But it's true. I can spend hours hapilly bouncing around Far Cry 2 in a jeep from one repetitive mission to the other. Some people find the relentlessly hostile AI tiresome and unrealistic, but I find it adds to a constant feeling of tension in the world. On top of that, I might get paralysed by malaria or have one of my weapons jam on me during a firefight, but it's oh-so-satisfying to survive something like that!

It's a game of mini-games really, but the player has to be imaginative enough to find them. I always enjoy sniping a guy from 100 yards away and then see if I can sprint after him and finish him off with the machette before he can equip his pistol. It's also pretty fun to sneak right in to the center of a large shanty town and then unleash hell to see how long you can last.

That's just the nature of sandbox games really. If you want something different around every corner you need to play something more on a rail like Biocock or Gears of Poor. 

I think games like Stalker and the elder scrolls series do open world much better than fc2. Stalker in particular as you never know what your going to find around the next corner, even if you've been to an area 100 times before, the 101st time there could be a bloodsucker hiding in a mundane corner that rips your face off when you least expect it. Or a gang of stalkers fighting off a wave of mutants that you never saw happen before. It's random and unpredictable and that is what makes it work.

I guess that is the key thing that fc2 is lacking, the unpredictable and random element of it's open world. The checkpoints are always in the same place, guarded by the same npc's. Nothing ever changes. Even something as simple as enemy patrols wandering from village to village would spice it up some, as you would never be sure when or where you would encounter them. Add friendly patrols also and perhaps some sort of war for territory and it starts to get a lot more interesting!

Maybe it's a limitation of the console hardware, keeping track of all these different elements in an open world certainly isn't cheap on the hardware side I would imagine. Maybe Far cry 3 will improve things in this regard, who knows :) 

I bought it in a Steam sale a couple of years back but I got bored after an hour and haven't touched it since. Maybe it's just one of those slow burners that you have to play for a while to get in to it, but the early weapons were unsatisfying and there wasn't a beautiful landscape to hold my attention in the meantime. I'll give it another try sometime.

As for Elder Scrolls, Morrowind is probably my all time favourite sandbox game because it does break the mould in terms of variety. Then they made Oblivion and it all felt a bit too LOTR for my tastes.

I guess the other major SandBox game to mention would be GTA, of which I had the most fun in GTA 3 because once again you had to make your own fun. These days it's all about pretend girlfriends and horribly scripted set pieces. Dull dull dull. 

Accessibility and pacing are two of the numerous faults that stalker had. It's a curious game for me as the combat when you get right down to it is fairly boring, you basicly hide behind a wall and peek out and shoot the guy looking at you. Or just run backwards while shooting wildly and hoping for the best against mutants :)

Where it scores its biggest win though is the exploration and atmosphere, and the random unscripted elements. I swear I've never been so thoroughly absorbed into a game like I am with stalker, when its dark and storming, and i'm creeping around some barren russian facility with no idea what I'm going to find around the corner. it's pure gaming gold to me :)

Not to mention that abandoned industrial buildings are like architectural pornography to me, I'm sure that helps it's case ;) But I guess not everyone feels the same way.

GTA and Just Cause 2 (I guess) go about the open world differently I think as they give you a lot of tools to play with and make your own fun, as you said. That's probably another area where far cry 2 falls short perhaps, but I guess it wasn't the focus of the game to create a playground. Starting fire's that set off chain reactions around enemy camps is always fun though :)

Makes we wonder if the strong focus on story, setting and companions in Fc2 hurt it's open world design somewhat. It's hard to give the player some fun toys to play with when your dealing with some fairy serious and current topics regarding Africa. 

Usually I'm not a fan of realism shooter and slow gameplay where you crouch around, run from cover to cover and aim with iron sights, but it Stalker I totally enjoyed it. The atmosphere and the desolate style are great. It even let me not care about the glitches.

FC2... already forgot about it. But what you say sounds about right. Good looks, but generic gameplay that fun in the beginning but gets tedious after a while. I probably posted about it somewhere in this thread. 

The first game (shadow of chernobyl) is even better if you install the oblivion lost mod. It just nicely tweaks a lot of things like the gun-handling, and fices a lot of the broken story stuff that was in the game.

I loved all three of the Stalker games. It is a game which I often think about playing over and over (though I never do) just because I am convinced that there was a lot of stuff and exploring which I didnt manage to do the first time round. 

had a mixed feeling about that one. on the one side there's fantastic atmosphere and sense of place, those abandoned industrial buildings made me want to explore them because i just enjoyed wandering thru them. and nights were very moody. but on the other hand the gameplay was not my cup of tea. combat is slow and hard, quests (apart from the main line) were boring and repetitive, so after 1/3 of the game i focused on the main quest only.
i'm sure the game has found a plenty of true fans. 

Solved my game freezing issues by turning my GTX560 clock speed from it's factory 900 to 800. Thanks Gigabyte. 

How did you do that exactly? Might solve my 460 freezing issues too. 

AMD GPU Clock Tool to set graphics cards clocks. 

I used Evga Precision - it does memory, shader and fan speed as well which is handy. 

Good? Worth $25? Yes? No? 

The best multiplayer hat simulator of all time, is completely free to play now on Steam. Those silly ignorant fools who have never gotten around to playing it should do so now. 

Meet the Medic
http://www.teamfortress.com/uberupdate/ 

Teen Fortress too 

 

I thought with all kiddies who play it, especially now that it's free....
Okay, admittedly I haven't played it for ages, so no idea really. 

Thanks for the tips. I appears lowering it a little does solve the issues with Crysis 2. Will have to play for a bit to be sure. Anyone got some savegames so I don't have to start from the beginnging? DAZ??? I think I got as far as that research facility with the big 'aquarium window' in the hall. 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33279452/SaveGames.rar

I think these are the right files, put them in C:\Users\**name**\Saved Games\Crysis2\SaveGames

Not sure what level that was so ive got savegames for all levels :) 

Got em. 

i finished on for entar's terrain mapping thingy, but i just don't have any energy for another one. 

wrong thread. i was responding to neg's sm pack. 

So who wants to play some TF2??? 

I'm raping who's ever on my server.