Far Cry 2 - UbiDays '08 Preview

Cast your mind back and think when the last big stride forward in FPS game design was - perhaps you're thinking that Half-Life 2 fits that description, or maybe even the original Far Cry. Either way, you'd be hard pressed to find any FPS game in the last four years that is as innovative as either of these two. To re-cap a little, when Crytek and Ubisoft parted ways after the original Far Cry game, Ubisoft retained the intellectual property. Crysis (Crytek's spiritual successor to the first Far Cry) was released last November and ended up being little more than an evolution of the original Far Cry formula with the addition of a nanosuit and cutting edge graphics. The question now is can Ubisoft Montreal create an FPS revolution with Far Cry 2 like Crytek did with the 2004 original?

The answer to this is yes, and then some. We first saw Far Cry 2 at Leipzig GC last year and have been raring to get our hands on it ever since. Now, having had some hands on with the game at Ubidays this week, we can safely say that it's everything we hoped it would be and more. Far Cry 2 won't simply provide a sequel that will satisfy hungry fans of the first game, it will blow the lid off what FPS games are supposed to be. Put simply, when Far Cry 2 is released later this year we'll have to make a space on the FPS wall of fame somewhere in-between Doom, Marathon, Wolfenstein 3D, Goldeneye, and the original Half-Life. It's that good!

Heart Of Darkness

The build on show at Ubidays was a demo featuring two main objectives across 1 square kilometre of game world (the final game will have 50 square kilometres of game world). This demo was playable on the Xbox 360 and PC builds, although the PS3 version was a look but don't touch affair (more on that later). Eager to see how the Xbox 360 could handle such an ambitious project, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the controls felt great, the graphics were very close to the PC version on full-spec, and the gameplay itself was an identical experience. In other words, Far Cry 2 certainly won't be a specialised PC game that's cut down to fit on the consoles - you can expect the same core experience across all three platforms.

Our first task in the demo was meeting a couple of mercenaries who provide intel on your objectives. One of these guys serves as a guide who you're in contact with throughout the mission via cell phone, while the other watches your back in combat and will resuscitate you when you've taken a few too many hits. It's mercenaries like these that will form a key role in Far Cry 2, not only in the gameplay, but throughout the game's story as well.

At the very start of the game you can select from a list of mercenary soldiers/private military contractors who have come to the game's troubled African nation for one reason only: monetary gain. Once you've chosen your character, the game world is then populated with the other mercenaries and you'll come across these additional characters as you progress. How your particular experience of the game pans out depends on your interaction with these key characters and the relationships you forge with them throughout the game. On a single playthrough of Far Cry 2, one player's experience will differ widely from another's based upon this particular gameplay feature.

The reason why there's so much money to be made in this region of Africa is civil war and diamonds. Two rival factions, the AFLL (United Front for Liberation and Labor) and APR (Alliance for Popular Resistance), have emerged in this civil war and the region itself is under the tyrannical powers of a man called The Jackal. Your ultimate aim in the game is getting to him and you're drip-fed vital information on this enigmatic dictator by a journalist called Ruben, who acts as a narrative voice throughout the game. Similarly to your fellow mercenaries, forming relationships with the AFLL and APR will also be critical to your progress throughout the game. These factions that will provide you with missions and, ultimately, can help you get close to The Jackal himself.

Interestingly, the writer of Far Cry 2 is Susan O'Connor, who is one of the foremost wordsmiths in games development and has previously lent her talented hand to Gears of War and the multi-award winning story of Bioshock. The plot of the game itself is based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (which Apocalypse Now is also based on), with The Jackal being a clear representation of Kurtz in the original novel.

A Big Heart

The only games that Far Cry 2 is really comparable to are the original Far Cry and Crysis. Both offer open world gameplay and a strong, story driven campaign to boot. Having said that, the open world gameplay of Crysis didn't manage to go far beyond what the original Far Cry offered. While both games had wide open vistas that remain fairly unprecedented in FPS games, the reality is that you were shepherded through these environments with quite a strong hand. The campaign's missions had a linear progression and, while the environments themselves were large, the areas you actually played through were actually quite restrained. They may not have been conventional corridor shooters but the corridors were still there, only much wider and sometimes with the option of multiple routes through one section.

From what we could gather at Ubidays, Far Cry 2 will be everything that the original game and Crysis fell just short of. It will offer a non-linear mission progression in its campaign, allowing you to take on various objectives in the order that you chose to and select which factions or PMCs you want to take them from. What's more, Far Cry 2 promises to be the first FPS title that will kiss goodbye to individual levels and restrained environments once and for all. If you wanted to, you could walk from one end of the game's 50 square kilometres of map to the other just to take in the sights.

However, all of this is merely cosmetic if Ubisoft Montreal doesn't manage to nail the standard gameplay dynamics of an FPS. Far Cry 2 goes for the same blend of stealth and action gameplay that both Far Cry and Crysis opted for - the choice is left up to you... As we were continually reminded during the demo, you can either use a bit of stealth or go in like Rambo with all guns blazing, and this was the strongest feature of the game that we experienced during our hands on.

The gunplay is sublime, particularly as our hands on was with an Xbox 360 controller rather than a PC mouse and keyboard. The controls were so smooth that you could easily forget the restrictions of dual thumbsticks. As far as the guns themselves are concerned, we opted for a heavy use of the stealthier firearms in the game. As we neared the enemy base on one particular section, we used our spy scope to pick up intel on ammo dumps and sniper posts (which was then noted on our map once we'd spotted them). After stealthily edging up a hilltop, we took out one of the snipers with a silenced pistol before taking his rifle. Then it was simply a case of spotting the various guards on patrol throughout the camp and shooting them in quick succession with the rifle before they could get a visual on our position. The stragglers could then be finished off with grenades and AK47 fire.

On an additional playthrough we noticed that there was an array of weapons at the sniper post, such as rockets, a grenade launcher, Molotov cocktails, and a flame thrower. Firstly, we flushed out all the enemies from their base by setting the huts alight with Molotovs. Then, after returning to high ground, we fired a couple of rockets at ammo dumps near the fleeing soldiers and noted the carnage. Upon realising that a couple of soldiers had flanked us, we chucked a grenade to get their attention before making a run for it and cutting off our escape route with a liberal use of the flame thrower. After counter-flanking the two soldiers, we stealthily moved on their position and finished them off with the knife. The opportunities for both stealth and pure action gameplay were perfectly balanced in the demo, while the results were sheer poetry in motion.

Fire will certainly be a very interesting gameplay dynamic in Far Cry 2. The game world is a dry African savannah and fire spreads like, well, wildfire. A directional arrow on your spotter scope tells you which way the wind is blowing, which obviously dictates the direction that a fire will spread in. Using this info you can then strategically place your prospective infernos so that enemies will evacuate certain areas. As long as you make sure you've got a grenade launcher aimed at the area they will evacuate into, you can take the enemies out with peak efficiency and without a bullet mark left on you.

Speaking of bullet marks, you'll be getting a lot of them and also tending to your own wounds - sometimes quite graphically. Whenever you heal yourself you're shown a short animation of the main character sticking a needle in his arm or cutting out a bullet from his thigh. We're told that there will be a wide range of these animations when the game is released and that they will be procedurally generated depending on the type of injury you have suffered.

The Hang-Glider

There were a variety of vehicles on offer throughout the demo from a car that looked a bit like a Ford Capri, to a fan boat, and something similar to a dune buggy. Ubisoft Montreal has also included the infamous hang glider from the first game, although Jack Carver and ravenous mutants won't be anywhere near it this time. We had a chance to give it a quick fly at the end of our demo as an opportunity to get a good look at the expansive savannahs in the game. As we dipped and swirled with the eddying air currents, we got to thinking about the visuals on show in the game and came to the conclusion that they really are something very special indeed.

Various tech demos have already shown a lot of the graphical features on show in Far Cry 2. Whether it's the migratory patterns of animals; the realistic foliage of Ubisoft Montreal's own RealTree tech, or the stunning lighting demonstrated by the game's day/night and weather cycles, everything we've seen suggests that this game is at the cutting edge. None of this manages to prepare you for seeing it all in motion though. Just imagine the blissful image of zebras sipping water from a stream as bushes sway in the wind next to them, before a huge rocket explosion - the fires of which only Beelzebub's own heart can conjure up - rips up the landscape and sends the zebras fleeing in all directions.

Whether it's perfectly wavering reflections in water, foliage so crisp you can smell the chloroplasts, or glorious sunlight reflecting off a gun's barrel, all the graphical aspects of Far Cry 2 are top of the range. Running at full-spec, the PC version appears to have the edge over the other two with slightly sharper textures and an extra touch of brilliant lighting effects. That said, the Xbox 360 version is literally a hairs breadth behind it and we were astounded by how close both builds were visually.

As if it were the slow kid in school, it's the PS3 version that's holding everyone back. As we mentioned earlier, the PS3 game could only be seen as a viewable demo at Ubidays (i.e. no hands on), and we've been told that this was due to the build being "crashy" (so Creative Director, Clint Hocking told us) at this stage in development. However, as far as we could tell the resolution was lower on the PS3 build and the textures duller. Key environmental features like leaves and flames looked a bit average in comparison to the other two builds. It's worth remembering, though, that average in comparison to Far Cry 2 is still very good looking and there's still a lot of dev time left to iron this out.

Far Cry 2's Creative Director, Clint Hocking, told us at Leipzig last year that Far Cry 2 will have multiplayer, although no details were being announced at that time. When Clint spoke to us at Ubidays this week he re-asserted that multiplayer was very much on the agenda and confirmed that the shipped game will include a level editor, which will certainly keep the hardcore fans of the series happy.