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And they called it Buggy Love…

Over the Christmas period I planned to spend some quality time with a few RPGs. Whilst I did wile away a few hours battling various fiends and assorted evil creatures I also found myself traversing the African plains in Far Cry 2.

I like Far Cry 2 a lot. It took a while to grow on me, as my initial games didn’t last very long before I was lying dead in some bushes with no-one to save me. As I spent more time with the game, and got used to the different ways it can be played I’ve grown to love it more and more.

I’m currently still messing around in the Northern Territory. I have a lot more diamonds to find and, you know me –  I love a sidequest. Seriously, I can be driving along by road or river and if my GPS light starts flashing I will stop to investigate, no matter what kind of situation I may find myself in. I will use trucks as make-shift platforms to get onto high rocks or buildings (I have noticed a lot of guard posts seem to think that storing their diamond in a suitcase on the roof makes it safer). I will do pretty much anything to get at that diamond stash. I think I’ve found about 60-70 of the 212 hidden stashes, and have a few more that I haven’t managed to access yet due to being on the wrong side of a cliff or two along the way.

Once I’d got the hang of the game I spent ages unlocking all the safe houses. I found a little buggy, and formed an unhealthy attachment to it. It became my equivalent of Richard Hammond’s car “Oliver” from one of the Top Gear specials. I loved that buggy. It served me well. I have subsequently lost it, as I parked up for a mission and, well, couldn’t remember where I’d left it. Since I lost it, no matter where I seem to go I cannot find another buggy. It’s all jeeps and trucks, although the fact that I have not formed an attachment to these vehicles means that, should the need arise, I can park it up somewhere and use it as a large explosive device.

But now the Fortune’s Pack has been released as downloadable content. Amongst the silenced shotguns and crossbows there’s a couple of new vehicles. A unimog which looks like a big-assed truck so probably makes a bigger bang when used as a mobile explosive, and a quad. A quad which I could love more than I already love my buggy.

But which is better – the sleek buggy, or the Ozzy Osbourne-threatening quad? There’s only one way to find out…

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15 responses to “And they called it Buggy Love…”

  1. avatar
    Anonymous

    im going to give it a little while longer before i grab this game but I would say quads are way more fun than buggies.

  2. Michael avatar
    Michael

    Oh yes, quads are fun! I mean real quads… Quads FTW!

    I like that the diamonds have a tracker thingy, makes it much less of a “smash the TV up in frustration” thing, ya know?

  3. Tony avatar
    Tony

    Those buggies seem to everywhere. I’m pretty sure there’s one near the top left bus station in the Northern Territories.

    Did you find a blinged up gold AK-47 yet?

  4. Garvaos avatar
    Garvaos

    Might have to pick up farcry 2. Nothing beats a good old drive around in a buggy.

    Love the ozzy reference by the way 😀

  5. Duncan Aird avatar
    Duncan Aird

    FFFFFIIIIIGGGGGHHHHHTTTTT!

    Sorry, nobody else had said it. 🙂

  6. Jake avatar
    Jake

    Tony… I did indeed find a gold AK-47 but had to give it up when I ended up in a major s**tstorm and had to trade it for a sniper rifle and a decent hiding place to make it out alive. I think it was last seen on top of the sheds in the trainyards.

    Duncan.. thank you!

  7. Stephen avatar
    Stephen

    I bought Farcry 2 recently. My experience of it is far less positive than most, it would seem.

    For me the game reads like a list of bad design choices. Those cool ‘field surgery’ animations that happen when you’re down to your last health bar, for example. At first they’re an interesting addition. In the middle of a fight, however, they get controller-flingingly irritating. All the vehicles handle identically from what I can tell, just at varying speeds. My arch-nemesis, weapon degredation, is a constant companion. Having to find a safehouse or otherwise safe place to save your game is fantastically impractical. Your character must be at on at least sixty cigarettes a day because they seem only capable of sprinting twenty feet before their vision blurs and they return to shuffling along at a snail’s pace. Also, which bright spark thought that having your character take the bus to their next location was a great idea? I wonder how many diamonds a travel card costs? Oh yes, and they give you malaria before you even take your first step into the game. Hooray.

    Still, the fire effect is pretty. So if you’re a pyromaniac then I can heartily recommend Farcry 2.

  8. Tony avatar
    Tony

    “Having to find a safehouse or otherwise safe place to save your game is fantastically impractical.”

    Far Cry 2 is hardly the first game in the world to make you do that.

    And it does actually save automatically at the end of each mission.

  9. avatar
    Anonymous

    [i]”My arch-nemesis, weapon degredation, is a constant companion.[/i]

    I still haven’t played Far Cry 2, but if this is true, then I am deeply saddened. 🙁

  10. Andy Turner avatar
    Andy Turner

    Ok pop quiz hot shot…I’m getting tempted to buy Far Cry 2 now….do I make myself finish the last one that I abandoned half finished upwards of a year ago before I get it or not?

  11. Duncan Aird avatar
    Duncan Aird

    Grrr! That 9th ‘Anonymous’ post was actually me, but because I was logged in from the forum it said I was logged into WordPress.

    Strange…

  12. Stephen avatar
    Stephen

    True, it does let you save at the end of every mission. But what if you have to go out? Or the kitchen’s on fire? “I was just finishing my mission” isn’t going to cut it with your insurance company as you sift through the charred remains of your home. Okay, that’s an extreme analogy but you get the idea. The maps are so big and it takes so long to get to where you want to be that the prospect of starting it all again is daunting to say the least. I have discovered a way around this though! A nifty way of saving quickly is to get killed, get revived by your buddy, then kill them causing the save screen to appear. Okay, you won’t see that buddy again for the rest of the game but I thought of this as a bonus.

  13. Michael avatar
    Michael

    I think the weapon degradation is a nice touch, though admittedly I’ve yet to play the game. Does it also apply to enemies? Also, I’d rather save in a safe place than save where enemies could spawn and shoot me to death over and over again… Impracticality FTW!

    Far Cry 2 has no connection to the last one, Andy. So getting FC2 without finishing that game won’t spoil anything if you start playing it again.

  14. Tony avatar
    Tony

    If you get some reliability upgrades and only use your own (and not enemies weapons) it’s pretty rare that a gun will lock up on you. It does still happen, but it’s rare.

    As for saving, if it’s right across the map for a mission, I’ll take a bus and that brings up the save screen. It’s also the fastest way to cross large swathes of the map.

    If the mission is a long way from the bus station, I go to the nearest safehouse first.

  15. Andy Turner avatar
    Andy Turner

    Good call I’ll keep an eye on the price and grab it in the not too distant future then.

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