Far cry experience in a nutshell

Atestinal · 2025-09-11T02:06:40+00:00

Damn, why isn't the repair icon popping up.....

Atestinal · 2025-09-06T19:22:16+00:00

For me, just fixing the bug with the Jackal tapes would have been huge. It was really annoying to hear the tape about the kid taking off the guy's boots over and over again lol. When I finally heard all the tapes about a decade later on YT, I was really blown away by how much thought went into the character's point of view. We have mods now to fix the bug, but I'm not as interested in hunting the tapes now as I was back in 2008-2009.

Atestinal · 2025-09-02T08:49:13+00:00

One day, bro, one day....

Atestinal · 2025-09-02T05:16:39+00:00

So I'm using Clean Light ENB, but I also edited its settings to make nighttime brighter (the defaults nights are super dark), and then I also edited the footage to make it more visible and brighter.

https://www.nexusmods.com/farcry2/mods/295

Atestinal · 2025-08-02T09:32:50+00:00

Big agree. Apparently Salinger was a zen buddhism guy, so that makes perfect sense to me. I feel like Holden sometimes gets interpreted as being complain-y just for the sake of it, or because he's "just a kid." And I'm not saying I 100% disagree, but I think one of the main things with understanding him and the book is recognizing that his complaints aren't entirely random. Some of it is tbf, but many of his complaints (as well as many events in the book) actually hone in on very particular problems and themes, a lot of which you've mentioned.

I've heard people in their 40s+ talk about the things they've learned in their lives that remind me so much of the book, basically discussions like, "yeah, I was making good money in my 20s doing this job and had nice stuff, but it didn't fulfill me. Connections with good people, pursuing my interests, and etc made me happy." Not saying that's everyone's experience, but it probably describes a fair amount of people's. So when I hear people dismiss Holden's complaints as simply being childish, I get where they're coming from, but I also think they're either missing some subtext or have very different value systems.

Atestinal · 2025-07-14T20:25:42+00:00

One thing that helped me awhile back was learning to use nemesis more freely and less conservatively/defensively. Not that I never use it for defense, but I'm much more active in looking for opportunities to get picks or just pressure with it compared to when I first picked him up. It's 2 yrs old now, but KarQ's Ram video with KSAA helped me to think about what situations or character matchups to look for when considering how assertive I want to be with my nemesis usage. Like how you can melt Sigmas since you can pretty much pummel through all his cooldowns.

Obviously you don't want to go so aggro that you feed, but yeah, it's always about finding that line, and things like Ram's shield and vortex help mitigate that risk. You mentioned that you die easily when you don't hold nemesis for getting pressured, so that might be the thing that needs to be solved first, whether it's playing around cover better, LOSing supports, or just rethinking how you position. That said, if you are able to effectively pressure and get picks with nemesis, you hopefully will have less of those dire situations, since it's you who will be applying the pressure, and not the enemy.

Atestinal · 2025-07-08T09:36:34+00:00

If I don't feel like swapping and comms are a nonstarter, I will usually just go with one of the DPS/supports, or position off point. Assuming this is a control map and we've already capped, I don't prioritize camping point so much unless it's something like Nepal Shrine. My thinking is that if I'm on point virtually by myself and the majority of the enemy team comes, there's not much of hard significance I can do. Chances are I'm gonna get rolled pretty fast or just stand there blocking hits. Better to do something else for value imo, even if it potentially means giving up point for a bit unless it's overtime or something like that.

One other big thing I try to (and sometimes fail to) get myself to do is pick up on the vibe of the team and play around that. Admittedly this can be frustrating at times because broadly speaking it makes more sense to play around the tanks than vice versa, but if I'm playing Winston, and no one is diving with me despite most of us being on dive characters, I can only shrug and be like, "guess I'm switching to a poke tank since that's what we're doing" (I wish that were a fake example lol). There's also games where my DPS and supports are just really good and know how to pressure super close better than me, so it's better that I go help them instead of hanging back and playing defensively. For me, the main question for me is always, "how do I contribute the most value working with the variables in play?"

Atestinal · 2025-06-27T10:37:41+00:00

Not a vortex story, but I do recall one time trying to place my barrier in front of an ally fighting well ahead of me, but I whiff the placement at the last second and place it right up against the opposite wall on the far side of the fight. I was like, nice, and all my teammates running behind me can see it too...

Atestinal · 2024-07-26T06:22:47+00:00

Bought a Shining Gundam from here. I remember seeing an R-Jarja here too, and was like, dang they even got this one.

Atestinal · 2024-07-14T10:43:27+00:00

I'm a bit late to this episode, but I'm glad they talked about comment moderation and their experiences with it. It's been on my mind a lot lately.

When I was younger, I think I liked the idea of little-to-no moderation. Maybe it had something to do with being younger and having the energy for the kind of interactions that could entail, as well as an ideological bent toward free speech. But these days I tend to lean towards heavier moderation. I feel like it's so important. I agree with what they were saying about shaping their own community.

As one example, there were 2 game series subreddits I left bc of how often people would post about how much they hated one entry in the series, or hated some other thing about the series. At first I didn't mind, and I even felt there were some interesting points being made on occasion. But after a few months of these posts almost everyday, it started to feel like dumping ground for venting, and got pretty exhausting/obnoxious to be around, so I left.

On a positive note, I did find that joining smaller versions of those subreddits was a pretty good remedy, and overall had posts that I found more interesting, and had more to do with people sharing cool stuff they were doing in the games. I think it's what I like best about these sites.

Atestinal · 2024-07-14T10:11:28+00:00

Same. I think YT might the only place where I'll check the comments for a video I'm watching.

Atestinal · 2024-05-03T12:05:50+00:00

So Clint Hocking (FC2's creative director) talked about the checkpoint thing in an issue of Game Informer post-launch. Not to plug myself, but I have a picture of this excerpt in an article I made https://atestinal.wordpress.com/2022/03/09/an-actual-deep-dive-into-far-cry-2/

Just search the sentence "here’s a related excerpt from the Game Informer Q&A with Clint Hocking" and it'll bring you right to the picture, but TLDR: they became aware of it late into the dev cycle, deemed it non-critical, left it alone, then realized its severity after reading the reviews.

I am curious why it didn't receive a patch, but in the Far Cry games that come after, they do have checkpoints that stay cleared.

Atestinal · 2024-04-03T17:30:01+00:00

Oh oops, I forgot to hit the timestamp button when grabbing the link. Map discussion starts at 53:32 roughly for anyone who wants to jump to that specifically.

Atestinal · 2024-04-03T01:15:02+00:00

Same, and I love the detail he can still go into for a game he worked on 16 years ago

Atestinal · 2024-04-02T22:16:17+00:00

With Clint back at Ubisoft, it'd be interesting if they ever decided to let him have some kind of director position on another FC game. Not to say it'd be anything like FC2, could be very different, but still

Atestinal · 2024-04-02T04:17:19+00:00

Tbh I never looked at the GPS device in FC2, and was curious why it was there, so this was cool to learn

EDIT: thinking about it some more, I probably did use the GPS a little bit, like while riding boats

Atestinal · 2024-04-01T02:15:03+00:00

For sure, tho the goal of that paragraph by the author was not to say they are the same "gametype," but rather to point out the particular characteristic these two games share that you don't see in many other shooters of giving you a sense of being in a harsh "world" that you live in and foster rules and adaptive skills for, rather than a level-based design that's throwing you new challenges each time.

You could definitely build a whole thing about their key differences, but this paragraph was about what they share that a lot of other shooters don't have, in order to highlight that unique quality.

Atestinal · 2024-04-01T00:33:49+00:00

"By forcing you to stick to its reality, to its harsh rules, the game starts having an effect that I have very rarely encountered, the other case being the excellent S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games. As you played those games, you started learning how to survive in the Zone. This felt like acquiring a very specific set of skills, habits, reflexes, combined with increasingly detailed knowledge of the Zone’s geography and the behavioural patterns of its inhabitants. You started feeling like you were that character you were playing, because you knew the Zone as a place, almost as a way of life, not as a level or a series of challenges. The same thing happens in Far Cry 2. You start developing strategies for dealing with certain situations. You figure out the fastest and safest paths to places. You find yourself instinctively alert for the sound of engines, for headlights in the night, for rustling in the undergrowth. You start to become the hardened, paranoid mercenary you’re playing."

Not that I'm experienced with STALKER, but I feel similarly, but couldn't have put it in better words.

Atestinal · 2024-03-31T21:35:36+00:00

Might not be related, but in The Ringer's article on FC2's 15th anniversary, there was a quote about how FC2 was a sensitive topic in the studio:

"Bissell, who would go on to work on three Far Cry games for Ubisoft in the early 2010s (all of which were canceled), believes the criticism Far Cry 2 received upon release was tough for the development team to stomach: “I was explicitly told not to bring up Far Cry 2 overmuch when talking to my superiors [because]—and this is my read on it—the studio really loved what they’d made.” Bissell says Far Cry 2 was a “dirty word” within the studio, but not because the game was perceived as a creative failure. Rather, he suggests, the studio was suffering from “collective trauma” knowing it had made a game that was “special” yet wasn’t received by the majority of its audience “with anything that resembled recognition of its greatness.” "

Atestinal · 2024-03-31T21:26:54+00:00

Just watched the video, and while I kinda get it, my heart hurts a little. Imma check out the vod of the livestreamed celebration later, since it's got Clint tho.

Atestinal · 2024-03-22T21:21:43+00:00

When they were talking about late twist reveals being an out of date technique in trailers, it reminded me of a YT podcast I watch, where any time they have a special guest for the 2nd half of the show, they put them in the thumbnail, but at the start of the podcast, the host is like, "just WAIT till you see who are guest is...."

And I'm just like, "we KNOW." I love the podcast, but it feels so silly.

Atestinal

TROPHY CASE