Far Cry 4: Pointlessness is the Point

I’ve long held the belief that the Far Cry games generally have a lot more going on than the casual player or critic may notice or give it credit for. They don’t have any problem getting good review scores, but they still commonly receive complaints about things that were perceived as flaws but were more likely intentional choices because people miss the point, possibly due to not being used to games asking them to think on a more philosophical level than “Nazis should be shot in the face”.

“I hate that all these guard posts respawn and that the hostility is so pointlessly endless,” cries the person playing Far Cry 2, not seeing that these aspects of the game were supposed to help illustrate the senseless futility of war and violence. “Jason is an unlikeable douche and it doesn’t make sense that he can do all this crazy shit,” complains the Far Cry 3 player who missed the themes of perspective and insanity as well as the not-so-subtle metacommentary on the gaming industry as a whole.

While I don’t want to dwell too much on this debate, I will concede that it’s possible that these games didn’t effectively present their messages effectively enough if so many people didn’t catch them without being told, but I still personally believe that we, both consumers and critics alike, need to start demanding more from games and digging deeper anyway or the industry will never have any reason to produce anything more profound than mere entertainment.

That said, I’m pretty sure Far Cry 4 is continuing the tradition of saying a lot of interesting things that most people won’t notice. In fact, this time around even I was fooled at first. Thats right, me, the guy who squeezes deeper meaning out of basically everything thought that this game might not have any deeper meaning to squeeze out.

Quick Thoughts: L.A. Noire is Realistic in Less Obvious Ways Sometimes

There’s all kind of interesting things about L.A. Noire worth talking about, but one thing that struck me today while I was playing is how the police treat the presumption of innocence with comical disregard. This is almost certainly done on purpose, as one of the major plot points is that you keep putting away suspects for murders that were all clearly done by the same (still not caught) person. But this comes through the actual mechanics of the game in more subtle but no less striking ways.

For those of you (at least in the States) who don’t know your more basic rights, presumption of innocence is the concept that all suspects in a crime are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt. It is the burden of the prosecution to present proof to the court before a citizen can be declared guilty of a crime.

At least in theory. To put it politely, our justice system is far from perfect, and corruption is more common than we would like to acknowledge. Innocent people go to prison all the time, sometimes for their entire lives, with staggeringly inconclusive evidence lodged against them.

In L.A. Noire, you guide a detective through each crime scene, collecting clues, talking to witnesses, and interrogating suspects. Because this is a videogame, there is a pre-set number of clues and people to question for each case. However, in most cases you can, either by calculated hypothesis or sheer accident, skip entire testimonies or sets of clues by triggering the final interrogation scene with a main suspect.

What this means ludologically is entire portions of the game are skipped. What this means narratively is that you haphazardly put away a suspect before you had all the facts and evidence to consider, even though you know they exist. You have those leads written down in your handy notebook whether you follow them or not.

This bit of mechanics is an interesting support for all the narrative pieces where Phelps, the protagonist, questions whether or not they’re arresting the right people and is generally told by superiors that it doesn’t matter because it makes them look good politically.

It would have been really easy to make the suspects either obviously guilty or obviously framed, but despite its flaws this game manages to play with the concepts of guilt and innocence really well.

The point is, you are alive when they start to eat you.

Back to the PS3

Now that I’ve finished Far Cry 4 and taken down all the notes I need, I can start working on the analysis. Only now I have the issue of deciding what to play next.

I really enjoy playing things on the PS4 when I can help it because it makes capturing images and video extremely easy for someone like myself who doesn’t have a computer powerful enough to run modern games; I’m stuck on consoles so all arguments about platform superiority aside, that’s just how I consume games. Fortunately almost everything is multiplatform these days anyway so the end result is about the same and you still get to read my inane ramblings on the wide world of digital experiences.

But honestly as far as new stuff goes there’s not a whole lot. I mean there’s some. It would be easier if I were just writing straight reviews, but returning readers will know I strive to say more interesting things than whether or not a game is worth buying. And to my shame, there’s a sizable list of games from the past several years that I either never got around to or could really benefit from replaying, so it’s back to the PS3 I go, at least until Bloodborne hits.

This conflicts directly with my desire to stay up to date and relevant to my readers, but screw it. Some of my favorite readings have been about media from years ago, and like a good book there are plenty of older games worth revisiting even now. So revisit I shall! And if anyone has any suggestions or requests I would be happy to consider it.

Quick Thoughts: Dark Souls II Hasn’t Learned Anything

I’ve ranted before about the ways in which Dark Souls II fails compared to its predecessors, but all aesthetic choices aside the one thing I still can’t stand about this game is the seeming lack of understanding of what makes difficulty engaging. In the first Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls, difficulty was kind of a byproduct of very tight mechanical design. They were hard games, but the difficulty didn’t feel like the point of the game. Mastery of the mechanics and learning to play carefully was intrinsically rewarding, so even when you got stuck, when you persevered you felt awesome and didn’t often feel like the game was being unfair.

That’s not to say that Dark Souls II doesn’t encourage you to master its systems, too, but that game uses difficulty almost as a gimmick. From the very start it pokes fun at how many times you’ll probably die. The town square has a statue that records how many total deaths the player population has racked up. And most egregiously, the difficulty isn’t really all that interesting. The combat is very similar to Dark Souls in that it’s designed for one-on-one combat, but instead of making the enemies more dynamic or challenging themselves they just throw more of them at you to achieve more “difficult” situations. There were mobs to deal with in the other games, too, but typically you could lure them out in singles or pairs. The number of instances in which you must deal with multiple enemies in Dark Souls II is significantly higher.

So in other words the difficulty comes primarily from the fact that mobs are hard to deal with in combat designed for dueling. And in many cases this doesn’t even make it harder so much as more irritating or exhausting. It just feels like a slog, there’s nothing compelling about the encounters.

These views are not unique to me, of course. Many a critic and player alike have complained about this very problem. A vast majority of people, in all fairness, really enjoyed this game and can probably defend any misgivings I have about it. And that’s wonderful, I’m not one to denounce the value others find in a creative work, even if I don’t agree with them. But my point is there has been plenty of negative noise against this game, too.

So in comes the re-release, which will also be available on the new-gen consoles. And what things have they added to the game? Why, it’s more enemies!

Look, it’s not a bad game. I’d still rather play Dark Souls II than a lot of the AAA nonsense out there at the moment. But this update shows a disturbing lack of understanding of what has made this series so fiercely loved by fans. These extra enemy placements were considered by the developers to be an improvement; they wouldn’t have been added otherwise. But this just exemplifies my point that while this may make some areas more difficult than before, it won’t make them more interesting or make the experiences more meaningful.

I try not to be too negative on this blog. It’s too easy to be a harsh critic. I try to celebrate the things I love about games and discuss things about design that I find interesting or important to gaming. I aim to focus on optimism and enjoyment rather than vitriol. But that’s exactly why things like this disappoint me. I love the Souls series. I’ve had some truly remarkable experiences with them. It’s just frustrating when a really good run has a totally avoidable misstep like this.

However! While not really a Souls game, I feel like Bloodborne is at least in the same family, and I have nothing but positive anticipation for how that title turns out. I suppose we shall see in a matter of weeks.

The point is, you are alive when they start to eat you.

Daily Grind: My Less Elegant Far Cry 4 Moments

For those of you wondering what I’ve been doing in all the silence between posts, here it is. Finally, an actual piece of content!

I’ve been playing a lot of Far Cry 4, and while I’m not done with my full analysis or indeed even the game yet, I have had some pretty memorable moments along the way. One of the things Ubisoft promised this game would have more of is emergent gameplay, and I have to admit that this is one busy game. You can’t walk twenty feet without running into some calamity or other, and the random and unique excitement that can spawn rom these situations are really quite enjoyable.

This also means that on a blind run you’re not going to look super slick all the time. Gameplay can get clumsy, even once you start to master the mechanics, because everything is just so insane and unpredictable. This game, more than most, illustrates that even the best laid plans can fall apart at the last second.

So what follows are some of my less suave moments in the game so far. Let’s start with the time I carelessly got spotted by an enemy truck on my way to an enemy outpost, which sped off and severely annoyed a nearby elephant who only wanted some peace and quiet. I pressed onward, and by the time I got within view of the outpost that very elephant was already wrecking their shit. I didn’t have to fire a single shot because the pachyderm slaughtered every last guard.

Speaking of elephants, here’s another outpost takedown involving them, only this time on purpose. Unfortunately I play like a fucking amateur. I don’t remember what my problem was this day, but I must have been half asleep or blindfolded or something because the whole thing devolved into chaos pretty quickly.

This next one is one of my favorites. I don’t play poorly, really, but the radio music in my vehicle lined up almost perfectly with my actions, giving the entire affair a comical officialness.

In this next clip I’m attempting a hostage rescue mission. I take my time, tag the enemies, scope out their locations and patrols, lure a soldier out away from the others for a silent assassination by arrow, only to somehow get the attention of every other enemy in the area. Out of pure luck I was never discovered, despite some very close calls, and manage to kill the final two guards together using a convenient bee hive. Basically, I got lucky.

Along those same lines, while trying to take down a larger outpost I was moving around the perimeter to try to get some good positioning when I stumbled across a rocket sniper standing around a corner. Playing it safe, I tried to lure him out with a rock so I could get behind him without being spotted. Unfortunately, he decided to have another patrolling guard inspect for him. I was almost spotted several times before clumsily taking them both down just in time.

In a less stellar display of AI, at one point I was cowardly sniping down enemies from a hilltop when the three remaining guys got distracted or panicked or something and all ran out of the base and down the road. I took the opportunity to walk in and deactivate the alarms, though I’m not sure why I bothered since the soldiers never came back and I was able to snipe them from inside their own outpost.

Finally, the last video is where I awkwardly but ultimately effectively took down a fortress on my first try using nothing but a bow. My wingsuit fly-in at the beginning is my smoothest act, after that I’m all cautious and stuff.

And so, on my first run through the game, sometimes I play like a filthy casual. That’s okay, though, because it made for some entertaining moments. Hopefully soon I’ll have made it through the main story a couple times and I can write up my full analysis.

The point is, you are alive when they start to eat you.