Hacker Cinema
Far Cry
2008 · Film · 95 min
Directed by Uwe Boll
Jack Carver, a former member of the Special Forces takes the journalist Valerie Cardinal to an Island to visit her uncle Max who is working in a Military complex on the Island. As they arrive Valerie gets captured by the minions of Doctor Krüger. After the destruction of his boat Jack finds out about the true purpose of the Facilities on the Island, which is the creation of genetic soldiers.
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6 comments on Hacker News
Far Cry enemies were relatively smart in the first episode too.
One thing that isn't mentionned is that games makes you engage way more with the story than movies because of how they are. In most games you can explore areas to discover more things. The equivalent doesn't really exist in movies or books. You can maybe reread a chapter or a paragraph. Pause a film and look at all the details. But that's something people rarely do unless they are analyzing the thing. In games, you have a way more "a la carte" experience. I know that I and many people have a "main road" sense, in which it's easy to see what's the main road that will progress the game, and what are optional branches. That means that if you want to engage more with the world, you can easily choose to.
The main quest of Skyrim takes 30 hours, but I'm sure that most people played way more than that. Same thing with games like Far Cry, you can rush the main story, or you can take your time and do way more things. I think that makes games a media where often you don't follow a story but engage with a world. Those are two very different things. Even in linear "walking simulators", there are usually tons of optional stuff.
The equivalent would be to have a movie or book that dynamically react to you, and that doesn't really exists, at least not as well as how games do it.
On the other hand, the experience of reading a book and imagining all the visual parts, or sitting there watching a movie are also very unique, and can't be filled by other medias.
I didn't think I would, but I seem by those archetypes to land under "Achievers", this despite me never 100%:ing a game (the rare exception being Binding of Isaac, love the item synergy sandbox/breaking of that game), and hating achievements, never looking for collectables, etc.
I do however always accumulate/optimize for maximum ammo/currency/gear/weapons/items, to the point where I believe I completed >80% of Half-Life with the crowbar, to conserve ammo.
I also like you love singleplayer games and a well-written story, but I on the other hand hate open world games (because they're never open nor "worldy" enough), and equally hate too linear games (looking at CoD past 3 and the like).
I grew up loving games like Quake (for the multiplayer/mechanics/general tech side of it), The Longest Journey for the story, Half-Life for both aspects, and a bunch of games struggling with either storytelling/mechanics or other but loveable for their attempt at trying something more than they could achieve (examples being Outcast, Citizen Kabuto, Oni, Advent Rising, Too Human).
When thinking of what the last bigger/sorta AAA games I enjoyed playing was I think it's Half-Life 2 (kind of obvious), but also FarCry (1), Crysis (1, but also Warhead), Just Cause 2.
All of them had a story, most of them were open world and allowed you to approach a problem with undesigned solutions, which is what I really love.
I've bought GTA 4, 5, Far Cry 3, 4, Just Cause 3, and many many others, played them for less than a handful hours, and given up because it just feels like I have to churn this mill just to advance a movie, at which point I may as well watch a movie, or watch someone else play the game (which I now completely understand as a concept).
"Open world" games I've played in recent years - after the original concept of open world once went linear for consoles, and then consoles catching up enough to enable open world games again - don't seem to be so much about designing a world with some rules and a number of tools, but simply providing more than 1 or 2 designed solutions to a problem, which feels completely hollow to me.
I have no doubt that this is why MineCraft (which I haven't played much for lack of story/"game", although having plenty of sandbox/open world) and that genre has sprouted up to much success.
Sorry for hijacking. I don't know how this turned into a longwinded games rant, but it raised questions since I identified with you, while still feeling characterized under "achiever".
I highly disliked Far Cry, it was the epitome of graphics over gameplay. The graphics were astounding, but the gameplay was a tedious uncoordinated piece of crap. Story basically had all the point of a Mario game, stealth didn't exist as the AI could seemingly spot you from 200ft away with their backs turned (maybe a little exaggeration).
I disliked the game so much that I've essentially avoided any game with 'Cry' in it since playing Far Cry.
IMO the best outcome for EA would be a pre-release that with such great reviews that I would actually consider playing the demo, although that still requires the HDD space that I'd likely prefer to waste on a blu-ray rip of virtually any movie as I'd expect it to entertain me for longer (I love the 5hr gameplay that most FPS now provide, real 'bang' for my buck when I can usually spend less for an RPG that'll give me anywhere from >20 to 100 hours like Mass Effect/Dragon Age)
Yes, two dollars, when compared with the value I get out of a decent FPS.
It's funny you mention the orange box; Portal is another puzzle game, and similarly not particularly replayable after solving it, which similarly takes about 6 hours.
And as for Half-Life 2, Ep 1 and 2, these are some of my least favourite FPSes because they are obsessively linear and don't reward creative approaches. For these reasons, they are more like a movie, and don't have particularly good replay value (IMHO).
Far Cry, on the other hand, was a masterpiece of playability, leaps and bounds ahead of any Half Life game, again IMHO. The freedom to tackle each situation resulted in large rewards to creativity.
Far Cry 2 took it even further; rather than just having to tactically plan one's approach to action bubbles, one needed to plan an entire navigation across the map, avoiding guard posts, road patrols, etc. I've never played a more immersive game than Far Cry 2, a game that took me to another world, save perhaps Outcast or Thief.
That depends on what you mean by "interactive movie". I've seen some games that rely too heavily on cutscenes, and other games that keep the character pretty strictly on rails (e.g. Call of Duty and Half-Life series), and I generally detest both of those.
I like to get into high tactics, if not strategy, in the FPSes I play, which means I like games that have the scope and openness for emergent action. Typical examples would be Far Cry and Far Cry 2 (but not Crysis, being spoiled by the suit's power). These aren't really what I'd call interactive movies, because even though they have plot to keep the character moving along, the main meat of the game is in how you tackle "action bubbles" - but those action bubbles are nice and broad that there's plenty of scope for deception, diversion, distraction, improvisation with explosives in the environment, and an openness to lots of different approaches that linear games like Half-Life (particularly 2 and episodes) can never really match.