I absolutely love freeform games. Which explains the boxes of Simcity 3000, Simcity 4 Deluxe, The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind GOTY, The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, Railroad Tycoon 2 Gold, etc, etc, littering my room. This is the main reason Far Cry 2 suckered me in.
I am not a first-person kinda guy. I get motion sickness a lot whenever I try any FPS. Plus, I am not a graphics freak. I do love having the latest hardware, and I do like seeing all these fancy textures and lighting in my games, but it is definitely not a requisite for me to play a game. “Good graphics do not a good game make” – believed always, I have.
However, surprisingly, I have tried out a few FPS’es that don’t make me sick in any way, only after extended play sessions, like an hour or two. Serious Sam 1, Commandos 4 and the original Far Cry don’t sicken me the way CoD4, BioShock, FEAR or Return To Castle Wolfenstein did. Since the original Far Cry is in the “FPS that I can play” list, I am hoping that I can play Far Cry 2 too.
The open world really intrigues me. Also, seeing trailers of the game impressed me in the way the game is handled. There’s no alternate screen for the map, you actually hold the map in your hand. When you heal, there is no magic flash on the screen. You’ll actually see your alter-ego doing something, like injecting himself with drugs or sticking a knife in your body to get the “bad blood” out a la. Rambo. Ok, granted the former has been done lots of times, but the latter is quite cool to have. I guess it’s all for realism. Which somehow strikes me as odd, because I play games to escape from reality.
The game also seems to be hardware-friendly. A post on VR-Zone describes that someone managed to max out the settings, and he is only running a 9600GT. Of course, this all depends on what resolution he played at, and if his forum signature is accurate at the time.
So which part of my soul does it want if I were to play this game? The DRM looks interesting.
- You have 5 activations on 3 separate PCs.
- Uninstalling the game “refunds” an activation. This process is called “revoke”, so as long as you complete proper uninstall you will be able to install the game an unlimited number of times on 3 systems.
- You can upgrade your computer as many time as you want (using our revoke system)
- Ubisoft is committed to the support of our games, and additional activations can be provided.
- Ubisoft is committed to the long term support of our games: you’ll always be able to play Far Cry 2.
Hmm, sounds very fishy, doesn’t it? I wonder what “3 separate PCs” mean. On the surface, people will really think that it’s all 3 physically different PCs. But software isn’t that smart. It simply means that if you change your graphics card or CPU or motherboard or RAM or possibly even a hard drive, or a combination or any of these, it will mean that you have a separate PC already! So “3 separate PCs” can also mean your same PC upgraded thrice. Funky!
And the revoke feature only works if you “complete proper uninstall”. So you can wave goodbye to one install if your windows suddenly got a BSOD, disabling you from booting into the windows partition, and you have to reformat. Good luck trying to revoke that install from customer support and proving your case.
Just how long is “long term”? If they really want me to play Far Cry 2 always, why not a simpler DRM or even no DRM at all? Sigh…
All this sounds very disappointing to the trying-to-reform pirate. I have a nice income now: I can afford 1-2 games each month. (Yes, I define my income levels by the number of games I can buy per month.) Yet publishers like this simply try to push me away, time and again. First, Mass Effect. Then Spore. Then this! I am super super happy that Fallout 3 will only have a simple CD check, and I will be immediately getting that game first in 2 days time.
Hmm, maybe I can buy it, then download a crack. Or just buy it, not install it at all and just use a pirated cloned ISO off my favourite torrent site. While I mull over this, I think I’ll just play Colin McRae 2005 for now. I just bought it off Good Old Games, a game distribution site that actually advertises “DRM free” as a core feature in their games. Brings tears to my eyes.
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Tags: far cry 2
[...] I have extolled on the virtues of open-world games before. I love it. I’m not too keen on having a pre-scripted and pre-determined location on where to go and what to do. I feel restricted by it. I don’t mind it, but the choice of letting me go off-track is nice. [...]