I get off the bus in Pala and head to the underground HQ. Apparently I'm getting low on pills for my malaria, and the only way to take care of that is to do a job for these guys. Father Maliya in the church doesn't have any medicine, but he knows a vet in the northeast who does. All I have to do is deliver some travel papers for a family that's holed up there. I get back on the bus.
I make it past the checkpoint on the road just before the vet's clinic, but not without having to administer another painful bout of homebrewed first aid. Pro tip: Try not driving right up to these outposts in your car, then hopping out to engage the guards. It's not nearly as badass or practical as you might think.
There's a squad of militia goons at the vet's clinic that I need to clear out before I can go inside and get my medicine. I try to get the drop on them, but Michele's sniper rifle just jams way too much, so it's got to go. I use it to take care of a couple of the guys out front, then deal with the remainder up close and personally. Inside I deliver the papers to a family, who exchange their medicine for them, then sleep for 4-5 hours on the cot inside the building.
When I reemerge, something isn't right. I think I hear voices. I crouch and move through the garage to see a man crouched at the other entrance, waiting for me to walk by on the road. Which is odd, because in order for me to get into the clinic in the first place I had to clear the area of all hostiles. After I take him down with the machete, I notice that there's an entire welcoming committee waiting for me in the field just beyond, about four more dudes in total, so another firefight ensues.
I want to bulk up my arsenal and I've definitely got the stones for it (figuratively and literally), so it's time to off another vaguely European dude. The nearest cell phone tower is to the south up a nearby river, but the lake at its mouth is guarded by the same checkpoint where I had my first near death experience, so it's not going to be a cakewalk getting a boat. As I approach the nearby outpost on foot I encounter another soldier creeping along the base of the rocky ridge. Maybe the welcoming committee came from the lake? Then as I approach the house on my side of the lake opposite the checkpoint, a few explosions go off on the road near the vet clinic. No idea what's going on back there, but I'm not too inclined to find out.
The checkpoint had a couple guards, but nothing too serious. I swipe the medical supplies and make my way back down to the dock and am in the process of speeding off upriver when a "There he is!" is quickly followed by a burst of machine gun fire. Apparently, there are men in the house across the small inlet that divides the lake from the river. These guys present me with a bit of trouble, actually. As I move into the house there's a soldier inside who spots me before I do him thanks to my eyes not yet adjusting. I forgot to mention that: when you move from outside to inside, your eyes have to take a second to adjust in the light, which can screw you if you're low on health and looking for cover. It kinda works both ways, though, making hiding in buildings and letting enemies come to you a fairly reliable tactic.
I take out another guy, and I don't hear anymore chatter from the enemies. This is the worst, because it either means you've killed everyone or you've killed all but one. This is one thing Far Cry 2 does better than, say, Splinter Cell: Conviction. Not only is enemy chatter fairly low key and consistent, if you manage to take down all the guards but one, the lone survivor won't start berating and taunting you. He'll keep his mouth shut and hunt you. Turns out for me, it was all but one. I manage to get him with my machete, and though he gets a few good shots in it's nothing too serious. I check the house and see these guys were guarding a diamond case, so the firefight was actually kind of worth it.
I set off upriver for real, and aside from a head on collision with another boat I make it to my destination pretty much without incident. The quickest route to the guard tower from the river is by heading south through the villa I attacked in the first mission. I find a safehouse on the river near it and sleep until nightfall. When I wake up, Marty's there. I try not to think about how long he might have been sitting there while I slept, and instead take him up on his offer to help me out again if I end up taking too many bullets to the face. He says what he'll be doing is basically shadowing me from a distance, not using me as bait "like Michele does." Huh. I set out along the footpath towards the villa.
It's a lot easier to sneak at night, and I manage to slip past the villa itself undetected. I make it to the perimeter guardpost and decide to try stealing some ammo, but I'm caught in the act. I took out the guard who saw me as he stood in the doorway, and as I reloaded I heard the characteristic sound of a grenade hitting the floor. I run out to the road and see the second soldier, and just after I take him down the grenade detonates the ammo dump, the rounds that were there firing. In other words, I have excellent timing. I take a jeep and drive to the nearby tower to learn the target is not far from here, in the Mokuba shantytown. Again, also just like the first mission.
I approach the slum from up the hill again, placing me behind an RPG soldier stationed on the hill. Ideally, I could use my sniper rifle to take out the target from this hill, then the RPG guy, then run off. Unfortunately, it's not going to be that easy for me. I can't get a clear line of sight on the target, and there look to be plenty of guards walking around the village. It occurs to me that maybe I should've invested in a silenced pistol, because now once I start attacking I'll have to go loud. I come up with a plan that sort of helps to compensate for my lack of being able to silently insert: I'll hit the RPG man with a rifle, then make my way to an explosives dump I spotted in the village. I'll plant a charge there, move a bit away and detonate it as a diversion, then in the confusion make my way to the target and eliminate him.
I set it in motion, and manage to hit not only the RPG guy with my sniper rifle, but a man who was standing right behind him, then move down a small footpath into the village. Naturally, I'm spotted not long after I make my way past the perimeter, so I use the PKM to just start blasting my way down the main street towards the target. It's actually very effective, and I'm taking down target after target with relative ease, which makes it all the more surprising when out of nowhere a grenade detonates next to me as I pause to reload in a hut and I fall on my face.
Marty's there for me once again, and as he hands me his pistol tells me to "never do that again". Really good advice. I resolve to keep on the move a lot more now, because even if I'm laying waste to entire companies, all it takes is one dude with a good arm or good aim to finish me off. Just as I heal my wounds, the malaria kicks in again. I take a pill as Marty tries to hold off some more advancing goons. After the fever subsides, I notice that Marty's having a tough time of it, as he limps into a patch of grass next to a hut then lies down and starts moaning. As I move up to heal him, two more soldiers run over and start firing. I chuck a grenade, which takes down one of them and also explodes a jeep, but his buddy evades it, and tries to flank through the huts to my right. I respond by spraying the sheet metal wall with my PKM, and the bullets go through the flimsy material and take him down.
I heal Marty, and decide to make the target pay for putting me through all this hassle. All his guards are dead, so getting to him then flanking him through a hut proves to be no problem. I get paid, but I'm really just happy to be getting out of Mokuba in one piece. Well, mostly one piece anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment