Far Cry 2: PERMANENT DEATH End Thoughts

So apparently I wasn't able to transfer my save data from home to college, so I will have to end

this little experiment here. It's probably for the best, given that I've (naturally) been pretty busy ever since school started, so playing video games while writing about them would probably be nowhere near as fun as I need my vidja games to be right now.

Rather than just abruptly say, "Well that's it" and declare this Let's Play (if you want to call it that) over, I thought I'd offer by way of closing a brief summation of why I think Far Cry 2 might be one of my favorite shooters. Like, ever.

Like I said at the beginning, Far Cry 2 is a game about war that not many other shooters and action games are nowadays. It explores the nature of conflict and what prolonged exposure to it can do to people. By the end of the game (SPOILERS DUH SKIP TO NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU CARE) you've machinated a hilarious succession of assassinations and counter-assassinations that leave the mercs previously employed by the APR and UFLL in charge of these militias, which are now working to round up and suppress the civilian population. The Jackal is having none of this, and enlists you in his plan to get every civilian in the country, something like two million people (but I might be exaggerating) across the border. Yes, all of them. You go along with it because you're a mute protagonist so it doesn't matter if you think otherwise, as there's no way in hell to voice your disagreement. Your merc "buddies" all betray you for a case of diamonds, and one way or another you end up killing yourself, as does the Jackal (maybe, they never found a body). As he puts it, "You and I are both terminal cases. But this time we can actually do something about it". The country descends into madness as the remaining leaderless members of the APR and UFLL perpetuate their bloodbath, and that reporter Ruben takes a picture of the refugees.

But this is all really secondary. The plot only intrudes on the game at the end of the first and second halves. And that is the right word, because otherwise you're aware of the enmity between the two factions, but it doesn't make itself that evident, especially because they're both trying to kill you anyway. Far Cry 2 succeeds in setting up its central question through gameplay and setting, not by dumping hours and hours of text, expositional and otherwise, on you as some other big name titles might (COUGH COUGH FINAL FANTASY AND METAL GEAR SOLID COUGH COUGH). This is a much more insidious way of doing it, because it conditions you in ways you aren't really aware of, or at least ones that might make you stop at points to consider exactly what it is you're doing.

Take melee kills. In Call of Duty games, using the knife simply requires pressing one of the control sticks, which your thumb is usually perched over anyway. The motion is quick and impact on any point of the body is instantly fatal. This is carried to its logical conclusion in Black Ops multiplayer with the Ballistic Knife, letting you shoot knives at your opponents. It's tricky to wield, but even if you hit someone in the foot, they're dead. Using the knife in Call of Duty becomes a reflexive action, a quick swipe or stab that allows you to resume running and gunning in seconds.

In Far Cry 2, it's very different. First, you have to select your machete, a very deliberate gesture that's especially tricky to undertake when there's an angry mercenary 3 feet away from you yelling in Afrikaans and trying his damnedest to put a bullet or two or fifteen in your face. Then you've got to hit him with it, and this requires even more deliberate actions. It'll take more than one swipe to bring him down, and the first one will take him to the ground. Finishing your foe off starts a new animation sequence where your character lunges and shoves the machete straight down into his chest cavity. The first couple times you do this, it'll be more than a little disturbing. It's a very visceral motion, and a lot of times the enemy might be limping away or pulling out a pistol, gasping desperately and maybe pleading for help from their comrades. Making melee kills such an involved process keeps it from being just a quicker way of racking up points, especially since those don't exist in this game. But that isn't even the most disturbing part.

That would be the fact that as you keep playing, you'll stop noticing how disturbing it is. When I'm showing the game to friends who haven't played as much as I have and I perform a melee kill, I'll always get a reaction along the lines of a grimace or "Oh, nasty!" Which is pretty much what I did, even if only internally, the first time I did it. But now, having experienced a world where literally everyone on the road is an enemy, I've come to think nothing of it. If they were in my position, they'd understand. You've got no friends out there and ammo is scarce, so you do what you have to. But really, all I'm doing is being paid to kill some other dude who's probably just out here for a paycheck, and did I really have to use the rusty blade that I haven't cleaned once since I've picked it up? It was seeing my friend's reactions after I'd become desensitized to the process that really drove home how effective it was to make the game mechanic function like this.

And that's kind of what happens with war, right? In his aptly titled book, War, Sebastian Jurgen wrote that one of the biggest problems the soldiers he was embedded with in Afghanistan had on their return back to the states was "not necessarily that they come back traumatized-which some do-but that they miss it." The experience of being under fire produces a rush that can't be rivaled, which I think Winston Churchill commented on in similar words. There are elements of brotherhood and camarederie at work too, but Junger devotes a significant portion as well to the addiction these guys develop to the thrill of combat, something that no one can understand unless they've experienced it. But to any outside observer and rational mind, this phenomenon is almost inconceivable. If a firefight were to break out as I was walking down the street, I'd probably hide and crap my pants, and not necessarily in that order. But this trend does exist, and it's not their fault. War can make those who participate in it love war more than anything else.