FC2: PERMADEATH Chapter Four: Runnin' and Gunnin'

I'm now broke, but that's okay, because there aren't really that many weapons worth buying available at the gun shop. I decide to remedy both situations. First, I go to the gun shop. When you aren't on a mission, you can talk to your friendly neighborhood arms dealer, and he'll give you a mission where you ambush a rival's convoy, and in return you'll unlock new, better weapons for purchase.

His competitor's driving around in the northwest, so I head for the nearest bus station. On the way there I barrel through a checkpoint, not feeling like going through the whole ordeal of another firefight, and a jeep gives chase. I make it to the bus station just ahead of him and get on the bus just as he gets there, effectively escaping untouched. I like to think I then flipped him the bird out the window of the bus while he just shook his fist in impotent rage.

Convoys in Far Cry 2 are pretty easy to ambush, because they always follow a neat circular path through whatever section of the game world they occupy, even after you attack them. This particular convoy was passing through a guard outpost, which I cleared out with a single grenade. After dispatching both of the guards there, I readied my RPG and waited. I missed with my first shot and the truck sped past me and out of the checkpoint as one of its escort jeeps pulled off to engage me. I disposed of it easily enough, then sat and waited some more, probably another minute or two. After hiding in one of the buildings and allowing the first escort jeep to pass, I hit the truck with my second RPG, ending the mission and unlocking some pistols at the weapon shop. As I went to retrieve some ammo from a palette at the checkpoint, I turned and saw a guy just standing between two of the huts. Apparently, he'd been here the whole time, just watching the whole thing. Well, if he couldn't pick up on what was going on after that protracted display, he probably wouldn't ever develop the skills necessary to survive this hostile territory. I did him a favor, really. The checkpoint was by now mostly on fire and another jeep was pulling up to investigate, so I took that as my cue to exit.

So now I had a bunch of shiny new toys to purchase and play with. Or at least I would have if I had any diamonds to buy them. I knew how to take care of that, though. I drove in a buggy I'd acquired to the nearest cell tower. On my way I set another checkpoint on fire (I'm kinda making a thing of that) and then found one of Ruben's tapes.

Once at the cell tower, I intercepted a transmission from a guy talking through one of those voice modulators that makes you sound like you've got the deepest voice in the world and are constantly trying to swallow something huge. He told me there was a guy in Pala that he wanted dead, and I'd be paid in diamonds once that was taken care of. I headed back to the station and took a bus into town.

This is where things were a little tricky. If I had any diamonds, I could've bought a silenced pistol to effectively and quietly take care of the target and then leave town with no one (or at least mostly no one) being the wiser. The problem was that I was taking this job in the first place so I could potentially afford that same pistol. I stalked the target, some white guy in a sharp suit and packing a sidearm, and soon enough he entered a secluded alley. He didn't seem at all concerned that an old Albanian dude was creeping up behind him, a machete in his hands and madness in his eyes. His fault, really.

After I'd taken him down, I was a target for all the soldiers in town. Luckily, the alley opened onto the road right out of town that I'd used the first time I'd escaped Pala, and also just like the first time, no one was watching it or manning the machine gun post there. I grabbed a car on the outskirts of town and sped off to a nearby safehouse, encountering absolutely no resistance along the way. Wow. The mercs in town really suck.

FC2: PERMADEATH Chapter Three: My First Job

Carbonell has set me up with the UFLL, so I head over to their HQ in Pala. The man out front pats me down and takes my guns, then ushers me inside. Up the stairs I find a room with another guard, a lieutenant with a Russian accent, and Dr. Leon Gakumba, the local head of the UFLL. The work he has for me is simple: a group of foreign commandos are in the country to capture a local APR individual, but Gakumba doesn't want this to happen. His reasoning is that people will think he is so rich he can just buy armies off the shelf. "Africa is for Africans," he says. The Russian lieutenant says "Without the APR, we've got nobody to fight."

I'm to blow up some equipment out in the desert. Without it, the special forces guys are screwed. I pick up the folder and receive my payment in diamonds. On my way out, the lieutenant warns me that the UFLL guys won't know who I am, so they'll shoot on sight too. That's the thing about Far Cry 2: instead of trying to implement some sort of "faction mood" system, they just resort to having everyone shoot you on sight. As a result, you can find yourself adopting a "kill or be killed" attitude very quickly. I think it's the fact that literally everyone I encounter on the road or in an installation will be trying to kill me that results in me being more of a dick in how I play this game than in almost any other shooter I've played.

As I walk out of the building and down the street out of town, I get a call from Michele, who wants me to meet her at a safe house just north of the town of Mokuba. This will happen pretty much every time you get a mission, and taking the buddy's objective will always result in upgrades to your safehouse, so it's worth the extra effort. I head for the bus station. This area has five stops, one in Pala, and then one for each of the compass directions. Traveling by bus is automatic, meaning no having to deal with checkpoints and roving patrols, so I take it. It's also not far from Michele's location.

After I arrive, I check my GPS locator and follow it to a case of diamonds around the back of the station, then take off. I encounter a checkpoint on the way and clear it out fairly easily, then take one of their jeeps and drive to my nearest friendly neighborhood arms dealer. At the computer inside, I contemplate buying the accuracy upgrade for my G3, but spend all of my 20 diamonds instead on grenadier webbing and light assault webbing, figuring that scarcity of ammo is a bigger problem. Then I check the ammo counter for my rifle and see it hasn't changed. Huh. I look in my journal and see the light assault webbing upgrade only applies to a bunch of weapons I don't have. Smooth. I consider reloading my game and spending my money a bit more carefully, but decide this is too easy a way out. If I'm playing under permadeath rules, then that means no turning back.

I head to meet Michele, who tells me she's the person the commandos are here for because of contraband and human slavery or something. I don't know, I kind of stopped paying attention here. Basically, she tells me to go this villa where this Dutch radio operator is relaying orders to the team. I'm to redirect them to the Mokuba shantytown, where it'll be easier to take them on and destroy their supplies than in the middle of the desert. At least, that's what Michele claims. I shrug and sleep on the cot inside until nightfall.

On my way out, I spot an MGL-140 lying on the ground. The MGL stands for Multi-Grenade Launcher. It holds six at a time. I pee a little and trade out my shiny G3 assault rifle for it and set off on foot. I do this because it's a sound tactical decision and not at all because I crashed my jeep in the pond right next to my safe house shut up. I continue across a wide field towards a guard post, and manage to sneak all the way up to the motor pool and behind cover as a jeep on patrol drives through. I wait until I think it's left, but when I poke my head out to confirm this, a guy's looking right at me. I take him down, then hop on the machine gun in the back of the assault jeep in the motor pool and go crazy. I blow up a hut (thanks explosive yellow barrels!) and then drive off.

At the "do not enter" sign at the beginning of the road to the villa, I ditch the jeep and go in on foot. There's a single guard post at the perimeter, but I manage to sneak around it on a small footpath without engaging anyone and without even being spotted by the guards there. Wow. They kind of suck. The path takes me to a ridge giving me a good overlook on the villa, and I start scouting it out. I see a sniper on the upper balcony above the entrance, along with three guards walking around beneath him. Then I hear a gunshot. Yep, sniper saw me. Kind of expected that. But I'll bet he wasn't expecting a big fat grenade to fly over and hit him in the what the hell this thing just jammed on me.

Yep, Michele's a slut. So with a sniper plugging me full of lead and more angry soldiers bearing down on my position from below, I clear the jam and fire a few rounds at the sniper. Apparently, the gun's in such bad condition that just one doesn't do the trick. I drop down to the small path and pull out my pistol, firing and sprinting towards the first of two garages. I sneak around both of them towards the back of the mansion and start looking for another entrance, but don't find one. When I finally make it all the way around, at least two guys out front start peppering me with machine gun fire. Without enough time to pull out my MGL-140, I sprint along the facade and into the mansion, ducking into a side room and jabbing a syrette into my wrist to heal up.

There aren't any guards in the house, so I move upstairs, pistol at the ready, and find the radio operator. He stands up, which is when I stick my machete under his neck and shove a piece of paper in his face. This is actually how half of all interactions in the game go down, the ones that aren't you mutely accepting whatever orders you're being given. You shove a machete at a guy and hope he gets that what you really mean is "I'd like you to read this over the radio, please".

He reads out the new orders, which means I'm done here and should leave and get to Mokuba. That's a bit complicated, though, considering there are at least two guys with machineguns on the grounds still looking for me, and if the crashing noise I think I just heard downstairs is any indication, they're moving into the villa. I consider leaving the Dutchman alive, because he's sort of just looking at me, and even though I know he won't, logically there's nothing to keep him from getting on the radio after I'm gone and going, "Hey guys, some dick with a machete just burst in here and told me to tell you that, so don't do it". I'm very low on ammo by this point though, with only 8 rounds or so left for my dinky pistol, so I opt for the machete instead.

I edge my way back downstairs, pistol at the ready. I head towards the side entrance that I missed on the way in because apparently I'm not too bright when I see a guy inspecting one of the rooms. Just as he turns, I fire and take him down, then scoop up the ammo from the pistol he dropped. Two more men are waiting outside of the side entrance, but I make short work of them and make my way into the garage. I take the cargo truck inside and scream down the road, past the surviving guard(s?) and then barreling past the perimeter checkpoint, squashing one of the guards there against a jeep as I do so. After I've made it a ways away, I get out and repair the truck, then continue on towards Mokuba, stopping at an armory on the way to trade out my MGL-140 for a crappier but much more reliable G3 rifle.

I approach from further uphill on foot, and I see a couple of guards on the road, but I know there must be more. The way the buildings are so close together, though, it's impossible to see who could be walking among them. I figure the best way to take them on would be to draw them to me, since if I tried sneaking past I could be in too deep should one of them spot me. At a small post on the hill is a man with an RPG, and I figure he's as good a place to start as any. It takes two swipes with the machete to bring him down, and his yells send the rest of his guys running.

After a short firefight with a squad of four or five guys at the head of the road, I ran to a hole in a fence which I snuck through to get into the town proper. It was about then I saw a flare rise into the sky, meaning someone was trying to signal for reinforcements. I needed to wrap this up. The truck with the supplies was parked under a bridge in the dried up creek bed that split the town, so one RPG round later, it was taken care of. All that was left now was to help out Michele where she was engaged with some APR goons at a checkpoint just to the north.

By the time I got there, there were only a couple guys left. It didn't take long to mop up, meaning the job was done, and now all my safehouses would have a jeep with a machinegun parked out front. Michele told me to go ahead without here while she cleared a jam in her gun. I took a gun truck from the checkpoint and returned to the bus station where I'd arrived in this area and continued past to a safe house with a couple of dudes out front. After unceremoniously murdering them, I grabbed a few hours of shut eye. I survived my first job. How many more would I get?

FC2: PERMADEATH Chapter Two: You My Bitch Now

Instead of a bed, I wake up on the dirt floor of an absolute shithole, and instead of "Good Morning!" I get "You look fucked up. Rip that bullet out of your leg with this dirty knife." So I do.

The guy who gave me that helpful piece of wisdom is Carbonell, a lieutenant (or something) for the UFLL, one of the two major factions vying for dominance of...The Country. I could tell you what the abbreviation stands for, but it really doesn't matter and you probably don't care all that much anyway. He says I killed some of his men back in Pala, which is bullshit because I didn't even fire my gun once, but whatever. Basically, he tells me I'm his bitch now, so he wants me to fix his shitty car in the driveway. I don't really have much of a choice, and he does give me a G3-KA4 assault rifle, a Makarov pistol, and an RPG launcher free of charge, along with five medical syrettes, so I guess he's all right.

The yellow car outside is pouring black smoke out of the engine, so I pop the hood and tighten a bolt on the radiator for thirty seconds, and apparently that's enough to get the thing into good condition. Then I get a call on my cell, and it's from Carbonell. Really, dude? You can't even pop open the door and stick your head out?

He tells me there's a safehouse nearby with a couple of APR (that's the other faction) dudes guarding it, so why don't I go take care of that? I drive over and get out of the car a bit down the road so I can approach the position on foot. This is my tactic of choice for approaching enemy positions in this game so I can scope them out, but until I buy the camo suit it doesn't really work all that well. Here it does, though: both of the guards are just standing right next to the door of this tiny hut, so I pull out my assault rifle and a few seconds later, the place is mine. Carbonell calls again to say the malaria I have is "serious shit", so why don't I have a good lie down. Instead of burying the bodies of the men I just ruthlessly gunned down, I go inside for a little nap.

I decide to grab about seven hours of sleep and awaken at about 9:30 PM, the sun only just beginning to set. As I step outside, Carbonell calls again. Asshole's turning into my mother. Before I can even get out a sarcastic and biting "Yes?" he's going off in my ear about how there's an APR installation further down the road that he wants me to scout out. I drive down and take a small concealed path up onto the ridge. I pull out my monocular to see about four buildings, with five or six guards walking around. After I locate the ammo dump, Carbonell calls again to say thanks, and also he's pretty sure that those guys are keeping a foreign mercenary captive in that smaller bricked up building over there and maybe I should bust them out hint hint wink wink.

I drop down from the ridge and at first my idea was, "Stealth". If I was going to be serious about this permadeath, I'd want to minimize risk as much as possible. In this case, stealth would mean not being seen at all. Until I unlocked and could buy silenced weaponry, there wouldn't be any possibility of silent takedowns. Apparently, a guy screaming after he gets swiped with a machete tends to alert all his buddies nearby.

But then I saw the ammo dump. And for some reason, the phrase "Instill the fear of God" entered my mind. I chucked a grenade in its general direction and ran into the nearby garage. The ammo detonated, and the tactic actually sort of worked. All the militia run towards the exploding ammunition, which just happens to be on the exact opposite side of camp from the bricked up building. At one point, I hear two of the guys talking about who's out there, and one of them says he's sure it's at least two people.

I sneak towards and then around the back of the brick building. I look for a door and can't find one, but as I turn around to try the other side I see this guy in a pink shirt walking next to the building. Then he stops. I know what's gonna happen, but I still think, maybe, just maybe, he'll turn and walk away. I edge back around the other side of the building.

Nope. He sees me and gets a few rounds off, but I take him down. I peek back around the other side towards the central area of the camp to see the four other guys running towards me. I get some rounds out and duck back to reload when I get hit from the other side. I turn to see Mr. Pinkshirt is down, but not out, and he's plugging away at me with his pistol. I kill him then run past him. As I'm retreating to the garage, I decide to set some grass on fire with a molotov cocktail. This is actually a much better tactic than it sounds if you know what you're doing: fire spreads, and when this happens enemies will drop everything, even trying to kill you, to get away from it. But I mess up my button presses and end up throwing a grenade. I think it gets a dude but I throw a molotov anyway, because at this point why not, right?

I get into the garage and from there it's a fairly easy matter to dispose of the rest of the squad, as they've by now clustered around the brick building. I just pop my head up and down in some windows, firing until they're all down. Inside the brick building, my malaria flares up as I unlock a door to find Michele, some French lady, who says she might be able to help me with my sickness, and I should meet her later at Mike's bar.

As I'm walking back to my car, Carbonell calls again saying he's willing to pay me for my work. About time. I get back to where he's holed up and he tells me that he's got a cache of diamonds stashed away somewhere on the property, but if I want them, I'll have to go on a bit of a scavenger hunt, because the guy who actually delivered them apparently didn't bother to tell anyone where he put them before he went and got shot in the head.

The case is easy enough to find, and I get 10 diamonds out of it. I drive off, cutting through the now peaceful town of Pala, and I arrive at Mike's bar, which also happens to feature a franchise of the ubiquitous friendly neighborhood arms dealer. I stop in there to spend my new money on a brand spanking new G3 rifle and a reliability upgrade for the same. This is important because that means that the armories at all the gun shops will now stock one of these rifles for me to pick up whenever I stop by, and the reliability upgrade keeps it from degrading as fast, and when it does start jamming, it'll be easier for me to clear and keep firing.

I go in the bar and see Michele, who points me towards a guy at a table over in the corner. I keep talking to her a bit, and she says something about the "price of a child" in this country. That's about when I decide to leave her at the bar and let her continue drinking. I go to the table and meet Ruben, a journalist trying to cover what's happening in this country and failing at receiving any coverage. He gives me a tape which features the Jackal expounding on his philosophy, and says that there are many more that comprise the interview he conducted with him scattered throughout the wilderness. I was never able to find more than three of them last time, but maybe now I'll be luckier. He suggests I give the tape to a priest in town who can give me some medicine in exchange.

I also meet Marty Alencar, an American. He's the guy who I can get to rescue me when I go down. This won't count as a death, cause all it will amount to is him dragging me a few feet away, giving me a pistol and a chance to patch up, and then a friendly gun to continue the fight with. It's also not entirely without risk, because he can die on these little excursions too.

I drive back into town. Pala is now under cease-fire, which means no one there will shoot me unless I provoke them, in which case everyone will shoot me. It's where both the factions have set up their headquarters, and right across the street from each other no less. For now, I just head towards the church across from my old hotel. Inside I find Father Maliya, the head of the Underground movement that's trying to smuggle as many people out of the country as possible. He takes the tape and gives me some medicine for my malaria, but not before remarking that they might have use for someone with my talents down the road. I pop a pill and step outside. The training is now officially over, and the real fun can start.

FC2: PERMADEATH Chapter One: Welcome to Pala! You Are Going To Die

(FYI, for the moment I won't be taking screencaps because I don't have any way of really doing that on my 360. I'll just paint a beautiful picture with my wofgkl;jdf sorry kinda just threw up a bit okay here we go)

At the beginning of Far Cry 2, you choose two things: first is the difficulty. I picked normal, which is what I played on for the first time through, so I picked it again here, because I want to keep this going for at least a little while.

The second thing you pick is a mercenary, one of nine. This doesn't affect gameplay other than determining which one you won't eventually find among your buddies. Last time I was Paul, the Hungarian born but Israeli nationalized guy. This time I'm Josip Idromeno, a middle-aged man from the Balkans. With that, we're off.

The opening sequence is a cab ride from the airfield where you landed in the country to a hotel in the first major town of the game, Pala. It's a good way to set the mood, featuring such memorable moments as a tense stop at a checkpoint and a row of huts being burnt to the ground by a bunch of angry looking dudes. All you can do really is look around and listen to the cab driver yak away. He's very chatty, because clearly I'm not going to say anything. I'm the protagonist in a first person shooter, for crying out loud. Ever since Half-Life, I'm expected to just shut up and shoot people.

As soon as we pull into town, my vision goes yellow around the edges and my breathing becomes labored and shaky. As we stop in front of the hotel, the cab driver turns and remarks how I don't look so good. I'm barely able to mutter "No shit, Sherlock" before I pass out on the seat in front of me.

When I next wake up, I'm on a bed in the hotel, and some jackass is going through my stuff. He finds my orders to terminate a local arms dealer called the Jackal who's apparently a destabilizing force in the region and gets pissed. Because it turns out, he's the Jackal, but the malaria I've apparently got is keeping me from doing anything about that at the moment.

He stabs a machete into the wall next to my head, waves a gun in my face, and quotes some Nietzsche at me. Then he just drops the gun on my nightstand and walks off with just a "see you later". Very chill. Like he does this all the time. "What, you're here to kill me too? Whatever, dude." Also, how the hell did I get malaria that fast? Is it some super-rare, super-effective strain that starts in on the symptoms three minutes after the mosquito bite? Anyway, I pass out again, because it worked out so well for me the first time.

I wake up, and there's quite a commotion going on outside. "Wow. They sound really excited. Maybe Foreigner's playing a concert in town!" I think. Then an RPG slams into the ceiling and gives my room a brand new skylight. "Okay, I don't think it's Foreigner," I conclude as I collect my cell phone and the Jackal's machete and gun.

So it turns out the town's been plunged into battle somehow, and now control is given to the player, with the only objective being to get the hell out of there. I stumble over some wreckage and out of my room to find myself on the second floor of the hotel's central courtyard, the sounds of fighting still raging from outside. I briefly consider going out the front entrance, but I recall the last time I tried that on my first playthrough I didn't even make it past the patch of dirt out front that passes as a parking lot. I go to the room on the other side of the hotel to find a machine gun on the ground and an open window.

I hop out onto a thatched roof. A soldier runs below and past me down the tiny alleyway, so I decide to head in the other direction. I drop down and start to make my way to the road only to find my way blocked by a burning tree and patch of grass. That's the other thing about Far Cry 2: in this game, fire spreads. Quickly. So I'm not going that way. I try a flight of stairs around the side of the hotel only to find they lead to a roof of a building on the main street, where most of the fighting is. So not that way either.

I edge my way back down the alley in the direction I saw the soldier running to find it empty, and the edge of town in sight. I run past a deserted machine gun position and start heading out of town. I get to a bridge spanning a river and almost make it all the way across before my malaria gets the best of me. As my consciousness slips away, I can hear a car pull up and at least a couple guys hop out, and my last delirious thought before I pass out is "Why the hell is the lead singer of Foreigner speaking Swahili or some shit?"