Postcard From The Wilderness – Far Cry 2
Playing Far Cry 2 has become a dreadful ordeal – it is draining me emotionally. I don’t want to play it any more, but I feel like I have to. I suspect that this is actually an awful game, but its effects are actually quite profound. Maybe it’s curing me of my gaming addiction. Or perhaps it’s proving that I am incurable!
At first you feel different to the ranked masses of gunmen populating this African country – after all you’re the protagonist in a first-person shooter, surely that alone makes one abnormal. You are Clint Eastwood in A Fistful Of Dollars, or Toshiro Mifune in Yojimbo. You are to play off the warring factions against each other, using them to get closer to the grandmaster. You are one step ahead of the game, like all great heroes.
But gradually you feel less and less important, and less and less of a hero. What begins as a singular quest, to find the legendary arms dealer and kingpin ‘The Jackal’, soon descends into a chaotic morass of violence and hatred among in-fighting militias in a sprawling desert region filled with… other mercenaries, other people just like you. It becomes increasingly hard to focus on the repetitious mission at hand, or on your uberquest to find The Jackal – it simply becomes a rather meaningless meander from one kill to the next.
There is nobody to love here. Even your ‘buddies’ are merciless mercenaries, for whom your friendship is only a means to an end. The streets are empty save for gunmen – the only innocents are the animals (and even nature is cruel). Pleasure is fleeting – you know the next minute your gun will jam, or the effects of malaria will kick in, or another jeep will turn up with another wave of gunmen. It is relentless and depressing, humourless and charmless.
Soon the realization strikes – I am not a good person here. I am not a force for good. I am not Niko Bellic, faced with surviving in a brutal world. I came to Africa to be part of this, and I am more brutal than the enemies I encounter. I don’t think I’m solving anything or even getting anywhere – I’m just indulging in the only thing I know – violence and brutality.
Freedom is an illusion here. Many missions have built-in choices, but the result is always the same – mayhem. The world is open and free to explore, yet you can’t travel far without encountering combat. There are plenty of side missions, and cases of diamonds to search for, yet the basic mechanics of the game are the same. Drive a bit, get out and shoot, find another car, drive a bit further, get out and shoot etc. At least in Liberty City you are free to move at will, as long as you don’t break the law – what I wouldn’t give for an internet cafe here in the desert. Here the freedom is notional, because you are forever trapped between one set of gunmen and the next. It’s the most claustrophobic open-world game yet invented.
Perhaps the first-person shooter has become a boring cliché. The basic game mechanics are too familiar now – the experiences in this game prove it. One sets fire to the undergrowth just for variety’s sake. The real enjoyment comes from the rising sun, the herds of zebras or antelopes one encounters, the flicker of the water – the simple pleasures. One hopes to not have to shoot for just a minute more. Just let the game go away, and let me be alone.
I haven’t reached the very end of the game yet, where I presumably will meet the jackal and fates will be decided. I’ve listened to the Jackal’s taped interviews with a journalist, and he seems like the same sort of fatalist as I have become – any notion of hope or justice or morality drained, just being is all there is. The belief is almost that it is normal civilisation that have lost the plot, looking the other way while people are dying – the jackal seems to understand all this and more. Life has become a rather meaningless first-person shooter.
Maybe I will join the jackal, or maybe I will just replace him myself. Maybe I already AM the jackal!!!
[rating: 4]
