Wednesday, September 02, 2015

Far Cry 2 and 3

There are a few things in computer games that REALLY REALLY torque me off.

1) Not letting me save where *I* want to. I.e., checkpointed saves, only when THEY want to let it happen.

2) Forcing me to play some scenes THEIR way instead of MY way.

3) Stupid and un-changeable keyboard settings.

4) Timed scenarios or sections.

5) No auto-saves at all. So that way, when the game crashes, you are going back to whatever was the last save, and redoing a bunch of stuff, as opposed to the autosave that SHOULD have taken place a few minutes ago when you made a huge transition in the game (Spore just screwed me over on this, I have to replay the entire third section ("Tribe") of the game; maybe I'll just punt--seriously, people? How hard is it to automate this? Does it take an Advanced Degree to understand this?)



Checkpointed saves mean you have to repeat actions that become annoying. This is generally compounded by being forced to play certain areas a particular way, AND being unable to modify control settings in such a way that I can do better. This is what killed Far Cry 1 for me.

Forcing me to play it their way--seriously folks? If that is what you want, just make a cut-scene of it, and let's move on. I hate that routine, and it will cause me to stop playing and then delete a game.

Un-changeable settings means typically that someone doesn't understand what other people need to do. *I* have to play with left-sided-left-handed mouse, because of RSI issues 15 years ago. I want to pretty much completely remap the keyboard/action settings, as well as flip mouse buttons.


Far Cry 2 was ok. I was able to finish it, and pretty much play it my way. That was good. Didn't like the ending, tho. You get two choices, but you die either way.

Far Cry 3 eventually pissed me off about action/controls, so I've quit playing. I was about 1/2 way through when I decided I couldn't tolerate it any more.