How To Kill People More Effectively In Far Cry 2

I love Far Cry 2. You want to love Far Cry 2, but you’re always getting killed, then getting rescued by your buddy only to get killed again a mere minute later. So here is SLRC’s top 5 tips on How To Kill People More Effectively In Far Cry 2. Inspired by Steve Gaynor’s post ‘Basics of FPS encounter design’, because Far Cry 2 is both the epitome of good FPS encounter design, and its antithesis.

#1 – Distance is the man killer, and you are the man.

If there is only one thing you learn about playing Far Cry 2, it should be that the distances involved in any engagement are an order of magnitude higher than any other game around. The sprawling African savannahs allow for you and your enemies to trade potshots at targets up to a kilometer away – and still retain reasonable chance of hitting.

Long range weaponry is king in Far Cry 2 and ideally you want to have at least one weapon with a scope on it at all times. Why? Because your enemies are better than you, can see through the brush and scrub better than you and there are just plain more of them. The more distance you can create between yourself and your target, the less likely they are going to be able to land any hits on you (especially if they are wielding shotguns, LOL!).

However, we here at SLRC know that ideal isn’t always possible, as you will probably eventually run out of bullets from killing so many people. In that case, you’re going to have to close to a middle distance and change to an alternative weapon. Note however, that I have never on a difficulty harder than normal been able to fight closer than 50 yards and take no damage; the AI is just too fast and too accurate at point blank range. Be smart and Just Don’t Go There. Which brings us to point #2.

Pro Tip: If you get your angle right, and you are patient, you can often shoot two people with one sniper round! Brillantine!

#2 – Pick where YOU want to murder people, don’t let them decide where you are going to die.

If your enemy doesn’t know you are there, you have the advantage of time, as well as space. Use it. Choose both where and when to engage. If possible, follow point #1 and fight from as far away as possible. For arguments sake, however, lets pretend you don’t have any sniper weapons or (more likely) you’re out of bullets from killing all those naughty mercenaries. Sometimes you need to get up close and get your hands dirty.

The main thing to look for is cover – learn to read the environment and look for things that you can potentially stand behind and that won’t let bullets through. If the obvious approach to a position doesn’t look like a good idea, it probably isn’t – don’t risk it. Swing around and come at them from the side, or even better, from behind. There’s usually a multitude of options in Far Cry 2, so explore them. That stand of trees off to the right looks OK, but further to the North West there is a burnt out car, which is even better. The bigger the cover the less bullets you’ll be pulling out of yourself. Higher ground is always a good idea, too.

Since Far Cry 2 utilizes a semi-recharging health system, getting behind cover even when lightly wounded is absolutely critical unless you want to burn through syrettes like a morphine addict on a week long bender. It becomes an issue particularly on the higher difficulties where you can only carry 3 on you at all times (without buying an expensive upgrade for more) and is compounded when you’re trying to save some for when you buddy gets injured. Defensive play is often necessary at medium-close range, and that’s only possible if there’s plenty of cover – the enemy can and will flank you and you will die.

Pro Tip: If your enemies are in cover and you are standing in an open field, you’re probably already dead.

#3 – Know your escape route and when to GTFO.

This ties in with point two, because if anything at all goes wrong, you will need a plan to get out of there and the faster the better. If an engagement has a chance of going hairy, SLRC personally like’s to park it’s car facing in the direction I know I’ll be wanting to escape and it has been useful on more than one occasion. An anecdote:

Once, on a mission to assassinate a prominent member of a faction, I parked my jeep on a large hill to the west of my target. A huge grassland area with no cover stretched between me and a number of his body guards. I parked my jeep facing south-west and started picking off mercenaries. They swarmed at me like I’d disturbed an ant hill, and I cut off their direct approach to me by starting a fire in the grass between me and them. However, as fire likes to travel uphill and it quickly turned on me meaning I had to GTFO as the ground caught fire beneath me. Thanks to having my jeep parked already facing the way to go, when I got in I was able to move in a safe direction and get out of the fire without taking much damage at all.

Often times, however, it will be the caser that your vehicle will be destroyed or disabled when you need to GTFO. In that case, sprint is your friend – learn where the sprint key is and the sprint-crouch move which allows you to slide the last few meters along the ground and into cover. It may just save your life!

Pro Tip: Your vehicle can be a valuable source of cover for your pathetic, bleeding figure as you limp off into the jungle.

#4 – Start a fucking fire.

I’m tempted to leave this point as-is, because it really is as simple as that. The effect of a nearby fire on an enemy is described by the Far Cry 2 fire propagation expert, Jean-Francois Lévesque (who is on twitter, incidentally), in an interview on Gamasutra.

Speaking in RPG terms, the fire acts as an area of effect fear spell.

Life forms will flee or at least try to avoid fire. It disorients the AI, making enemies forget about you and focus on saving their own skin. It gives you an advantage against high numbers of opponents.

Before, during and after anything goes wrong in your fight you should be thinking about starting some kind of fire. You always have on you two Molotov cocktails available for throwing and there are often many things you can shoot to blow up to start fires too. Make use of them all - anything to get those bastards to stop shooting at you!

Pro Tip: Despite the fact that it’s an extremely cheap weapon from the Gun Merchant, the flare pistol combines points 1 and 4 from this guide! Don’t underestimate the potential in starting a fire exactly where you want it, really, really far away.

#5 – Don’t use someone else’s gun, keep yours clean and don’t run out of ammo.

Weapon deterioration is a big part of Far Cry 2 as anyone that’s played for more than an hour or so can attest. So make sure to visit the weapon dealer regularly to pick up a free new gun – remember, if you’ve unlocked it you can get new ones whenever you like for no additional cost! Isn’t that handy?

When you run out of sniper ammo, the LAST thing you want to do is ditch you gun for (to quote Danny Archer from Blood Diamond) some “rotten AK” which is going to jam on you when you least need it. A better idea is switching to a secondary or special weapon, until you find an ammo box or crate.

Pro Tip: A big-ass machine gun in your special weapon slot is a very good idea for when you can’t use your sniper rifle, and when your pistol is a flare gun. As much fun as it is to light men ON FIRE with the flare gun, it’s pretty dangerous and SLRC does not recommended it.

April ‘08: S’Craft and the power of 3’s, Or “Why did I never know how much damage my Zergling’s did?”

Okay, so this is my first attempt at a ‘blog of the round table’ and if this is your first visit to my blog, to get a feel for what I am interested in, read my honours project summary post, the one immediately before this on.

But that’s not what I’m writing about today, in my oh-so conversational tone (picked up on that yet?), instead I’m focusing on the topic of Variations on a Theme: What are your favourite games? Well, one of my favourite games is the interminable Starcraft. If you are a follower of The Brainy Gamer, Michael Abbot, then you’ll know that he recently posted on the power of the story of Starcraft and its rather prophetic nature – reflecting modern society in a game from 1997. While I agree with Michael that the story is a powerful factor in the attraction of the series, and I’d argue that S’Craft is one of the few games with an extremely tightly integrated story and internal game logic, that isn’t exactly what I’m talking about today.

Everyone who’s ever played or watched Starcraft played competitively knows that it can be extremely fast paced and, if done properly, a significantly strong ‘early game’ strategy like the Zerg Rush (hyperlink) (along with obligatory ‘kekeke’ or ‘I’m in ur base killin ur doods’) can give one player an early win. And yet, not all races are created equal – there is a reason after all why it’s called the Zerg rush.

So, the phenomena I’m talking about is, of course, Asynchronous Gameplay, and it’s by no means a S’Craft specific trait. The other well known Blizzard game that deploys Asynchronous gameplay is, of course Word of Warcraft, and It does it in a different manner. World of Warcraft sets up extremely efficiently in its PvE (Player versus Player Environment) content the idea of the ‘Holy Triad’. That is, the most effective 5 person group for an instance is comprised of 3 roles (look at that – another 3!) the DPS, the guys who kill the monsters; The healers, the guys who stop the other guys from getting killed by the monsters; and a Tank, the one guy who’s job it is to try and soak up all the damage so the healers only have to heal 1 person.

Now, Mr. Elrod says in his guidelines suggest to “focus in on a narrow approach” so, I’m going to peel back the skin, if you will, of S’Crafts Asynchronous nature to explore this idea a little bit more.

So, back to the Zerg rush. Let’s break down how the Zerg “rush” the enemy with their little Zerglings. To get to the stage of being able to build their first Zergling, a player has to build a relatively low number of buildings – they only really need a ‘spawning pool’ to be built before they can start to churn out little ‘lings of their own. Aww shucks.

Great, you say, let’s do that! Not so fast, Little Timmy, cause your Spawning Pool only lets you build a Zergling if you have the requisite population cap allowance. And you only get that by creating, not a building, but a unit called an Overlord (bear with me, those of you who already know all this stuff, there’s a purpose for it). At this point I also need to explain that the Zerg differs from your traditional RTS race in a very important way. The Zerg, you see, employ a non linear build order. This allows a Zerg player to start building a unit as soon as possible as determined by your resources, and NOT determined by the end of the production of a previous unit. This means that a Zerg player can be making an Overlord and another Zergling and then halfway through start another Zergling or Overlord, without requiring a whole ‘nuther Zergling specific making building. Ah, parallelism at work – the revolutionary nature of which is worth another post in itself.

But getting back to our Zerg rush. Little Timmy was just about to build a Spawning pool to make Zerglings and splatter the pre-pubescent base structures of his enemies, who are currently dreaming of their high tech, and high resource investment, Protoss Carriers. Let’s not let him get there. But wait. Timmy knows that if he wants to get enough Zerglings to splatter aforementioned base, he’s going to need resource collecting drones - and LOTS of them. Also, Timmy knows that his Spawning Pool costs 200 minerals, whereas a drone only costs 50. So Timmy is at a critical juncture as he really wants more of those minerals, but also wants Zerglings.

At this point, it is probably worth comparing the monetary investment for each race in order to just get to the Zergling equivalent level fighter. If the player were to take 1 builder unit and keep the rest on mineral gathering duty…

A Zerg player would need:

• 200 minerals for a Spawning Pool + time to build it
• 100 minerals for an Overlord to supplying his population cap + time to create it (note this process is parallel, and not one after the other – a feature unique to the Zerg and hence asynchronous.)
• Finally, 50 minerals for 2 (count ‘em!) little Melee fighter Zerglings that go Muurrllsskkk when you click on them.

A Terran player needs:

• 150 minerals for a Barracks + time to build it.
• 100 minerals for a Supply Depot to supply pop cap (note this process IS linear, not parallel)
• 50 minerals for just 1 ranged Marine.

Finally, a Protoss Player needs:

• 100 minerals for a pylon to provide pop and power the following (linear warp time)
• 150 minerals for a Gateway
• 100 minerals for a Zealot

Okay, so what is this telling us that we didn’t already know before? For starters, it all seems pretty even at this point. There are no clear winners, but they are not really showing the full picture. We still don’t know one important factor in this whole plan, and it’s the key to the success of Timmy’s Zerg Rush strategy – if I send my doods at your doods who’s gonna win?

Again, this is an extremely complicated question to answer, but to be wilfully reductive, let’s put my Zerglings up against your Protos.

Example 1:

Timmy has 2 Zerglings, because he decided to save money on them, to get more drones to make more Zerglings in the future.

Joe has 1 Protos Zealot, because he too wanted more minerals to make more Zealots in the future.

Timmy’s Zerglings attack Joe’s Zealot for 5 damage 2x cause there is 2 of them, and Joe’s Protoss hits 1 of the Zerglings back for a whopping 16 damage.

Ouch. That really hurt because Timmy’s Zerglings each have only 35 health, and in 2 hits, he’s gonna do 34 damage, leaving Mr. Zergling on 1 health. The Zealot, on the other hand, has 100 health, and 60 shield on top. Man, you can see where this is going, can’t you.

Assuming that a Zergling attacks at around twice the speed of a single Zealot, it’s gonna have killed both Zerglings in 6 hits. In that time, it’s taken either 5 or 6 hits from the 1^st Zergling (25 or 30 dmg) and 11 or 12 hits from the other (55 or 60 dmg) resulting in a max total of 90 damage. PROTOSS WINS! His shield has soaked up 60 and his heal got hit for 30 more.

Example 2:

Let’s pretend Timmy decides not to save his money for mineral collecting drones and instead opts for 4 Zerglings.

Joe, on the other hand, is still holding his minerals out for drones, and he certainly has more reason to, as his 1 Zealot costs the same as 4 Zerglings – he’s gonna need cash fast!

This time, Joe’s Zealot engages the 1^st Zergling and all 4 start wailing on his flimsy blue shield.

This time, Joe’s Zealot is going to take 8 x 5dmg for every swing of his Slicey-Slicey Protoss blades. How quickly the parallelism of the Zerg has swung the balance.

Joes Zealot hit the 1^st Zergling for 17, and in the process takes 8 Zergling hits, resulting in 40dmg. Ouch. Before he’s hit it again for another 17, he’s taken another 40 dmg. Captain! Shields are buckling!

By the time he has killed the first Zergling, Joe’s poor beleaguered Zealot has taken 120 dmg, out of possible 160 before he dies (discounting all sorts of tiny things like single points of shield regeneration and Zergling health regen).

The Zealot swings around to face his 2^nd attacker – yet two more persist! He takes 30 more dmg before landing his 1^st blow, and another 30 before he expires. For Aiur, as they say.

From this example, we can see in action the power of the parallel design and build philosophy of the Zerg (as well as being an interesting in examination the risk/reward potential of early game mineral to fighter unit production).

And thusly, I conclude my investigation into the off balance world of Starcraft. The Zerg, by employing a strategy of parallelism offset their weakness, including the squishy nature of their little Zerglings.

I hope you have enjoyed this delicious Theory Crafting romp through a small, small subsection of the Starcraft domain, and I acknowledge the fact that this analysis is very reductionist – I felt that a more holistic approach that attempted to include every little possibility such as who hits first in battle, and at what rate does health and shields regen, was out of the scope of this little blog post, as well as bordering nigh on impossible. Also, I didn’t compare the Zerlings to the Terran Marine because it is a more complicated affair, as the marine is ranged and… well… I’m sure you can imagine how that can complicate this kind of analysis.

Feel free to leave a comment, or ignore them as you will.

Cheers.

[Humorous side note – after spending an hour or so writing down stats about each race’s unit and buildings, I forgot how to spell the Protoss race – 1 ‘S’ or 2? It’s two, in case you were also wondering.]

Post #3 - So when's this whole 'criticism' business going to come in?

Okay intrepid readers, you've all been clamoring for something more like a genuine opinion/experience based critique of System Shock 2 (which i said I'd write something about). Well, the time has come, so I'm now attempting to organise my thoughts on the subject.

So, as I mentioned previously, I just recently finished System Shock 2 for the first time the other week, but my experience of the game is by no means complete. Why not? Because the game being somewhat of a FPS/RPG game, I still haven't explored the whole RPG aspect that much. This is because I have always played the game as a Techie. My hack / research / maintenance skills were just about maxed out by the end of the game. Why have I always played the schizophrenic Tech Class/Tree? Because it seemed to me to always have the most fun. Hacking. Researching. Repairing. Hacking - all of these were the best bits that SS2, it seems to me, has to offer.

What the heck am I talking about? Well, lets look at your options:

There are 3 main skill trees available in SS2 - Wepons, Tech, Psi. If you choose to specialize in weapons (which some degree of is neseccary to just survive in SS2) then you don't actually get any skills to MAINTAIN your weapons, and so they all fall apart. Additionally, there really aren't that many projectile weapons to start off with, so the Wep tree is, at least initially, an optional extra. (Note: All this writing is just my opinion, and as one of the guys at Rock Paper Shotgun made the brilliant observation that the main reason we write up our opinions on the internet is to have people pick it apart. I wholeheartedly encourage thoughtful, productive picking, so tell me I am wrong!)

Next, the Psi tree. If you've never played SS2 (and right here I might just take the opportunity to slap you in the face for not having done so.) the Psi tree is all about Psycho-kinetic powers, or something like that. So it's all about moving around bits and pieces, blowing things up with the power of your brain and making you fly (although I don't think that it actually does the last one I just mentioned). Sounds great! Well... in practice, it's fun and all but... you really can't regen Psi except for in one of 2 ways that I know of, through consuming Psi hypo's, which restore 30 (???) Psi, but are single use only and are in limited supply, or by consuming an alien organ which has to be researched first before it can be used.

So, here we see the main problem of the Psi tree as well - it requires lots of Psi hypos... but throughout the whole duration of the game I believe I only ever picked up in the order of about 30, certainly no more than 50. Okay, sure, you can occasionally find a replicator to buy some from, but that's usually quite expensive. I could fire up SS2 right now and find out how much they cost, but it's hot here, and I can't be stuffed - can you? No? Didn't think so, so shut it.

So, with weps rendered pointless, and the Psi tree fatally (in my view) flawed, what choice are we left with but the Tech tree. Ahhh, sweet sweet hack. Beautiful repair. Useful, Useful research. Notice how I haven't mentioned either of repair or modify in the Tech tree yet? That's because they TOO are pointlessly redundant. How so? Well, lets take a look at all the possible uses for the repair skill.

Repair can be used on broken objects, mostly weapons and replicators. If a replicator is broken, the worst that can happen is that I won't be able to buy more packets of chips! oh no! To be fair, some replicators do come in extreme handy, like for instance, the ones that sell Tox Hypos, near the end of the game. I swear, I spent about 1,000 nanites on JUST toxin hypos. I hate those damnable spiders! The other use for repair is in restoring a weapon that has broken (jammed) and is now unusable. Okay, this sounds like it would be pretty darn handy. Oh wait. My gun has just jammed while shooting a laser turret. Lets repair it now, shall we? No, i don't think so Mr Repair man, surely not while someone is shooting you? See the problem now? Instead, the more sensible option is to simply NOT LET IT break in the first place and spent your precious, precious Cybernetic Modules on Maintenance instead (a smart move).

The other skill in the tech tree, Modify is useful... but, only to a point. Why? Cause you can only modify a weapon TWICE and then, that's it! You just spent 20+ modules on upgrading that pistol to do more damage and have a 24 bullet clip instead of 12. Whoop-Dee-Freaking-Do. Unless you are dumping every weapon that ever jams on you, you'll only ever need to do this a couple of times. Q.E.D.; Modify also fails.

Well. Now I've said my piece, I can kinda see that all this stuff was really pretty obvious to anyone that's ever played the game for even 30 minutes, so I'm really wondering why I bothered to put the effort in. Well, at least now I'm motivated to go back and try playing the Psi tree to see if my assertions actually hold any water. I also want write up something about the weapon unbalance (certainly in the early game) which favors enormously energy weapons, but I'll save that for another day.

Also, I'm planning on adding a blogroll of people that I read regularly (read that as, every day) so I don't have to repost what they are all saying.

Until later, dear readers, that is all.