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Story by Patrick Garratt

Mon, Sep 22, 2008 | 13:15 BST

We’re playing Far Cry 2 right now – tell us what you want to know

We’re sitting in Ubisoft’s UK offices playing the most recent build of Far Cry 2. Want to know anything? We’re going to start playing now, and we’ve got a while, so if you’ve got any questions, just stick them in the comments. We’ll do a few pieces from today over the coming weeks, but we’ll live blog this session as we go through for the sake of “the news”.

After the break.

• Right then. Pressing start. They’ve given us the 360 version to play.
• It’s the 360 version specifically, and they’ve asked me to say that in the all the editorial.
• Nine characters to choose from. Going with Marty Alencar, the first option. He’s a 28 year-old Brazilian.
• Story stuff. Little war in Africa. We have to kill “the Jackal.” There’s an opening sequence now which we can’t talk about.
• Frame-rate very solid. Dynamic shadowing obvious. No visible stuttering so far.
• Can’t skip this story part at the start.
• Load times fine – there’s no visible loading at all so far.
• OK, some loading, but very quick. It happened at the end of the first sequence. We’re now being briefed on “the target.”
• The whole thing’s subtitled, as promised.
• In the game now. We’re getting motion cues, like “use LS to move.” We’ve got to “escape the town.”

A to jump, B to crouch. There’s a firefight going on outside the ruined building we’re in. God rays through the dust. Sound of artillery and jets in the distance. Hardcore lighting: really pretty.

• Straight into a fight. LT to aim, RT to fire. X reloads. Health is in a bar in the left and drops as you’re shot then goes back up when you get into cover. Y to swap weapons on the ground. It’s actually very similar in control to Gear of War, Blerk.
• PR just told me they want me to say it’s the 360 version because of the screenshots, as there are slight visual differences between the versions.
• They also said that anything you want answered by the developers can be passed over. So anything we can’t answer today can be sent to Montreal.
• Dead. First Achievement!
• LB to heal yourself. Just dug a bullet out of our leg with a knife.
• The guy that rescued us is now a mission hub.
• He’s teaching how to save. You just walk to a case on a shelf and press Y.
• Just bumped up health with an injection.
• Mellee weapon is a machete. You can carry three other weapons. Just got a rocket launcher.
• VO’s brilliant. Gritty. Sound’s surround. It’s all very slick, to be honest.
• Re shooting ratio: as soon as we left the mission hub place, my gun appeared.
• First mission is to fix a car.
• Map’s on “back”. Can change the map scale with X.
• The UI goes completely blank if you do nothing. It’s contextual. If you’re just walking around there’s no info on the screen, just graphics.
• Just answered a phone call. Got to go kill some “shit-heads.” In the car.
• If you drive over foilage in the car it pings back up behind you. The red roadsigns on the fence posts lead you to your mission objective. It’s to stop you getting lost, obviously.
• In firefight. The openness is amazing. Flanked the objective and shot first guy from a distance, crouched in the grass.
• Best game foilage ever. Put that on the box, Ubi.
• Shot the second guy in the face at close range. That’ll teach you, second guy.
• The men were defending a safe house, which is now ours. We can sleep, meet buddies etc.
• The audio in the firefight was good: the men said things like, “He’s here somewhere” when they were searching for us. Also, the was a depth of field effect in the grass. When we crouched, the distance blurred and the grass came into sharp focus.
• You control time by resting. You can set your watch and sleep until that specific time. The game has a 24 hour day/night cycle.
• You click the left stick to sprint.
• Environments so far: towns, villages, jungle, “bush”.
• We have to say this, but the “living jungle” is just overwhelming. Everything rustles in the wind, everything’s shadowed, the lighting’s dimmed now we’ve slept till 6pm: beautiful.
• Going on to a second mission. Another camp. The game’s just paused when we’re driving in and told us to scout out the position instead of just wading in.
• OK, it’s getting into the combat proper now. You can get your monocular out with the map equipped and scout enemy locations. You can then pull the RT to tag objects on interest on your map, like snipers, mounted weapons, etc.
• Phone. Have to rescue a hostage from the camp. When you’re looking through the monocular, the sight turns green when you go over an ammo dump, or whatever. You pull the RT, then go back to the map: there’s a new symbol on the map.
• The music’s dynamic. Just killed someone with the machete, but he got a shot off before he died and it started a bigger fight. The music went “dramatic.”
• Right, fuck this. Rocket launcher.
• And the quarterback is toast, etc. Wicked explosions.
• Re framerate: no drops at all. It’s solid from what we’ve seen so far.
• Guns sound and behave realistically. An AK does what an AK does, and sounds exactly right. Full-auto makes the muzzle rise, so you have to keep adjusting.
• Aiming and movement simple and standard in terms of control. Feels great.
• Weapons arranged on d-pad. Right stick click does nothing.
• Just rescued a woman. She’s our first “buddy”. She’s told us to come to Mike’s Bar later.
• Gone back to the mission hub. He’s telling us about being paid in diamonds and not to use paper money. It looks as though the missions are starting to open up a bit. We can go to the bar in town, look for a crate of diamonds, etc.
• You have to save the game yourself by walking up to flashing blue cases on the wall. There are as many slots as you like, dependant on HD space, presumably.
• Just used a GPS tracker to find a diamond in a case. There are hundreds of these in the game. You can buy and upgrade weapons with them.
• We’ll ask about the resolution and framerate later. I’ve got a feeling that’ll have to go to Canada.
• Right, we’ve got ten minutes left. We’re just going to wander off and get into trouble.
• Drove off, found another safe house, killed the guards, used a grenade, made someone scream by injuring them.
• It tells you the date and time of each save, but not time played.
• Crashed the car into a tree. Got annoyed with it. Blew it up with a grenade. Alerted random soldiers. Now in firefight.
• Found a river. Went swimming. Up to an outpost. Killed everyone.
• AlbenoEpiX – It does appear to be brilliant.
• Statix – You can sprint for about ten seconds, then you get out of breath and your vision blurs and you go back to walking.
• Blerk – Checkpointing’s being added, we were told this morning.
• Started a fire! It’s very cool. It spreads along the ground in a wave and leaves burnt buildings, etc, in its wake. When it runs out of vegetation it just burns out. Started it by shooting a gas can which went spinning off into some grass.
• OK, that’s it. If there’s anything else you want to know, just leave it in the comments and we’ll send a doc over to Ubi later to get answered by Ubi Montreal. Thanks for the questions!

65 Posted in: Action, Hot, PC, PS3, Shooter, Ubisoft, Xbox 360
Tags: Far Cry 2, live blog