Far Cry 2 
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Grab the best Far Cry game right now for less than $3Mar 11, 2024 - PCGamesNThe first Far Cry game was something of a blank slate. Created by Crytek, the studio that would go on to make the Crysis series and Hunt: Showdown, 2004's Far Cry was more of a proof of concept than anything else. Far Cry 2, the sequel from Ubisoft Montreal, ended up a much more confident game when it launched in 2008, outlining a future identity for the long-running action series while also establishing a grimy anti-war vision of its own that none of the subsequent entries have quite been able to match. If you've missed playing it and are curious to try it for yourself to see what we mean, now's a great time. Far Cry 2 is currently on sale for the price of a cup of coffee over on GOG. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Snag Far Cry 6 and the rest of Ubisoft's series dirt cheap right now The best Far Cry game is 70% off right now Far Cry's best game gets even better with sweeping mod for Ubisoft FPS Snag Far Cry 6 and the rest of Ubisoft's series dirt cheap right nowSep 16, 2023 - PCGamesNThe best Far Cry games can be yours for next to nothing right now, as the entire series goes dirt cheap with discounts offering up to 85% off. From the very first game to the modern Far Cry 6, Ubisoft's series has something for everyone who enjoys open-world FPS games, and you can grab whichever of them takes your fancy without breaking the bank thanks to a big Steam sale. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Far Cry's decade-old tent bug officially gets a fan-made fix The best Far Cry game is 70% off right nowJun 4, 2023 - PCGamesNThere's something about Far Cry 2 that I just can't shake. It's a special kind of magic, a game that isn't afraid to make your life awkward in service of true immersion. The open-world playgrounds of Ubisoft's various Far Cry games are something I've long delighted in, with the FPS games always having incredible gameplay at their core even when the likes of Far Cry 6 fell a little short elsewhere. If, however, you're a player who missed out on the early entries then this Far Cry 2 Steam sale is a perfect opportunity to find out what makes it so beloved. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Far Cry's best game gets even better with sweeping mod for Ubisoft FPS Some of the best PC games ever are dirt cheap on GOG, but not for long Far Cry's best game gets brutally realistic as mod remakes Ubisoft FPS Far Cry's best game gets even better with sweeping mod for Ubisoft FPSJan 11, 2023 - PCGamesNFar Cry 2, still the pinnacle of Ubisoft's gritty, realistic, open-world FPS game, has somehow been made even better thanks to an ambitious new mod that addresses its mission structure, guard AI, and visual performance, a perfect solution for anyone who wants to return to the PC classic, or those of us disappointed by the middling Far Cry 6. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Some of the best PC games ever are dirt cheap on GOG, but not for long Far Cry's best game gets brutally realistic as mod remakes Ubisoft FPS Far Cry 2 director Clint Hocking returns to Ubisoft for new project: "It's good to be back" Far Cry's best game gets brutally realistic as mod remakes Ubisoft FPSSep 27, 2022 - PCGamesNThe best Far Cry game - no, not Far Cry 3, and definitely not Far Cry 6 - is more brutal, tough, violent, and realistic than ever thanks a transformative new mod that remakes and remasters the Ubisoft open-world FPS into something closer to The Day Before or the upcoming Road to Vostok. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Far Cry 2 director Clint Hocking returns to Ubisoft for new project: "It's good to be back" Looking back: why it's time to return to Far Cry 2 Taking a vacation in Far Cry 2 is easier said than doneApr 12, 2022 - PC GamerYou emerge from the iron shack into a luminous dawn, a blue hour vision of crushed darks and saturated colours to the susurrating of strings, pregnant with tension. Before you, a stretch of scrubland that peters out into the gleaming desert at the reddening horizon. But in front of that is a car... Read more.Great moments in PC gaming: Watching fire spread in Far Cry 2Jul 13, 2019 - PC GamerGreat moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories. I'm glad Sea of Thieves finally came along to conclusively win the battle that has raged on in gaming for years. Which game has the best water? That's over now. That's done. Sea of Thieves wins by containing what I assume is some sort of magic that permits a real ocean to exist inside it. But alongside the water war, there was the fire war, and that was won years ago by Far Cry 2. And then won again by Far Cry 3. And Far Cry 4. And so on. The Far Cry games do fire gud, and the first time I experienced it in Far Cry 2 it was like witnessing a real fire: It was alarming and fascinating and almost immediately out of control. Far Cry 2's fictional African country was the perfect setting for a great fire propagation system. It was sun-bleached and arid, dry and dusty, with fields of dead grass and trees of brittle branches. Its combat was chaos, with psychotic mercenaries who'd ram your car off the road and fill the air with lead at the drop of a hat. The entire game was a powderkeg just waiting for a match. I quickly learned how useful fire could be. If enemies were dug in behind cover, a molotov hurled toward them didn't even have to be accurately thrown. It'd smash, setting the grass on fire, which would quickly spread across the ground, forcing the mercs out into the open where they could be picked off without me having to leave cover. Thanks, fire! We're a great team! But the fire wasn't done and we weren't a team after all. The flames would keep spreading, climbing tree trunks, igniting vehicles, setting off ammo boxes, forcing me out of cover, and cutting off my escape route. More than once the blaze I'd started had become another enemy and I'd have to flee while patting down my burning clothing and cursing because my car had exploded (unlike the other Far Cry games, cars weren't all that easy to find). Most of the fires I started were accidents that quickly spiraled out of control. A bullet finds an ammo box or a grenade goes off too close to a vehicle. A careful approach and minutes spent scouting are all for nought. The entire fight changes course because most things are burning and everything else is about to catch fire. Once I was taking out a convoy from a safe distance with a rocket launcher, and I suddenly noticed I was taking damage. I looked down and saw the field I was standing in was engulfed in flames. Eventually I figured out what had happened: the Carl G rocket launcher emits a flame from the back when it fires a rocket, and that flame had set the grass behind me on fire, which quickly spread under my feet. My car was already burning and once again I had to escape on foot. Sure, I was angry and wounded but also impressed. The flame from a rocket launcher setting the grass on fire might have messed up my mission, but I still had to admit it was pretty cool. 6 games that are surprisingly great for permadeath runsApr 10, 2019 - PC GamerI love permadeath in games. (Also in reality, too, I guess, but one thing at a time.) Permadeath imbues every decision with consequence. It makes every HP loss a terrifying proposition. It can turn some games into dramatic, terrifying, exhilarating adventures. It can lead to soul-crushing defeat, or fist-pumping jubilation. It’s why XCOM, Spelunky, and Invisible, Inc. are three of my favorite games of all time. There are many other games that don't use capital-P Permadeath as a core aspect of their design but still manage to create immensely satisfying experiences when played with self-imposed permadeath rules (and maybe a few other restrictions). Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Self-imposed restrictions: Minimal upgrades. You can only purchase Execution, Impact, Strike from Above, Poison, Brutalize, Detonate, and Wraith Stun. Shadow of Mordor is a fantastic game by any stretch, but at a certain point—say, about five or six hours in—you become an unstoppable juggernaut. The orc captains who once terrorized you no longer pose much of a problem. You check out their strengths and weaknesses more out of blind curiosity than strategic necessity. As fun as the game is after you’ve reached this point, I missed that sense of disempowerment and forethought that defined the opening hours. To that end, I highly recommend you try a permadeath, minimal-upgrades run: Don’t invest in any upgrades beyond the borderline-necessary ones (executing people from stealth, shooting barrels to make them explode) If you die, you have to delete your save file. Suddenly, it really, really matters if an orc is immune to ranged attacks, because now you have to put yourself in harm’s way to kill him. Suddenly, the question of whether you should brand or kill an orc becomes drastically more difficult: The deadlier an orc is, the more you’ll want to recruit him, but recruiting him will be drastically more dangerous than killing him. And you know those moments where you’re about to stealth kill an orc captain, only to be ambushed by a vengeful orc you thought you’d killed? Those bits are a hundred times more terrifying in a permadeath scenario. Prey Difficulty: Nightmare Game options: Activate all “survival mode” options: weapon degradation, traumas, and oxygen scarcity. Self-imposed restrictions: Don’t buy the slo-mo skill, because it makes things way too easy. Prey really doesn’t get the credit it deserves. It’s probably the best Spooky Space Station game ever made after System Shock 2, and it’s so nonlinear that it makes permadeath runs an absolute joy. Succeeding in a Prey permadeath run (on Nightmare difficulty—Normal is too easy, and Hard seems like it can’t be that hard because it’s not Nightmare, but it is that hard, so you’ll get complacent and die in stupid ways) is less about memorizing specific strategies for specific leve...Far Cry 2's daring open world design is still paying off 10 years laterOct 21, 2018 - PC GamerThere are games like Doom that forever change their genres. Then there are games that don’t necessarily come to mind on a day-to-day basis, but which constantly re-enter the conversation when developers get together and talk. Far Cry 2 is a real developer's game: an imperfect gem to be sure, but one that changed the industry by changing how people thought about games. Most of the time, you re honestly of little consequence. Far Cry 2's central genius is that it’s an open world that doesn’t exist to glorify you, the player. At best, you’re a villain. Most of the time, you’re honestly of little consequence. The intro sets the scene with you as the world’s least prepared mercenary, visiting Africa on the hunt for a wanted weapons dealer called The Jackal. It goes poorly. Before you can even begin the hunt, you catch malaria, end up bed-ridden, and have the Jackal himself pop round to go through your things, point out that you’ve failed miserably and won’t be paid, before wandering off with a “So long.” Few games have been quite so happy to lower the stakes to something that non-existent. Of course, you don’t just go home. Instead the mission quickly descends into the kind of nihilism that wouldn’t be matched until the underrated Spec Ops: The Line. You kill because that’s what you do, working for two factions who were criticised at the time for being basically the same collection of psychopathic arseholes before people realised that yes, that was the point. There are no good guys in Far Cry 2, and no glorious crusade to save the war-torn country from some handy moustache-twirling dictator. There is only war, malaria, death and greed. As would become a series staple, Far Cry 2 had next to nothing to do with the game that came before it save for being a shooter, and certainly none of the mutants and other silly elements that slowly took over its storyline. The developers, led by Clint Hocking, explained that the goal was to capture the spirit of the series, though it often felt (maybe cynically) like the money-men just weren't paying attention until it was too late. Far Cry was a level-based game that just happened to have really big, open-feeling levels. Far Cry 2 was a playground. True, it wasn’t completely open, in that the story was still tied together with missions and specific objectives, and no matter how much you drove around killing things, nothing would change until the plot dictated it did. But once you were actually on assignment, it was anything goes. Snipe enemies from a distance, steal a car and go smashing into a base, run in guns blazing, set things on fire… What made Far Cry 2 different from the average open world game was how it managed to embrace the potential of this freedom without either descending into anarchy or coming across as ridiculous. You’re certainly no godlike presence. Along with needing regul...The pinnacle of pyromania: the best flames and flamethrowers in PC gamingJul 31, 2018 - PC GamerDeep down, I think we've all wanted to burn down a house. Not out of vengeance, or a half-baked insurance scam, or to send a message to a crosstown mob boss. To me, pyromania is simply the most relatable form of gleeful mass destruction. Who isn't a little bit entranced by a towering inferno? Of course, in real life you can't work out your emotional baggage through incendiary therapy without getting the cops called on you, but videogames fill the void. If we're being honest, games have only recently really helped us get in touch with our latent pyromaniac instincts. It was difficult to program inspiring flames on a Commodore 64, and the less said about Doom's pepperoni pizza take on lava the better. But that started to change in 2008, with the release of Far Cry 2 and its unprecedented wildfire mechanics. "To me really nailed how fire should feel and I loved how it would burn the grass and environment, such a wonderful touch," says Bill Munk, creative director of Killing Floor 2, which itself is a game with an incredibly satisfying flamethrower. He's right. Open world sandboxes weren't exactly a rarity in the late-aughties, but Far Cry 2 was one of the first times our machines packed the processing power to handle the physics estimations necessary to set those open-worlds on fire. We haven't looked back since. "I really think flame weapons are so fun because of the extreme destruction they cause to NPCs and to the environment," continues Munk, when I ask him why he thinks players enjoy a healthy bit of incineration every now and then. "It's such a fun power trip, not to mention fire-based weapons are generally more forgiving on how accurate you need to be with your aim." Today, we're seeing games that play with fire on a more granular, mechanical level, rather than the engine-porn stagecraft it's been used for in the past. The best example I can think of is probably Larian Studios' Divinity series, which has persistently injected an immersive suite of environmental effects into the relative solemnity of a turn-based RPG. I've always found this screenshot, where a rustic wooden platform is scorched to the depths of hell, to be an effective shorthand for why people who don't necessarily play a ton of strategy games still fall in love with the absurdity of Original Sin's magic systems. "We tried to tweak duration, area and availability of fire skills so that the player is frequently put into position where their battle plan is spinning out of control and they need to improvise and take risks," says Nick Pechenin, systems designer of Divinity Original Sin 2, when I ask him how fire has been a useful tool in Larian's game design. "It was also important to us that although the ways in which surfaces are created and interact with each other have almost no randomness, smallest deviations in how the player targets their skil...An ode to the sniper rifleNov 28, 2017 - PC GamerA rustle. A breath. A bang. Everything about a good videogame sniper rifle is sexy, sleek, and dangerous, from the look of a long steel barrel to the echoing crack of gunfire heard for miles around. We love playing games with great sniper rifles not because of how they look or sound, though, but because of something much deeper and darker: we want to play god. The allure of the sniper rifle is the allure of the divine power to reach out—way, way out into the distance—and snuff out a life. It’s twisted, but that really is the heart of it. For proof, compare the sniper rifle to its Big Boomstick cousin, the shotgun. Both are typically slow to shoot, but they hit hard when they do. Both are loud. Both make explosions of fire and gore. But a sniper rifle is unusual because its entire purpose is to make a fight unfair. We want to see the enemy without being seen. We look our enemy in the face without being in danger. Invisibility, invulnerability, and instant kills: the sniper rifle is a cheat code with a trigger. This is what Zeus feels like when he throws thunderbolts. Today we’re celebrating the sniper rifle by talking about how it changed games, and all those pieces that make it a great videogame weapon. It starts with distance. How to make a great sniper rifle Counter-Strike's AWP locks down entire sections of a multiplayer level. The AWP s power isn t just in killing, but in threatening to kill. Almost all of the godlike power of a really fun sniper rifle comes from its ability to shoot at long range, so let’s start there. A great sniper rifle has to have a scope that lets us see deep into the microscopic horizon. The best recent example of this is PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, where your ability to see other players is your most useful skill. There’s something so disconcerting about running across an open field late in the game, looking around, and seeing no one. You know other players have to be close, but the hills seem quiet. This is where PUBG’s rare scopes come in. An 8x or, inshallah, the 15x scope brings you all of god’s many powers: eliminate a contender from the island in one shot before they know you can see them at all. Counter-Strike’s AWP is a legend itself, and arguably it helped start the "all-powerful bolt-action sniper rifle" trope that we’re celebrating today. Counter-Strike is a game where split-second accuracy and twitch reflexes decide every battle, and using the AWP demands the patience of a tortoise and the reflexes of a hare. If you’re good at it, the AWP locks down entire sections of a multiplayer level. The AWP’s power isn’t just in killing, but in threatening to kill. Giving players a better view from the inside of a multiplayer melee is one thing, but sniper rifles can do so, so much more than that. Games that focus on realistic simulation turn sniping into an advanced physics problem that only the bes...The best incidental animations in gamesNov 14, 2017 - PC GamerIt’s when you notice the little details in games that they really come alive. Those little things that hint at some sort of existence outside your control or awareness. They could be art props made to suggest who lived in the spaces you’re romping through, or little room layout details that show how the world works, but some of the touches that bring games to life the most come through animation. This is a celebration of incidental animations that don't help you win or make you lose or do much of anything important. They just happen, and you probably don’t even notice them, or think about how much work they actually took. There’s a madness to incidental animation, that so much effort has been lavished into producing something so ancillary, something which many players might never come across. But it can make the difference between a game feeling right and feeling that little bit off. It’s about conjuring that suspension of disbelief. It’s where the magic is. This selection of great incidental animation can’t hope to be exhaustive, since it’s simply compiled from the games I’ve played, and even within that paltry selection it’s only the things I’ve noticed, remembered and captured (with some pointers from some friends). But hopefully it’ll give you a new appreciation of the little things. Assassin's Creed: Origins: Wet Bayek Props to that special moment when a game nonchalantly plays out a very human response to something you’ve put your character through. Bayek doesn’t complain at you getting soggy, but his little hand and foot shakes give a sense of the person under all the stabbing. Rise of the Tomb Raider: Wringing out the ponytail Relatedly, Lara’s attention to her hair after coming out of water is a reminder of the tricky nature of dealing with long locks in extreme conditions. It’s just one of the many little animation details in Rise of the Tomb Raider , but several friends pointed towards it as their favourite and heck, they’re right. Prey: Q-Beam wobble Who was it at Arkane Studios who realised, "The Q-Beam absolutely has to comprise three objects which wobble as you move"? They are a genius. Weapons in games rarely passively react as you move around, and OK, that’s maybe because it’s a little distracting, but here in the Q-Beam, it’s wonderful. Overwatch: Junkrat's grenade launcher Another delightfully ramshackle weapon is Junkrat’s Frag Launcher. The way all its jiggling bits and pieces move as you walk do a great job of communicating Junkrat’s pegleg limp, and the way the flap on the end of the barrel flips as you fall really gets a sense of momentum across. You can almost imagine how his insane launcher actually works. Titanfall 2: Alternator Still on guns (because games are basically guns, right), I just love all the unnecessary (i.e. nec...How collectibles, stealth and climbing came to define the Ubisoft open world gameSep 21, 2017 - PC GamerOnce upon a time, Ubisoft's library was simple: it made platformers starring terrifying mascots with no limbs , and roughly 17,000 Tom Clancy tie-ins. But over the last decade, Ubi has muscled in on the genre that GTA made famous, building huge worlds spanning radically different time periods. Regardless of whether you’re controlling a historical hitman or a coma-bound cop, though, Ubisoft’s sandboxes love to borrow mechanics from other Ubi games. Join us as we look back at the history of the Ubisoft's open world games, to see just how these sprawling sandboxes have evolved (and grown more and more alike). A stealthy start Ubisoft first began to dabble in the sandbox space with 2007’s Assassin’s Creed. Skip back a decade, and you’d never guess the seismic scope the franchise would reach. Before the 2D spin-offs, books, and shitty Michael Fassbender films could wear us all down, there was just this ambitious (more than a bit broken) sandbox that spawned many of the features open world games still cling to in 2017. Chances are you don’t remember much about the original Assassin’s Creed. You probably recall moping around ancient Jerusalem stabbing folk as a dude in a hoodie. Perhaps you have a dim recollection of eavesdropping on NPCs chatting away on benches. Maybe you even remember that early kickass trailer with the horribly catchy Unkle song . Far Cry 3 s antenna towers undoubtedly cast the longest shadow on almost every Ubi open world that followed, but that's not where they started. The one thing you’ll definitely recall is Ubisoft’s obsession with making players scale super lofty buildings. That all started in Altaïr’s adventure. To fully scope out all of the Holy Land’s side activities, you had to climb the tops of the tallest structures across Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus. Doing so gives you a very literal eagle’s eye view of the sprawling mass of humanity hundreds of feet below; a bird of prey swooping around the building when you reach its summit. These vertigo-bating landmarks birthed Ubi’s most infamous open world feature: gradually filling up a map with mission markers. Crossover feature: Climbing towers Assassin’s Creed may have introduced us to the idea of big-ass buildings that revealed points of interest when climbed, but it was 2012’s Far Cry 3 that really cemented the feature. Jason Brody’s leopard-punching, pirate-blasting, tattoo-inking tropical holiday had the sort of wide reaching influence on the open world genre its two predecessors could only have sweaty night terrors about… mainly because its predecessor literally gave you malaria . Surprisingly, Far Cry 2’s obsession with making you stuff pills down your throat to keep mosquito-borne diseases away never caught on—nor did its love of jamming weapons . Far Cry 3 ditched the annoying obstructions in ...The Far Cry games ranked from worst to bestAug 11, 2017 - PC GamerRanking the games in the Far Cry series isn't an especially easy task given that for the most part it's been a widely varied collection of shooters: Far Cry 1, 2, and 3 were all distinctly different from one another, and while Far Cry 4, Far Cry 5, and Blood Dragon were quite similar to Far Cry 3, Primal threw us a curve and plopped us in the Stone Age. Another issue with ranking them: the Far Cry games are all pretty good! There are no stinkers in the series, meaning there's no one to really dump on. This makes things harder. But just because something isn't easy doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. Below we've cobbled together a highly-unscientific ranking of the Far Cry series (sans Instincts, which only appeared on console). As with all of our rankings, this list is iron-clad and inarguable, so we expect nothing but collective head-nods of sycophantic agreement in the comments. Here they are, the Far Cry games listed from worst to first. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon Developed: Ubisoft Published: Ubisoft 2013 Samuel: Blood Dragon is a pleasingly concentrated and beautiful slice of Far Cry 3, wrapped in a joke that maybe wears a bit too thin. It essentially offers everything the main game does, but in a sillier and more explosive framework, designed as it is to poke fun at '80s movies and games in general—the latter of which is a contentious point for some. But it's so clearly enjoyable for what it is. Neon versions of Far Cry 3's creatures wander the landscape, and it's refreshingly streamlined, with no crafting and simpler progression systems. Throw a cyber heart to lure a Blood Dragon, watch the beast turn up to wreak some havoc, then move onto the next outpost. If the 20+ hours of game waiting in Far Cry 3 or 4 seems daunting, this is a pleasingly complete microcosm of the Far Cry experience. Far Cry Primal Developed: Ubisoft Published: Ubisoft 2016 Chris: Cranking back the clock—way back, to 10,000 BC—would seem a good way to take the series in an entirely new direction. There are no guns in Primal, of course. No cars, no aircraft, and absolutely no radio towers (thankfully). In some ways, it's pretty amazing that the familiar gameplay of Far Cry fits so well in an environment without automatic weapons and off-road vehicles. The flip side is that Primal feels too familiar to really stand out. Stone Age or not, it's still unmistakably a Far Cry game and never really feels like a fresh experience. The ability to tame animals to fight alongside you is new, and while combat restricts you to bows, clubs, and spears (there is, enjoyably, a bee-filled pouch that acts as a grenade), the hunting and crafting you spend much of your time doing isn't any sort of departure from the series. Despite sending you thousands of years into the past, Primal winds up feeling a little too similar to Far Cry 3 and 4. Far Cry 5 Developed: Ubisoft Published: Ubisoft 2018 ...Games I Was Wrong About: Part TwoJan 19, 2016 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunLast week, in the wake of MGSV opening my eyes to a series I’d long disdained, I shared a quartet of games I now feel I either dismissed out of hand or unreasonably feted. Here’s the rest of that list, though I suspect if I sat down and went through every review I ever wrote over the last 15 years, I’d find quite a few more. I’m not going to do that, because making me read 15 years of my own writing is pretty much the worst thing anyone could ever do to me). … Clint Hocking Has Left Amazon Game StudiosAug 18, 2015 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunClint Hocking has been cursed by a witch and is now doomed to travel the games industry, joining new developers and then leaving before releasing a single game. In the last five years, the Far Cry 2 designer has joined and left LucasArts, joined and left Valve, and as of yesterday, joined and left Amazon Games Studios. … Have You Played Far Cry 2?Aug 10, 2015 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunHave You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time. I don’t have a single favourite FPS and find such conversation boring but if someone asks and I want to test their mettle, I’ll tell them it’s Far Cry 2. If they say they prefer Far Cry 3, I know they – as a person – are wrong. Far Cry 2 is a game about plans and contingency plans, then desperate makeshift plans when those both go wrong, then finally, after a crucial grenade rolls back down a hill towards you, hoping that your buddy will come pull you out the fire – and that you can cover them. “Far Cry 3 is for babies,” I’d probably declare, because I’m like that. … The 50 Best FPS Ever MadeMay 13, 2015 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunGathering together the best shooters is no easy task, but if you’re looking for a new PC FPS to play, look no further. Your favourite game is at number 51. … Why Far Cry 2 Is Still The Best In The SeriesNov 20, 2014 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunYou shouldn t always give people what they want. This is focus testing s fatal flaw. It s also the reason that Far Cry 2 – a game which doesn t give you what you want and slaps you for asking – is the best game in the series by far. … Far Cry 2 creative director Clint Hocking leaves ValveJan 6, 2014 - PC Gamer Technically, I'm aware that the employees of Valve have regular jobs, doing regular things on irregularly mobile desks. Even so, when picturing Clint Hocking's year and half stint with the company, I can't help but imagine him strapped into a central development node, where tendrilled mind probes extract creative ideas to be fed into the Almighty Feedback Formula. I'm not saying that's definitely what happened, but if it is, it's perhaps understandable why he'd leave. Which he has. News of Hocking's departure comes via his LinkedIn account and personal blog, where his biography states: "From 2012 until the end of 2013, Clint worked as a designer and level designer at Valve in Seattle." Hocking is probably best known for his work at Ubisoft, where he was creative director for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory - a game that, to this day, remains the highpoint of that series. He was also the creative director for Far Cry 2, which is either the best of the worst Far Cry game, depending on your fondness for emergent situations, jamming weapons and malaria. In typical Valve style, we don't officially know what Hocking was working on. But based on leaked information taken from their internal database, he was suspected to be part of the team developing the yet to be announced Left 4 Dead 3. As yet, there's no information about his next project, but hopefully it'll evoke the same manic clash of systems that defined FC2's best moments. Thanks, ValveTime.
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