He's not just responsible for one of the coolest games of the year, Dishonored designer Harvey Smith is also a man with impeccable taste.

That impeccable taste is on full display in this guest essay he wrote for Penny Arcade Report about why he thinks Far Cry 2 is brilliant.

Smith shares some smart musings on the nature of embedded ("We have written this story for you") and emergent ("Woah, this story randomly happened to me!") narrative in video games, and how Dishonored was his and his co-creative director Raphael Colantonio's attempt at blending the two playstyles. (I'd say they did a pretty good job.)

Smith wraps it up thusly:

If games focused on embedded narrative are more polished, why do many of us prefer games that focus on the dynamics of emergent narrative? Is it some intuitive sense that ferrets out what is most meaningful in games? Is this a situation akin to independent film, where an audience steeped in the critical aspects of the medium wants a bare experience, uncluttered by bombast, filler or special effects, delivered in an understated or experimental way? On initial contact, Far Cry 2 was somewhat unwelcoming in that it did not invite players in; the subject matter was brutal and the game's advancement curve and difficulty tuning required patience.

The reward for those who stayed with the game was potent. Some of the most interesting game design commentary of the year orbited the game, including the Permadeath experiments conducted by Ben Abraham and others, which I take as an indication of how thought-provoking and challenging (to video game conventions) Far Cry 2 was. The game stands as the shooter title that has given me the most compelling, player-driven moments to date.

See? It's not just me and everyone else with good taste in video games who thinks Far Cry 2 is great. HARVEY SMITH AGREES, YOU GUYS. I think we can finally close the book on this once and for all.

In all seriousness, give the whole article a read, it's good.

Dishonored's Harvey Smith explains the genius of Far Cry 2 [Penny Arcade Report]

Here's what happened: I was soaring above a gorgeous tropical island in a hang-glider when I heard gunfire below. Waaaay down on the road below, a gang of friendly islanders was going toe-to-toe with a band of ruthless pirates. I banked around and dropped in low, landing just inside the treeline. I pulled out my high-tech bow, then crept up to and took down one of the pirates with an arrow before another spotted me. Shouting and gunfire erupted from all sides.

Forty-five seconds later, burned bodies lay strewn in every direction; a deadly tiger had come roaring out of the jungle, and the grass and trees to my left were ablaze, deadly-hot flames spreading as fast as I could scramble. Cutting my losses, I sprinted toward a cliff overhang, violently jerking my dislocated thumb back into joint as I ran. In one smooth motion, I swan-dove into the open water a hundred yards below. A crash as I broke the surface, then silence. Sun-rays sliced into the murky depths as I regained my bearings. And that was when I saw the first shark.

That's Far Cry 3 in a nutshell.

Repeat the above encounter five times in the game, and you'll get five different outcomes. Maybe you take out all the bad guys without raising a ruckus. Maybe you stay high up on a hill and blow everyone up using rockets, only to get chomped by a tiger you didn't hear behind you. Maybe your allies win the firefight before you land, and you've got nothing left to do but clean up. Or maybe the fight spills over into an enemy outpost, and before you know it you're up against an army of troops, trained dogs, and helicopters. It's all possible, and every permutation is as fun as the last one.

Far Cry 3 is an open-world shooter through and through. The setup is simple: You're set loose on a massive island in the south pacific and tasked with gradually conquering it, one dead pirate/tiger/shark at a time. Here's a gun. Have fun.

WHY: Far Cry 3 does so much right: It's an exhilarating and empowering adventure that marvelously combines player freedom with shiny technical polish.

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Far Cry 3

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC (Reviewed)
Release Date (US): December 4

Type of game: Open-world first-person shooter with an emphasis on exploration and stealth.

What I played: Completed the single-player story and a ton of side content over the course of around 30 hours. Played an hour or so of co-op and an hour or so of versus multiplayer.

My Two Favorite Things

• Realizing that my 20th base raid had been just as exciting and unpredictable as my first.
• Running up a winding mountain ridge before hang-gliding off. It never gets old.

My Two Least-Favorite Things

• Every time Jason Brody would pipe up to tell me how he was feeling about things.
• The inability to turn off the HUD, mini-map or objective markers.

Made-to-Order Back-of-Box Quotes

• "My leopard army and I are coming for you."
  -Kirk Hamilton, Kotaku.com
• "I swear I saw a hatch around here somewhere."
  -Kirk Hamilton, Kotaku.com
• "Why doesn't this game just star Vaas?"
  -Kirk Hamilton, Kotaku.com

There's also a story you can play through, though the distinction between the "story parts" of the game and the "non-story parts" is an important one: It's in the balance between the two that Far Cry 3 finds success. The game casts you as Jason Brody, a twentysomething layabout whose drunken island vacation is interrupted by pirates (the scary modern-day kind). They kidnap him, his brothers, and his friends, and set to ransom them and sell them into slavery. The story parts are a long series of mostly linear, welcomely varied adventures Jason undertakes in service of this rescue/revenge plot.

The non-story parts, on the other hand, are the emergent action that happens all over the island between missions. As with many of the best open-world games, the story parts are fun, but the non-story parts are what make Far Cry 3 special.

The tale begins with Jason narrowly escaping captivity, then quickly taking up with a group of friendly island dwellers called the Rakyat, who are led by a charismatic, bespectacled dude named Dennis and a sexy, mysterious (and kind of ridiculous) woman named Citra. Dennis believes that cowardly Jason is, at heart, a warrior, and the rest of the game follows Jason's (and your) quest to rescue his friends and take down the men in charge of the Rook Islands' slave- and drug-trading empires.

It's a perfectly workable setup, as these things go, but the character at its heart—Jason Brody—is little more than a party-boy nebbish. Despite the fact that he was likely cast because the highest percentage of young male players would see themselves in him, he's never all that relatable, and while his journey from zero to hero sure looks convincing as you're blowing apart enemy helicopters, it never feels convincing when he talks about it. He's an overwritten tryhard who frequently yells exposition in the middle of action sequences, just in case we forgot what was going on. "I have to find Riley, Liza and the others!" he hollers to himself, running through the jungle in terror. "I can't take any more of this heat!" he grunts, as a burning building collapses around him. At one point, he actually looks down at his hands and asks, "What have I become?"

But even though the story is something of a mishmash, it certainly has its moments. The motion-capture technology used to portray the rogue's gallery of quest givers—a paranoid CIA operative, a deadly renegade hostage-taker, a sultry island woman, a drug-addled scientist—is some seriously impressive stuff, in some ways even surpassing Naughty Dog's work on the Uncharted series. The primary antagonist, a pirate named Vaas Montenegro, is marvelously brought to life by actor Michael Mando, who gives a magnetic, menacing performance. Whenever Vaas was on the screen, I couldn't take my eyes off him.

The single-player campaign also contains a welcome amount of variety—a series of tomb-exploration missions in the middle play out like first-person Uncharted, and a number of hallucinated drug sequences are creative, pure goofy fun. The story missions are best thought of as a garnish, a way to break up all the sneaking, shooting, and exploring you'll be doing in between them.

That the story is inconsistent is perhaps Far Cry 3's primary failing, only because the rest of the game is so good that the story holds it back from true, we'll-still-talk-about-this-in-five-years greatness. The more compelling story is the one outside of the proper narrative, the age-old video game story of progression and mastery. As players earn experience points, Jason levels up, and his arm-tattoo grows more and more elaborate with each new armor-upgrade or takedown ability. The transformation from the start of the game to the end of the game is remarkable, if not as cleverly tied to the narrative as the writers would have liked. You'll begin as dead meat—a weakling with no health and a pistol, running for his life. By the game's end, you'll be a deadly predator, silently skittering through the jungle and dealing death with monstrous precision. You'll toy with your foes, and you'll like it. Rarely has progression in a game of this sort felt so satisfying.

The Rook Islands make for a spectacular video game playground, one part Ling Shan from Crysis, one part The Island from LOST. From the dense jungles and murky swamps of the northern island to the wide fields and sweeping overlooks of the southern, the whole map is jammed with fun distractions and rewarding stuff to occupy your time. And the most remarkable thing isn't that there's so much to do, it's how well it all works together.

The game revolves around five core mechanics, more or less: Sneaking, shooting, driving, exploring, and hunting. All five work well and are fun in their own right, and all five tie in with the leveling and progression system so that every time you do something, you feel like it's making you more powerful. It's that sense of seamlessness that elevates Far Cry 3—there's a feeling of "concert," of interlocking systems that have found a hell of a groove together. That encounter I described at the top of this review is a good example, and that sort of thing happens more or less constantly. The game encourages you to quickly hop between driving, hunting, hiding, swimming, shooting, and hiding again, all with astonishing fluidity.

The item-collection, experience/leveling, and crafting systems are all well-balanced, too. You're encouraged to go hunting because if you skin animals, you can use their pelts in the crafting system to make better holsters and containers for your gear. Animals roam different parts of the islands, so if you want to go hunting, you'd better explore. To craft better health upgrades, you'll need to harvest the best plants. To carry more plants and syringes, you'll need to hunt the animals to make the proper cases. To get upgrades for your gear, you'll need money, which is perpetually in short supply—so to get money, you'd better go looting, hunting, or undertake side-missions. It's all balanced, and the game maintains scarcity in its resources very effectively. The "gaminess" of it all might be a turnoff for some—Far Cry 3 exists in some middle ground between the complex micromanagement of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and the minimalism of Far Cry 2. The balance worked very well for me, and felt like something of a sweet spot.

Each of the islands' many non-storyline diversions net you experience points, money, and gear. Enemy bases are the most satisfying of these distractions, encampments of pirates that you can conquer and take for yourself. After you've killed everyone at a base, you'll raise up a blue Rakyat flag, and the base's bulletin board will open up with additional hunting and assassination challenges you can undertake. In a smart touch, the hunting challenges must be tackled with specific weaponry (usually the game's outstanding bow and arrow), and assassinations must be performed up close and personal with a machete. You can sit down and play a number of poker games around the island, or engage in fun, arcade-y "Trials of the Rakyat," which give you a specific challenge ("Shoot guys, and each time you kill a guy your gun instantly changes.") and then put your final score up against your friends. On top of all that, there are story-based sidequests you can undertake ("Take photos of dead pirates") that could have been filler but frequently feature funny writing and interesting challenges.

In fact, the biggest complaint I have about the side-stuff is that the signal-to-noise ratio can become a bit overwhelming. There is no way to turn off the mini-map, HUD, or objective markers, meaning that no matter what you're doing, the game is constantly throwing information at you, and constantly reminding you to get on with your next story mission. As the wubby soundtrack churned, and the hud popped up and nudged me back on track, it was hard not to resent the game a little bit for being so up in my grill all the time. Back off, game! I want to explore you! As an avowed fan of the notoriously HUD-minimal Far Cry 2, I found the lack of display customization somewhat dispiriting. I'd love to play this game with the HUD turned off, particularly on a second playthrough. Why won't you give me the option, Ubisoft? Surely it isn't that important to give me all this information if I don't want or need it.

Ubisoft has performed a smart lift from their own Assassin's Creed series by adding radio towers to Far Cry 3, which you must climb and activate in order to un-fog sections of the map. There are 18 of these strewn around the islands, and climbing them gets progressively more challenging as you go. The radio towers could have been rote or boring, but instead are delightful—perilous ascents that can be downright tricky, but almost never frustrating. It's not quite first-person platforming, more first-person climbing, with a focus on figuring out how to get to your next point of ascent. When you stand at the top, the tower lightly buckles and sways beneath you, creaking in the wind. This kind of attention to detail runs through most every moment of Far Cry 3.

None of this stuff is all that new, but it's amazing how well it all works, and how well it all works together. It feels great to play an open-world game where all of the systems are polished to this extent—the game is rarely buggy, and dishes out surprises on a regular basis. Cars handle with a realistic sense of physics and momentum. There's an organic first-person cover mechanic that works so well it feels like a revelation. Press up against a wall, and you take cover. Hit the "aim" button and you pop out to take a shot. Please, other first-person shooters, borrow Far Cry 3's cover mechanic!

The stealth is just as polished as the gunplay—taking down an enemy base without anyone spotting you is an exercise in caution, observation, alarm deactivation and enemy-manipulation. But full-on combat works just as well—on normal difficulty, enemies are deadly and will frequently overwhelm you, and you must play smart to win. Enemy types—chargers, shooters, snipers, heavies—all run varied and complementary routines, and force constant improvisation. And none of that's to mention the (truly) wild card: Those deadly animals. Cobras, tigers, leopards, boars, komodo dragons, sharks, and the world's most startling crocodiles—all will conspire to throw a wrench into your best-laid plans.

Talk to ten people, and you'll get ten different highlight reels of their time on the island. Shark hunting off the northern coast, fleeing from a collapsing Chinese ruin, zip-lining from the top of a rickety radio tower, or demolishing an enemy encampment with a ton of strategically placed C4. The one constant is that island, gorgeous and deadly, sprawling out before you. Running along the top of an open ridge, the sun setting in the distance, feeling for all the world like an extra on LOST… it's something that has yet to get old for me, even after around 30 hours with the game.

Far Cry 3 looks fantastic on PC—I played using both an AMD Radeon 6870 and a newer GeForce GTX 660Ti. Particularly on the GTX, with Directx11 enabled, this one's a real stunner. I would recommend that anyone who has the means play the game on PC—while I don't have final retail console copies of the game to compare it to, I was less impressed by the PS3 version at a recent press event I attended. The 360 version looked okay, but neither console comes close to the crispness and high framerate of the PC version. Far Cry 3 feels as close to a true "next generation" game as anything I've played this year, and it requires current hardware to run at its best.

(This video is from a preview I did of the game a little while back. My opinions are much more solidified now than they were then, but this gives a good sense of what the game's all about.)

In addition to its lengthy single-player campaign, Far Cry 3 also comes with separate co-op and competitive multiplayer offerings, though both are much harder to judge at this point in time. The game still isn't out for another couple of weeks in the states, and there are few people playing it on PC at the moment. I teamed up with some press friends to play around an hour of co-op and found it to be fun enough, if buggy, but not really in the same league as more polished co-op games like Gears of War and Left 4 Dead.

Co-op has its own story and characters, but they're mostly weirdly acted clichés, and it's all very removed from the events in single-player. Enemies in co-op are damage-sponges who can take what seems like 400% more damage than their single-player counterparts. Un-upgraded multiplayer characters move and aim quite slowly, and the levels are all linear. You won't be able to grab your friends and tear around the main single-player island, which feels like a shame—that's really all I wanted to do! I'll still probably play through all of the co-op missions, but so far I've found co-op to be much less satisfying and enjoyable than the single-player game.

I also had a tough time scheduling sessions to test out the competitive multiplayer. I played a few rounds of both "firestorm" and "transmission" modes, both of which are riffs on capture-and-defend. They worked fine, though in general they felt sluggish when compared with both Far Cry 3's single-player and with other popular first-person shooters like Borderlands 2 and Black Ops II. A lot of that could just be tied to my low-level character, though. So, the jury's out, and at this point, two weeks in advance of the game's release, it's just too early to say whether the multiplayer is any good. My sense? That it's fine, and that it'll find some longevity in the fantastic map-editor, but that it won't attract a huge multiplayer following. Far Cry 3 is a single-player game at heart. I'll play more multiplayer once the game is out, and will update this review after that.

Even if Far Cry 3 shipped with no multiplayer at all, the game would be a cinch to recommend. It's a smart, challenging, and polished adventure that does what it does very well. Some missed storytelling opportunities don't overshadow its fun, occasionally daring narrative successes, and the whole thing revels in a luxurious sheen of high production values and extraordinary design talent.

Far Cry 3 is an example of the rare ambitious, big-budget game that accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do—chaotic yet controlled, with a brilliantly-balanced mechanical ecosystem that challenges and empowers at every turn. It's a wild ride, and one well worth taking. Just watch out for crocodiles.

Between XCOM and Dishonored, most gamers are probably unable to even think about anything on the horizon—the present is just fine, thanks! The horizon can wait!

Last week, I headed over to Ubisoft and spent about four hours visiting that horizon, playing a big chunk of Far Cry 3's single-player campaign. I've had my doubts about the game since it was revealed, though over the course of the last few months, many of them have been assuaged. After my time playing the game, any remaining doubts all but vanished. Far Cry 3 is serious business.

Most of what we've seen of the single-player story up until now has involved narrow, linear setpieces. But what about the massive, explorable island, the open-ended missions, the sidequests and collectables? What of the stuff that makes Far Cry Far Cry?

That's what I got to finally see last week. I was very impressed. Observe the following equation:

Far Cry 3 = Far Cry 2 + Uncharted + Red Dead Redemption.

Yeah. Granted, there's still a hint of what I can only call "That Unique Ubisoft Dumbness" to everything, but so much of the game was so impressive that I couldn't help but be won over. I can't wait to see and play more.

In the video above, you can get a feel for just about every element of Far Cry 3's single-player experience. The massive island, the teeming wildlife, the array of vehicles, and the amazing, performance-captured first-person cutscenes—the video is cut together from b-roll that Ubisoft sent over after the event; I saw most everything in the video, though I'm not quite as good at the game as the person playing the video.

But hey, just because I made a video doesn't mean I'm not gonna give you some bullet points.

• Far Cry 3 lifts its vantage-point system from Assassin's Creed. You'll climb radio towers in the game and, once you reach the top, you'll unblur a section of the map, highlighting the various points of interest. You'll even perform a sort of "leap of faith" to get down—only except of swan-diving, you'll zipline.
• You have a camera that you can use to reconnoiter enemy camps, tag foes, identify points of interest, and of course, take pictures. As a big Dead Rising fan, I must say I am excited to be able to take pictures in another open-world game.

• Everything is much more video-gamey than Far Cry 2. That's not really my thing, but it does let you have access to a lot more information. If only they had a map that your character holds in his hands! Alas. I'm sure some people will rejoice at this news, though.
• Oh, before I forget - even if you're not watching the video, for a good time, skip to 10:55.
• I don't know why that shit cracks me up like it does, but it does.
• There are a ton of optional sidequests, most of which you get either from quest-givers or from bulletin boards strewn around the map. They range from hunting challenges to stronghold captures to assassinations.
• Once you've captured a stronghold, it stays captured—no more respawning guards like in Far Cry 2. You'll have much more of a sense of progress in Far Cry 3. (Though of course, the futility of your actions was one of the narrative themes of Far Cry 2. Okay, I'll shut up about Far Cry 2.)
• The game has a hugely ambitious crafting system. There are a ton of collectible plants and animal bits, and you can use them to craft medicine, power-ups, and even bags that will expand your inventory.
• The island's ecosystem interlocks to a hugely ambitious degree. The last game with a wildlife system as massive was Red Dead Redemption—bold words, I know! It is remarkable how Ubisoft has managed to fit so much life onto a single game disc.
• Animals don't just fight you—they fight one another and can be set loose upon enemy bases. I'm sure we'll get some pretty funny glitch videos out of this.

• The game looks fine on all platforms, but the PC puts the console versions to shame. It was running smoothly and without a single hitch at 1080p, though I didn't see what kind of PCs Ubisoft was using. I got stuck on the PS3 version, and it was markedly inferior. Lots of screen-tearing, particularly during cutscenes, a smushed draw distance and some rough, ugly texture compression. Granted, the game still played fine, and most console owners won't care, but the PS3's graphics weren't looking so hot. The Xbox 360 version, from what I saw, looked somewhat better—less tearing, and darker textures, though still nowhere near the quality of the PC version. This game feels stuck between the current generation and the next one, and it appears to be just a bit beyond the capabilities of current-gen consoles.
• This is going to be one long-ass game. The Ubisoft folks were cagey about exact numbers, but they alluded to spending well past 50 or 60 hours on the game, including sidequests. Factor in collectables and relics, and that number keeps climbing.
• The stealth system is robust and transparent. You'll get a warning indicator on screen when a guard can see you, and it gradually fills as you stay in their sights. You can always toss a pebble to distract a foe, making stealth much more tactical and approachable than it was in Far Cry 2. (Sorry, I know I said I'd shut up about Far Cry 2.)
• The home-base area is idyllic. Almost too idyllic. You can go there to play minigames, resupply, and get quests.
• Gun shops are located all over the place, even in vending machines. Almost every single building lets you buy and customize guns.
• Far Cry 2's grisly (and awesome) low-health healing animations are back—get too injured and you'll rip fingers back into their sockets, dig out bullets and cauterize wounds. It's gnarly, and totally cool.
• A great deal of work has been put into placing you inside your character Jason's body. You'll be thrown around all over the place, and it's immersive to the point of being motion-sickness inducing.

• Far Cry 3 is not an easy game; especially at first, you'll be dead meat if you go too far out into the jungle without skills and proper equipment. Similarly, you can't just run into a firefight—you'll have to be smart, and use the environment (and often, the animals) to your advantage. In this way, it feels much like Far Cry 2—circle, circle, circle.
• The facial capture is truly astonishing—some of the most impressive I've ever seen. Ubisoft has used the same tech in other games, but I've never seen it work this well. Characters effortlessly convey fear, terror, patience, madness, and vacancy, not just in their faces but in their body motions. At least in the first-person cutscenes, Ubisoft has almost entirely escaped the uncanny valley.
• Your tattoos mark your power-ups, and as you get more powerful, they become more elaborate. You'll earn experience that lets you unlock more advanced moves, from stealth abilities to creative knife kills.
• The designers have had a lot of fun with the drug sequences. They're some of the best hallucinations I've seen in a video game in a long time, and are legitimately trippy.
• I shot a bear, and a bunch of boars, and I got eaten by an Aligator. (Crocodile? It's so hard to determine species when you're getting eaten.)
• The game has a curious "loot" system where you'll pick up various bits and bobs all over the island, each of which can be cashed in for money. I'm not sure the full depth of it, but I found a huge variety of items in only a few hours.
• Jason's talking during the story missions gets a bit annoying. It isn't endearing, and while sometimes it gives a good sense of how desperate he's feeling, it can also feel like overkill. Time will tell whether it works in the game overall, but I've got my doubts.

• Don't freak out, but the story actually made me feel a bit like I was living Battle Royale. Granted, it was a less-wicked-cool version starring a bunch of white American twentysomethings, but still, the whole "Fighting against your will on a deadly island playground" vibe often channeled Kinji Fukasaku's desperate, violent, brilliant flick.
• That said, I worry that the whole "spring break gone wrong" plotline will wind up feeling thin and inconsequential. Vaas is a terrific bad guy, and the acting and writing are fine moment-to-moment. But do I really care about the journey of this one dude? It lacks the historical grandeur of Assassin's Creed, the ticking-clock tension of the Rainbow Six games, the romance of Prince of Persia. It just kind of seems like a B-movie, like The Ruins or another horror flick. The story just doesn't seem as sophisticated as the tech, performances, and design.
• Then again, I really don't think the game will suffer all that much for that. But the story could wind up being what holds it back from being truly great.
• Vehicles handle with an unexpected degree of shift and slide—I found myself pulling through wild, spun-out turns as the physics reacted in ways I wasn't prepared for. It's cool, and will lead to all manner of nifty stunts once you've mastered it.
• In something I think we'll all agree is an upgrade from Far Cry 2, the hang gliders actually work, and let you glide for a good long time.

• So there you have it. It's a lot of game to take in, and I'll be looking forward to seeing how it all really hangs together once the game comes out. Far Cry 3 will be out on December 4 in North America.

  
  

Like a few other writers here, I've been enjoying Sleeping Dogs this week. But not necessarily for its combat, or driving, or story. No, I'm enjoying it mostly because of where it's set.

The game, in case you don't know, is set in Hong Kong. Not a photo-realistic recreation, but a caricature that's close enough. Being an open-world game, it lets you explore, chat with random strangers, see the sights, soak up the virtual atmosphere.

It's not the same as actually being there, of course. It's not even close. But it's something. For a few hours, you can turn off the lights, lie back, and pretend you're actually walking the streets of one of the most vibrant and fascinating cities on Earth.

You can be, for want of a better term, a virtual tourist.

Maybe you don't game like that, and that's fine. We all play for different reasons and get different things out of the medium. But me, I don't play for a challenge, or competition. I play to escape, and prefer a game where I can lose myself in another world, one that doesn't involve the boring, everyday and mundane.

Sure, that means I love my epic fantasy games or sweeping sci-fi extravaganzas, but I also enjoy games like Sleeping Dogs, ones which let me visit places in my world that I wouldn't otherwise be able to get to. At least not easily or on the cheap.

It's a big reason I love the Yakuza series. Tokyo is one of my favourite cities on Earth, and while I've been there plenty of times, I always look forward to going back. It's nine hours and $1000 away, though, so that's usually out of the question. But when I slide a Yakuza disc into my PS3 I can, for a night, make a half-assed trip, complete with karaoke-laden adventures and endless runs to convenience stores for snacky treats.

It's not that the game is simply set in Japan that makes it useful as a tool for virtual tourism. There are tons of games set in Japan! It's that the Yakuza games manage to capture the trivial so well. That makes it sound awful, but it's the trivial, incidental stuff that really encapsulates your experience of a foreign country. I never associate famous landmarks or events with an international city. That's the stuff of postcards. I remember them for the immediate experiences and sensations I feel; the sound of their train chimes, or the smell of a dining district, or the way the average person the street was dressed.

All things Yakuza games get just right.

The same goes for Far Cry 2, if for slightly different reasons. Now, the middle of a conflict-stricken African state is not somewhere I've been, nor somewhere I'd really want to go in real life. But it's somewhere real, and more importantly, somewhere different, a place and time that video games rarely venture outside of themed platformers or racing games. It's the other side of the virtual tourism experience, at least for me.

Yakuza, Sleeping Dogs, the GTA series and even The Getaway let me visit places I like to go. Far Cry 2 takes me somewhere I probably should see, a real place with real problems that don't involve drug lords or super-villains threatening the same old American cities. Which is just as important as idle tourism!

There are other games I'm not mentioning, and there's no doubt obvious ones I overlook (maybe because they're not as foreign to me as they might be to you!), but I know that there's always room for more. Not every video game with an open and vibrant world needs to take place in a big American city. It's a big world out there, and while there are millions of people who enjoy and can identify with the USA, it'd be great if more publishers took the risk of bankrolling adventures set somewhere else. Especially for Americans! GTA IV isn't exactly foreign if you happen to live in New York City.

After all, it's done wonders for Sleeping Dogs.

A sprawling Boba Fett action/stealth game. A Jedi adventure full of edgy moral relativism. Disturbing explorations of Jabba the Hutt's sex trafficking. These were the kinds of experiences folks were expecting Clint Hocking to create when he announced his move to LucasArts two years ago. But Hocking is leaving the development studio with no game bearing his imprint having been published by LucasArts.

A brief announcement on his personal blog reads as follows:

Yup, that's right, you heard it here first. Unless you heard it somewhere else first.

I recently left my job at LucasArts and am moving on to something new. Unlike last time, (and mercifully less wordy) I already have something lined up and I am currently in the process of dealing with the living hell of relocation.

I will let the world know where I am going once I get there. Unless you already know.

Hocking came to the House of Star Wars from Ubisoft, where he worked on the first three critically acclaimed Splinter Cell games. Hocking also served as lead designer on Far Cry 2, the first-person cult classic revered for its open, emergent design. Hocking is also respected for his views on video games as a medium, after writing a column in Edge Magazine for many years. It'll be interesting to see where he winds up next and what kinds of games he's able to make there.

In doing so, I remembered how much I loved the music from Far Cry 2, and so I'm sharing some of it here. This music, composed by Marc Canham, stands apart from the usual action video game cliches, combining traditional African instruments, strings, drums, and vocals to create an iconic, distinctive sound.

The string and drum music that kicks in every time you're creeping around an outpost is one of my favorite bits of game music of all time, but the main theme (heard above), encapsulates everything I love about Canham's score.

From Zelda to Final Fantasy, we've seen plenty of dedicated video game orchestral concerts over the years. Only a week or so ago, there was a huge Legend of Zelda concert in Los Angeles, and next week will see the release of a collection of video game music from the London Philharmonic.

I've listened to much of the Philharmonic album in advance, and I found that the tracks I enjoyed the most were the ones I'd never heard played by an orchestra. Orchestras tend to be going for a mainstream thing with these performances, so they focus on the themes we all know and love. But while I'm all for hearing the Mario "1-1" music or Cloud's Theme from Final Fantasy VII, I found that I was really digging hearing a full orchestra play the opening music from Grand Theft Auto IV, or the theme from Angry Birds.

I thought it might be fun to list five pieces of music that aren't the first choices for game concert programmers, but which I would get excited to see on a concert program.

(And for the record: I know that image up top isn't technically from Far Cry 2 due to the weird compass, but I still really like that image and theoretically we're in an alternate universe anyway so whatever.)

Instruments ready? Everyone tuned up? And a 1, 2, 3, 4….

World of Goo — "Beginning"

Actually, I'd almost be up for an entire segment of a concert dedicated to Kyle Gabler's wonderful soundtrack from World of Goo - it's this unhinged, Elfman-like thing, all momentum and balancing. I listen to the soundtrack from World of Goo and I hear a clown on a unicycle, wearing a one-man-band outfit, riding in desperate circles around a big top, trying to stay upright. In other words, it's about as perfect a fit for the game as could be. I'd say the orchestra could bring out a featured accordion soloist for this one, maybe Rob Reich or something. #justathought

Final Fantasy Tactics A2 — "Exceeding the Hill"

As much as I enjoy the opening music from this game (which plays when you hit "play" on the above video), my favorite track from this entire game (and, for some weird reason, one of my favorite pieces of video game music full-stop), is the second part, "Exceeding the Hill," which comes on at 1:50. It captures everything Tactics is to me—playful, thoughtful, and tense in an enjoyable way. Also, it is called "Exceeding the Hill," which is one of the best song names I have ever heard.

Just listening to it and I want to start placing my party around the grid. Watch out for my juggler.

The Secret of Monkey Island — "Intro"

Of course, this game has a much beloved soundtrack. And while it would just be cool to see an orchestra tackle its iconic themes, something I've found with this theme is that it actually sounded different depending on your sound card. As a result of that, the video I've posted above is what I think of as the "definitive" version, but for many folks theirs was. So, there's wiggle-room on the soundtrack, and it would be fun to hear what an orchestral arranger would come up with.

Plants vs. Zombies — "Watery Graves"

Of all the pizecatto string tunes that would work well if performed by an orchestra, Laura Shigihara's "Watery Graves" from her Plants vs. Zombies soundtrack might be my favorite. This is a track that was clearly created within a recording program—the delay that's bouncing off of all of the instruments gives it a watery, echoing quality that would be difficult to reproduce in a traditional orchestra. But that's exactly why I'd love to hear it!

This video actually cuts out when the beat drops, but you can hear a full version of the tune here:

Far Cry 2 — "Dark River"

Stephen has started joking that I'll post about Far Cry 2 whenever I'm given an opportunity. I have no idea what he's talking about. But speaking of Far Cry 2, let me tell you about this track!

In all seriousness, many of the tunes that are performed at these orchestral shows are the main themes from games, the big heroic anthems, the most iconic moments. But in music just as in games, pacing is very important. A good concert needs some other contours, and Marc Canham's Far Cry 2 soundtrack is loaded with contours.

This track, "Dark River," is one of my favorites. Canham ditched the more common focus on heavy percussion and driving melodies to focus on sparse, textural stuff, appropriating a lot of African harmonies and rhythms along with a surprising amount of horror-film string tricks. This track makes me think of Far Cry 2 more than almost any other, and if it fired up in the middle of a video game concert, I would probably leave my chair and start sneaking up on people in the lobby. With a machete. Y'know, if I'd brought a machete.

I finally finished Crytek's Crysis 2 last week and surprised myself by immediately firing up a new game and starting it over from the beginning. Sure, Crysis 2 is a slick, well-made first-person shooter, but it's fairly unremarkable on the surface. So why, when I had so many other games I could (or should) be playing, was I nano-suiting up yet another time?

A few minutes into my new game, I hit the right shoulder button to engage my cloaking device and slunk out of an office window and onto a balcony overlooking one of Crysis 2's trademark sun-dappled urban arenas. I surveyed the scene—a group of Cell soldiers were standing across a small park while nearby, another manned the machine gun on the back of an armored car. I slipped, cat-like, into an alleyway, bits of their conversation drifting along as I drew nearer. Carefully, I began to flank them.

And that was when I realized what it is that makes the game so appealing: Crysis 2 evokes the thrill of the hunt.

A friend of mine was talking about Crysis 2 on a podcast earlier this year, and when asked to explain why he enjoyed the game he said, essentially, "It's really fun to hunt people down." After saying that, he paused and kind of laughed, backpedaling a bit. "I realize that sounds a little creepy… but it's true! It's really fun!"

He's right: there's something uniquely satisfying about games that allow me to play the predator. And he's also right that it sounds kind of strange admitting that out loud… I swear I'm not a weirdo! I don't hunt people in my neighborhood after dark or anything! I just like games like Crysis 2, games that engage a natural, animal instinct through a confluence of stealth mechanics, flexible level design and strong enemy AI.

Batman: Arkham Asylum had a lot going for it, but my favorite parts of the game were its predatory stealth segments. As the Bat picked off Joker's goons one by one, their increasingly panicked reactions and erratic behavior gave me a sick thrill. This is what people are talking about when they say that game feels like a "BatmanSimulator." Crime-solving, exploration and brawling are all fun, but the essence of Batman is that predator in the dark, two white eyes glowing in the shadows, striking fear into the wicked. Arkham Asylum perfectly captured that feeling.

Predatory games hinge upon the freedom to be spotted and then hide again without resetting everything—call it "dynamic stealth." Early Splinter Cells fall mostly into the "pure stealth" category. Protagonist Sam Fisher must remain unseen for the most part, and so most of the game is spent lurking in corners, waiting for guards to pass by or turn their backs. Splinter Cell: Conviction did a lot to move the gameplay in a more predatory, engaging direction. And while I do love early Splinter Cell games, I had a absolute blast playing and re-playing Conviction, and at this point I think I prefer it.

While doing a second spin through Deus Ex for our letter series on the game, I realized that as much as the game encourages stealth-based, predatory gameplay, it doesn't quite feel right. The moment I get spotted, enemies start running about all willy-nilly, setting off alarms and charging my position. The levels are too narrow to allow for any escape or improvisation, and in most instances, enemy AI doesn't have any layers between "unaware" and "alert." Striking, setting off the alarm, and then sneakily circling back while enemies close in on your last known position is one of the sublime thrills of a predatory game; but AI has to be advanced enough to pull it off.

In addition to enemy AI, overall enemy design is also very important. Both Crysis 2 and its predecessor Crysis start off brilliantly, but both games get quite a bit less fun as they go on. This is almost entirely due to the fact that both games introduced a new, different type of enemy at the midpoint. When the Ceph were introduced in Crysis, what had been a game about prowling through the underbrush suddenly hinged upon big, open-field shootouts against flying squid-monsters. It wasn't half as much fun. Crytek smartly kept the Ceph on the ground in Crysis 2, but they still weren't as much fun to take on as the hapless PMC drones from the earlier parts of the game.

The sprawling savannas of Far Cry 2 present a remarkably pure dilution of chaotic, predatory gameplay. Pure stealth is rarely an option in that game, mainly because enemies are annoyingly hyper-aware and can spot you a couple clicks away. The key, then, is to move in carefully, strike from a distance and then close quickly, circling at all times while using the natural environment (bodies of water, bluffs and vantage points) to your advantage.

The dynamic nature of Far Cry 2's encounters make it enjoyable for hours at a time. Even better, the game adheres to its core design from beginning to end, dodging the switcheroo-itis that has plagued Crytek's games, including the first Far Cry. It is truly a wonderful thing that there are no extraterrestrial cephalopods or mutant killer apes in the latter half of Far Cry 2.

But there's something else about the game too, a certain quickening of the pulse as I come up over a bluff, crouch, and take aim. These games dig at something deeper, something darker: the hunter in all of us.

When I've used a wounded enemy for bait and drawn out an entire camp of mercenaries, I get a sense of bloody accomplishment that doesn't just derive from in-game progression or increased leaderboard status. It's grim, but it's very real—my predatory nature, working its way to the surface.

The guard post has been decimated, gutted by fire; there are bodies strewn all about. The last man standing has lost his cool and snapped. He's whirling around in circles, shouting false bravado into the shadows in the jungle. "That all you got? You got nothing! Where are you hiding? Where are you?"

I'll tell you where I am, buddy. I'm circling, circling… closing in for the kill…

This cute little clip for the upcoming Planet of the Apes reboot shows a chimp kicking ass and taking names at what looks like Far Cry 2.

At least, it's cute until he breaks out, kills all those people then knocks the Statue of Liberty over. Then he can go to hell.

Nicolas Ferrand is a French concept artist currently working on Thief 4 at Eidos Montreal. Previously, while at Ubisoft, he contributed to franchises like Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia.

Today we're looking at his pieces from Far Cry 2, Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed II, all of which are great.

It's a shame Far Cry 2 came and went without making much of a fuss. I really enjoyed it, but more importantly, I think it did a great job in depicting an Africa not out of a storybook or a Tom Clancy novel, but one that cut a little closer to the bone. Beautiful and dangerous, predictable and wonderfully varied, all at the same time.

Just like this art.

You can check out more of Nicolas' work on his personal site.