Wait till you meet Nana, ND's pensionable sniper. She's made of boilerplate and chrome leather. Kick her in the stomach and she'll kick your arse to New Eden and back.
...and 10-months later I'm back at it, having possibly wearied of FC5 in all that time (though I continued to sporadically go at FC3, still got ND and the cave man thing on a back burner). After a slow start, the bow [arrows 'n bolts mod] is coming into its own, easily surpassing the firearms I'm able to get my hands on for all but fraught CQB. One shot kills of tigers and badgers, 2-shot kills of Rhinos, yeah I'm already kitted up again pretty good.
It's still my fave, though I'm very happily playing through ND again, front-loading skills development and weapons loadout so the core quest is a breeze when I choose to engage with it.
Sporadically working my way through the replay. Got all the south end bases + forts capped, did one turn through the arena, and just spent ~6-hours dawdling through the sneak into Paul's hooker truck and go kidnap him from his torture ranch mission. I decided to see if I could kill everyone guarding the truck (obviously without triggering the alarm), about 10 guys, before climbing aboard. This took many, many tries -- they seem extra vigilant in this mission. I did it with the bow from the periphery, starting with the dog and slowly circling around, pausing after each hit for the "I think whoever did it, is gone" all clear. Anyway, while killing all the guards is in fact feasible (I did it twice), unfortunately it also seems to kill the script that triggers the cut scene of leaving on the truck and getting to said ranch. The screen goes black, you can still move around blindly (and open the map to check your position), but you ain't on the truck, and you don't go nowhere, certainly not to the ranch. Still, killing all the guards one by one with the bow is kind of the point. I had to restart the game to reset the mission script and this time did the conventional sneak onto the truck, go to the ranch, take the pics, and grab Paul. And now as my reward I've got the so-called autocross (crossbow that reloads like an automatic rifle), which is entirely the point: with this little toy, I am now invincible again. (cheer)
I finally got sort of bored with FC5 and decided to fire this up again a few weeks ago. Realizing I was stuck in South Kyrat *forever* unless I went up to Yogi and Regi, the two miscreant trickster stoners squatting in the family manse, and submitted myself to the indignities of Shangri-La: siccing a pet tiger on hallucinated demons and their hot knives (IRL, I substituted a skunk fatty), spinning and ringing bells, and back-stabbing a flame-thrower dude. Done, and done.
Then I did the CIA guy's stuff: killed everybody at an airport, flew up into the Himalayas, killed a bunch more people, got tossed in prison, escaped from said prison, yada (I deliberately shot the CIA guy in FC5, because CIA guy but in hindsight, I had considerable justification).
Ready for the retro review? The game has good points, and bad points. The controls are clunky and the weapons mostly suck. Except for the jizzed-up arrows and bolts mod, which makes the crossbow especially lethal as in, you can actually kill shit with it whereas without the mod, it's more like a nerf blaster.
The fight to cross the fortified bridge separating north and south really highlighted the clunkiness and weakness of the FC4 combat model, though these qualities dependably make an appearance at every firefight and wildlife encounter. The presentation of NPC's veers from not too terrible, to terrible. Kind of like FC3.
I've gone on to scale a couple more bell towers, a generally frustrating and useless exercise except it makes parts of the map visible, and captured a fortress and a couple of forts, which, once you know how (and can remember how), is fairly straightforward.
I'm gonna say this release marks an 'interesting' evolution point in the series. I have a better understanding of the game designers' intentions, and more respect. The scenery is consistently impressive, so extra points for that.
Heavily discounted, as one might reasonably expect for a ~7-yo game.
This has no doubt been mentioned before (myself and Throb have been verbal on it), but the Reggie and Yogi missions are a game highlight, I wasn't a fan of the Shangri-La parts, but the missions where're you chasing them down in a drug fuelled hallucinatory rage are brilliant and the music is the best I've heard in a game.
One of the weapons you get in the 2nd half of the game (the ripper IIRC) is a must have for tearing through enemies. One thing I really liked about 4 was the grenade launcher was a sidearm and can be wielded while driving. (bounce).
As you said, the scenery is amazing. The best bit in the 2nd half is when you're approaching Pagan Min's fortress. If you're in one of the helicopters, you fly over a crest and the whole valley just falls away from you revealing a vast landscape. :D
where're you chasing them down in a drug fuelled hallucinatory rage are brilliant and the music is the best I've heard in a game.
I don't remember this, so either I did that mission and found it unmemorable, or I never did it. I'll see if I can pull it up on this, my third go-through (I also spent several months in base-reset mode, which I found very enjoyable and aim to repeat).
I always turn off game music before I even begin, because I find it a distraction and seldom share developers' taste in music (I have teh olds).
It's entirely possible, likely even, that my rig is a shade too underpowered to do justice to this game, e.g. the NPC combat animations are unnaturally quick and jerky, simply because the engine is not optimized as well as in later iterations -- 5, Primal, and ND are all relatively smooth and believable.
Some of the game designers' strategies to overcome ca. 2014 technical limitations by other means are inventive and fairly effective. What they couldn't seem to overcome were conceptual limitations in player engagement. I think what I'm trying to say is, they did the best they could, and it's pretty impressive at that.
The game is really good, but it's been improved on at least in those respects.
Another great drug-addled set piece is the John Woo-influenced shootout in the brick works/drug factory, where as you shoot the sacks, your vision becomes increasingly psychedelic and Panjabi MC's Jogi, his wonderful remix of the Bollywood classic Mundian to Bach Ke, kicks in.
For me, in that context, the music blended perfectly. Aceeeed, as the young ones used to say.
I wouldn't mind seeing it remastered against latest engine, along with various other tweaks, such as: give Min and the Minions more airtime, with more meaningful player interactions, and remove mandatory side-missions (such as Shangri-La) -- this also applies in spades to FC5.
Being there was wonderful, but it didn't use the HTC wands and natch you can't see the keyboard controls. If I'd learnt it on a gamepad, it might have been a goer. Also, non-VR optimised ports = motion sickness.