Okay, maybe that’s a little harsh, because there is a lot to like about the game. The action takes place in a giant expansive world that, compared to, say, Oblivion, feels very real. It’s the subtlety that works here. The way the plants actually shift when your character moves through them. All these little visual clues that make the place feel alive. And I’m really enjoying the whole Heart of Darkness element to the game. I haven’t played much of it, but this is one time where literary references don’t feel completely out of place. It’s clear that the developers have gone to a great deal of trouble to make sure the players feel like they’re part of an epic story in an organic, real world.

Which makes it more of a shame that the game occasionally slips up and gives the player a good look at the person behind the curtain.

For me, this happened quite early on. In the tutorial mission, you’re told to go to Mike’s Bar to get malaria tablets, but you should first stop off at the arms dealer and get a new weapon. I go to the arms dealer, but he’s not there. So I head across to Mike’s Bar, except everything is shut. I spend five minutes shooting the place up and throwing molatov cocktails at the bar, trying to burn it to the ground. Then I finally read my mission objectives - I’m supposed to use the computer in the arms dealer’s shack. I do this, get my new weapon, then head across to Mike’s Bar, which is now open and the place is jumping (well, as much as I’d assume any war-torn African bars can ‘jump’). No-one makes any reference to the lunatic that spent five minutes shooting and blowing shit up outside.

This gave me a cold, hard look at the mechanics underlying this game, and this shattered any illusion of reality the game had created. It’s like watching a really bad ventriloquist - no-one actually watches the dummy. For most games, I’m usually immersed in the first few hours until I begin to recognise the rules and mechanics behind the game. From then on, the game is usually a grind. Sometimes the grind itself can be enjoyable, but it’s still those first hours that I remember more fondly. In Bioshock, I remember my first encounter with a Big Daddy much better than I remember my sixth.

I’m sure I’ll enjoy the rest of Far Cry 2 when I go back to it. But I just don’t know if I want to go back.

(On the plus side though, who’d have thought capping goats could be so much fun?)

And since I’m griping here, I’d just like to ask: did the voice actors not have much time in the studio, or do they just not believe in full stops in Africa? Every sentence is truncated together without a pause. Some of the worst voice acting I’ve heard in a long time.

Does this joker realise how much of a parody he actually is?

Take care of that beautiful blue marble out there in space, our home planet. I’ll be keeping an eye from here. Space exploration FTW!

To mark the successful end of the project, here’s a couple of beautiful articles about the Mars Phoenix Lander, or more specifically, about its wonderfully sentimental first-person twitter feed. Anyone who choked up at Wall-E (and I did, right around the spork scene) will appreciate this.