Far Cry 2 single player could last 25 hours! No 50! ... No 100!

by Jason Dobson { May 30th 2008 at 3:00AM }

Players looking forward to shooting their way through Far Cry 2's 50-square kilometers of African wilderness best set aside the better part of a few weeks (at least!) to do so. Varying reports suggest it could take as long as 100 hours (for compass-be-damned wanderers, no doubt) to complete the game's single player campaign alone.

Ubisoft Montreal creative workhorse Clint Hocking offered us an apparently inadequate estimate when he guessed that the campaign could be completed in as little as 25 hours, before adding that to see it all "you're looking at a 100-hour play experience." And, speaking to CVG, producer Louis-Pierre Pharand landed his estimate somewhere in the middle, suggesting 50 hours of play time to completion. Regardless of the varying possibilities, it's reasonable to expect that the shooter's single player experience will be long, evidence that not all devs are drinking from the same fountain as Phil Harrison.

Gallery: Far Cry 2

On top of the campaign, Eurogamer reports that the sequel to 2004's tropical island shooter will support up to 16 players in online multiplayer, which as we noted previously will focus on team-based gameplay rather than traditional deathmatch modes. Also missing from Far Cry 2 will be online co-op, though according to Pharand multiplayer games will support multiple classes, as well as persistent awards and experience, giving us plenty to look forward to when Far Cry 2 debuts this holiday season for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

Tags: far-cry, far-cry-2, farcry, farcry2, multiplayer, ubisoft

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

mezzanine @ May 30th 2008 3:13AM

No online co-op...BUT THERE'LL BE MULTIPLE CLASSES AND THAT'S JUST AS GOOD!!!

Weak.

#28 @ May 30th 2008 3:15AM

CREAMED
twice.
Damn I'm gonna love playing this game on PC. Single player games are a favorite of mine. I wanted to love STALKER, but I came off with the impression of shitty, broken mess. Hopefully this'll be that game... only good.

BlaqueBeird @ May 30th 2008 3:38AM

I thought STALKER was a nice change from the linear shooters like Half-Life or Call of Duty. Open-ended freedom FTW!

Eggy @ May 30th 2008 6:09AM

STALKER not main stream enough for ya?

HighFiveJesus @ May 30th 2008 10:11AM

download the latest patch, download oblivion lost 2.0 mod, and find out how to tweak the console dev to enable motion blur, and turn on dynamic lighting. it instantly becomes about twice as intense and sweet as it is normally. and you'll get a good 40 hours outta it if you do a majority of the side quests (and its worth it with the mod, money is hard to keep saved up).

PojoMofo @ May 30th 2008 10:27AM

WOW, I really liked STALKER, but to each there own. This games seems way different than STALKER so it should be right up your ally. Especially if you liked the first one

t_m @ May 30th 2008 10:41AM

stalker was possibly the best game of last year. update it and try again.

#28 @ May 30th 2008 10:28PM

Sometimes I wonder if I'm talking about the same game. I could barely stand the graphics, the gameplay was lackluster for the first few missions I played.

Procris @ May 30th 2008 3:38AM

100 hours seems way to far fetched to me.

Gehodra @ May 30th 2008 4:28AM

Well... duh

You actually believe those guys when they tell you the length of a game?

General rule, the bigger their extimate, the more they are exaggerating

CGamble20 @ May 30th 2008 11:44AM

So..that means you can probably beat the game on your lunch break.

DangerMouse @ May 30th 2008 2:01PM

I don't really care how long a game is, as long as the replay value is there. A game fun enough that right when i finish, i want to play through it again because it was that good. There's a few games like that, such as half-life 2 and halo 1, and others that aren't coming to me right now. If far-cry 2 has boring gameplay, then 25 or 50 hours is useless. Far cry 1 had an extremely long single player campaign, but the difficulty and other gameplay flaws hindered the game.

Einhanderkiller @ May 30th 2008 3:46AM

Remember what they said about Assassin's Creed and its 40 hour game length?

I'm going to guess that Far Cry 2's main game is around 15 hours long.

Laggy @ May 30th 2008 4:29AM

That depends on the style of play. I liked collecting all the objectives per mission so I spent quite a while doing the main story. Easily took me 40hours+ with all the distractions like messing with the beggars and rooftop guards.

Gehodra @ May 30th 2008 4:30AM

Flags

PojoMofo @ May 30th 2008 10:30AM

Gehodra, you win the prize for mentioning the most meaningless thing to ever be in a video game. I loved Assassins Creed, but if they think Im going around and finding the 500 flags in that game, their on crack (especially when I have the PS3 version so I dont even get nerd points for it)

ManicBomber @ May 30th 2008 1:18PM

I hate to say it, but "nerd points" is funny.

reppy @ May 30th 2008 3:48AM

The game is 100 hours long .. if you leave it running unoccupied for at least 4 days. :P

Chase @ May 30th 2008 3:51AM

Far Cry was a good day.

Far Cry is a bad game.

chez @ May 30th 2008 4:35AM

25 hours sounds good to me. I like to get lost in these big non-linear games and believe I've done some sequence breaking to find that NO! I was in their hands all the time.
Just hoping there are collectables to make exploration fun.

markhill66 @ May 30th 2008 5:17AM

I don't believe that longer equals better. I would rather have shorter, better developed games (Portal) than long, drawn out ones. I think the God of War games were just about the perfect length; long enough for the value, but not too long to make me lose interest.

Of course this is going to vary between different types of games, but to me, anything over 15 hours is too long.

t_m @ May 30th 2008 10:42AM

agreed. Games like Okami (and even zelda at times) have way too much filler.

they need better editors in games, to cut out all the crap and reduce it to a finely paced product like Portal.

t_m @ May 30th 2008 10:45AM

though of course, sandbox games are kind of different, as I can easily spend ages pootling around and not advancing the storyine at all.

J.Goodwin @ May 30th 2008 5:32AM

Why do I get the feeling that someone's going to find a way to fly over a mountain and kill the end boss in under 20 minutes?

Dio @ May 30th 2008 5:52AM

Oh ho ho, I love speedruns.

asdf @ May 30th 2008 6:12AM

Having played Far Cry and Crysis I can tell you that Crytek's definition of open-world gameplay is basically "linear gameplay except the corridors are wide enough to get lost in and waste 30 minutes walking back to the path."

Sveppi @ May 30th 2008 8:14AM

But this game isn't developed by Crytek

velocitySTRIKE @ May 30th 2008 7:14AM

Only game I've played for more than 100 hours is Pokémon.

Vcize @ May 30th 2008 10:07AM

Online multiplayer easily puts games in the thousand hour mark. I've spent over 1000 hours on Tribes 2, Gears, Counterstrike, and probabably Madden '04.

I'd imagine many have done (or will do) the same with Halo and CoD4.

PojoMofo @ May 30th 2008 10:33AM

I think I clocked in about 450 hours of Battlefield 2 back in the day. I have also probably played more than 100 hours of Starcraft LTD im sure

RobLink (Return of the McElroy Defence Force) @ May 30th 2008 3:10PM

Final Fantasy 7. Clocked just over 100 hours, got beat by Sephiroth. Went back to try again a few days later. The memory card had got corrupted. I haven't touched the game since.

AwesomeTown @ May 30th 2008 7:15AM

It's Oblivion with guns.

Oh wait...

Evan @ May 30th 2008 8:06AM

Sorry, but I have a job and I try to have a life. I'm not going to dedicate 100 hours of my free time to one game! I personally find 15 hours to be the sweet spot, anything over 25 hours is too daunting for me.

baby sea tuna @ May 30th 2008 8:18AM

tl;wp

playwhutyalike @ May 30th 2008 9:00AM

One Million Hours!
*rests pinky upside down at side of mouth*

oncnawan @ May 30th 2008 12:22PM

Uh, playwhutyalike, one million play hours doesn't go as far as it used to...

I'm dissapointed to see no co-op.

I'd really like to know if they have fixed the horrendous aiming/targeting system. In Far Cry (1), you could sit in the brush with your gun pointed at a trail, wait for the reticule to turn red, indicating a passing enemy was in your sights, squeeze the trigger, and frag an enemy. As long as your opponent was within the rather large circle of your reticule, the bullets would home in on him. I loved the artwork and atmosphere of the first game, but I couldn't stand the shooting mechanics. Here's hoping they fix it in the sequel.

Which brings me to a larger point, why do devs reinvent the wrong parts of gameplay? Leave well enough alone the ones that already work well and need no variance. Make your own artwork, yes. Groovy story line? Great. New powers? Awesome. Funky new shooting mechanics? What in Samuel Helsinki are they thinking?

Vcize @ May 30th 2008 10:05AM

25 hours is way too long for a first person shooter's campaign. They just don't work like RPGs and there's no way to keep them fresh and from feeling like a drag for that long.

Most start to drag bigtime around the 10-12 hour mark if they make it there.