Heart of Darkness: The Game in Off Topic

ID:49842
 
Oct 27 2008, 11:34 am
Despite its pessimistic outlook, Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" is one of my favorite books. (It's also a quick read and you can find it free online, so give it a try: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/526 .)

Nifty trivia fact from the Internet (http://www.contactmusic.com/new/home.nsf/webpages/ aliensyoudidntknowx23x10x03):

The ship at the centre of the story was originally named the Snark, after the legendary creature being sought in Lewis Carroll's poem The Hunting of the Snark. Its next name was Leviathan - a reference to its enormous size - before Scott eventually settled on Nostromo, the title of a novel by Joseph Conrad, a quotation from whom opens the screenplay: "We live as we dream - alone."

That quote is from Heart of Darkness, and it also opens the Alien video game for the Commodore 64. The quote pretty much captures the spirit of the book, so don't read it during bouts of depression.

Over the years, I've thought about making a Heart of Darkness game in BYOND, because if you know me at all, you know I could hardly resist the idea of taking a brooding meditation on civilization and morality and turning it into a light-hearted online multiplayer game. (I actually have at least two projects created for this very purpose, both of which I haven't touched in years.)

I say all that to say this: Far Cry 2, which takes much of its inspiration from Heart of Darkness, is excellent. It requires patience -- there's lots of walking, driving, and boating all over the map, and unless you're playing on Easy like me, probably lots of failing as well. But the game's world is beautiful and convincing, and best of all, it's saved me about $400, since I now have no need to buy a PS3 to play Afrika.

Warning: keep multiple save files. I recommend at least five. The game isn't generally buggy, but there is at least one game-killing glitch; needless to say, I ran into it, and didn't begin to realize it was a game-killer until after I'd already overwritten all three of my clean saves. The glitch apparently arises when you save the game while you're supposed to be letting a captive out of a room five feet away. So before you save, ask yourself: am I on a mission where I have to free a captive five feet away? If the answer is yes, do that first.

P.S. I almost forgot -- this was meant to be a political post. So here you go: UFLL = COMMUNIST DICTATORSHIP! APR IS FOR THE PEOPLE!


#1 Oct 27 2008, 11:36 am
Despite its pessimistic outlook, Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" is one of my favorite books. (It's also a quick read and you can find it free online, so give it a try.)

My favorite book of all time... all of my online poker handles are from that book.

It's a quick read, but the beauty and "horror" is in the detail -- well worth it to read slowly.
#2 Oct 27 2008, 11:43 am
I bought Far Cry 2 at 3am on Saturday using Steam and by 2am Sunday I'd already clocked 16 hours play time. I'm finding it pretty decent, but I'm not as totally blown away by the graphics as I thought I'd be - and most of the settings are on very high. I also think they might have gone a little crazy with post-processing effects because most of the time I can't tell whether my eyesight is failing or there's just glare or mirage or motion blur or tunnel vision or the myriad other effects they apply.
I quite like the pacing of the start of the game. The first few missions are pretty light on story, and I was just thinking 'hm, does this game actually have a storyline?' when the story caught up and catapulted forward.
The array of weapons is pretty decent too, although it's a bit tricky to tell on some guns whether they're manky and broken or just camo painted. Not having to adjust for bullet drop or wind (especially with the dart gun) feels weird too (too much CoD4 and BF2) but maybe they're added on harder difficulty settings or higher physics settings.
#3 Oct 27 2008, 1:18 pm
A PS3 is worth the $400, though! Blu ray for president!
#4 Oct 28 2008, 1:15 pm
It's a quick read, but the beauty and "horror" is in the detail -- well worth it to read slowly.

Definitely. The first time I read it was in high school, and I rushed through it because I wanted to see what kind of crazy things Mr. Kurtz would spout, and it turned out he didn't say a lot, so I was disappointed.
#5 Oct 28 2008, 1:18 pm
Hazman wrote:
I'm finding it pretty decent, but I'm not as totally blown away by the graphics as I thought I'd be - and most of the settings are on very high. I also think they might have gone a little crazy with post-processing effects because most of the time I can't tell whether my eyesight is failing or there's just glare or mirage or motion blur or tunnel vision or the myriad other effects they apply.

Haven't had much trouble with this myself, but I've heard the 360 version leaves out some of the PC frills. There's definitely some visual trickery going on when your "eyes" adjust moving from light into darkness or vice versa, but that works well, IMHO.