Hey, that's a good enough reason. If you're into colours, I suggest FC3 and then Blood Dragon; the awesome gameplay is bonus, though.

My major gripe with the first FC is the cheating AI that can shoot you through walls and see you no matter what bush you are hiding in. Also FC1 is just way too hard for its own good. A challenge is good but FC1 takes that to new levels and this goes double once "the others" start showing up. The game is just way too hard unless you are a FPS god.

So go with FC2.

Realistically, no two people think 100% alike and only you can know what you'll personally like. I play a multitude of games, some of which are AAA and super awesome and some which are ZZZ- crap and are enjoyable. For example, I have been playing Damnation lately, a game that gets terrible ratings just about everywhere and while the game has its flaws I've enjoyed it a fair bit personally while some other people will absolutely hate it.

Having said that, I think Far Cry is extremely awesome personally, and while I haven't finished it I've made it about 70% through several times and then got sidetracked for one reason or another. I totally need to finish that one off as it is one of my favourite games of that timeframe along with Halflife 2 and DOOM3. Far Cry 2 has much improved graphics and game engine and seems larger and more in depth although I've only given it a few hour long trial run just to check it out. I was quite pleased with what I saw and am sure I'll enjoy the game quite a bit.

I haven't read everyone's comments, but then I don't need to because any "What should I get, A or B?" type questions people ask publicly almost always result in various people saying "get A, B sucks", others saying "get B, A sucks", others saying "get A and B, they're both awesome", "they both suck, don't get either of them", "A and B are ok but if you really want something cool get C instead" etc. It's kind of like asking an audience of 300 people for help with the answer for a trivia question with $10000 riding on the line, it'll be a cacophony of highly differing responses that are likely to confuse more than help.

The answers are deep within... meditate briefly and the answer will come to you! Then get both of them, and also game C. ;oP

People commenting on Far Cry 1's difficulty made me wonder because I've finished it twice with the hardest difficulty... but then I recalled that I actually used the undocumented "save anywhere" feature in the game. If you feel you want to be able to save anywhere in the first Far Cry, google for it. You have to go to Far Cry console and save/load the game with certain commands.

I didn't start to use it specifically because it felt too hard, but because it was many times quite unclear where exactly the game would save, and I think there were instances where I missed some designated save point.

Far Cry 2 PC version has save anywhere officially (console versions don't). Then again I've read some warning that you shouldn't keep around too many FC2 save games at the same time, or they might start getting corrupted. I didn't face that problem, but then I restricted the amount of active save game slots.

Well, Crysis 3 is basically Crysis 2 with more open environments and more options. And better writing / voice acting, at least in my opinion. For the record, I too have enjoyed 2 more than the original, I just think that the original is a better game - just not quite my kind of game.

I don't really like Far Cry 1, it was a very impressive tech demo back in the day, but it hasn't aged well imo, and has some utterly rubbish levels later on. It's not bad though in the earlier levels.

Far Cry 2 is flawed (though improved with dylan's realism mod), but pretty unique in terms of setting (Africa), and is something as rare as an open world game that actually had open-ended mission design as well (where most just go for open world with linear mission design), and you can set pretty much everything in the environment on fire, which is always fun.

Damn, I must remind myself to replay Far Cry 2 a second time with those realism and graphics overhaul mods that people mention. I already liked the game vanilla (Fortune's Edition (from GOG)), so let's see if I like it even more with those mods.

Ah.. All that FarCry hype got me installing the 3rd finally.. Uplay suck your internet slowing everything down so I kept it overnight, for 10 gigas. Launched, a ton of settings but I managed to get it smooth somehow.. Now to get off Warframe, finish KotOR 2 and start this! Someday soon.. :o

Thanks, that was the one problem I had with Far Cry 1, was the checkpoint save system with no ability to make arbitrary saves. I normally play FPS games on the most difficult setting but found Far Cry to be insane, setting you back way too far and facing difficult tasks to get to the next checkpoint so I had to back it off one notch in difficulty to get by and still enjoy playing. With the ability to save arbitrarily, I very well might start from the beginning on difficult again as that's my preferred way to play.

Thanks also for the FC2 save tip as I'm a savegame junkie and would likely trigger such a bug if it exists. :)

While both are good games, I would definitely start with Far Cry 1. The premise is basically sneaking around on a beautiful, lush island. It's an incredibly fun FPS, but you must have patience as it's not a run-and-gun game. One gripe is that there are only checkpoints and you can't do a manual save.

Far Cry 2 had a much, much bigger map, but the sneaking around part was completely dropped. Plus the colors were a lot duller in this game. Oddly enough, the story in FC2 is not the same as FC1 and doesn't even have the same main character. In FC2 you can save anytime you want.

Fortunately you can, but you have to go to the console. I think it went something like this (but better double-check from the internets):

- During the gameplay, hit the ~ key to enter the console.

- \save_game 0001 (note the backslash) to quicksave the game, where 0001 is the save game file name. I think you can get the command by just writing save and hitting the TAB key (it autocompletes to \save_game), and later you can get it again in the console with the up arrow key.

- \load_game 0001 to quickload the game from 0001

But I think you should use it sparingly, I think sometimes this undocumented save system was a bit buggy, causing some issues to the gameplay. In those cases I would just reload an earlier auto-savepoint instead.

While I usually prefer the option for save-anywhere, in many kind of games I am fine with no ability to save at any point. For instance all the flight/space combat sims, Mechwarrior games etc... sometimes it just makes sense that the game is saved only after a successful mission.

But in the case of Far Cry 1, the problem was that it wasn't really obvious where the game would save. I am pretty sure there were lots of places where it was possible to miss the automatic savepoint, so you'd end up replaying quite a long trip then.

I also feel games with instadeaths should allow save anywhere. And in general I hate save points which are placed stupidly, like having to replay 15 minutes of boring stuff before continuously dying to one hard part. Please place a save point just before the hard part which people will fail, not 15 minutes before it.

Yeah, all 4 Far Cry games are related only in that they use the same game engine. Other than that they're all independent stories really that are unrelated to each other and can be played in any order, at last as far as I understand, and with Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon being very very very very different in every possible way. :)

I would go with 1. Not perfect, but it was fun. 2 just felt too empty. But if you like a hiking/driving through empty steppes simulator, then get FC2.