Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2 is an absolutely stunningly beautiful videogame. It's also, sadly, right smack dab in the middle of the uncanny valley. It's too fake to be real and too real to be fake. It has an absence of style that makes it just wrong, wrong, wrong. Worst of all, it made me dizzy and gave me headaches, something I haven't suffered in a videogame since Doom, 1992. Sorry.

I don't think there has been a longer more drawn out intro into a videogame since Frontlines. Or was that Call of Duty 4, World at War? Anyway, it got real tiring real fast. So did the rather random nature of it. I really didn't like the slow pace, and quite frankly the game was too real to be fake.

Far Cry 2 is extraordinarily realistic in that it gives a very authentic feel of a sort of abused nature of operatives in low level conflict. I was very much feeling like somebody abandoned in a hostile environment with nothing more than my wits, a cell phone and an AK47, and a machete for God's sake. I walk around and take over hovels and shoot people who have no idea who I am. They're just in the way of a morally ambiguous mission. Ick. That's not fun, it's not entertaining. Not only FC2 visually deep into the uncanny valley, but morally and in game play as well. It's a disturbing narrative that I simply didn't have the patience to see along despite the fact that I totally buy it.