Part two: Getting my hands dirty

I jump out of the car early enough so my next victims won't get alarmed and also to have a better vision and ability to spot them before they spot me. I get off road on foot and try to spot any enemies around the house I was ordered to clean up with my scope. I count two, and one of them is wandering a bit further. A take that as an opportunity to get closer. When I get there I notice the one guard closer to the building is alone and has his back turned on me. I can't resist and attempt to sneak behind him to nail the guy before his friend gets back. Just before I shoot I notice the other guard is much closer than I thought and almost panic. I'm so close I decide not to waste an opportunity and finish the first guard cleanly with two shots and then run like a headless chicken behind the building. Once I'm there I curse I didn't pay more attention to the second guard and have no accurate info on his position. I decide to go around the building, and once I'm again in front trying to locate the survivor I hear he is behind me. I turn around hastily thinking this is it and remind myself to be more careful in next life, but instead the guy just runs past me and lets me run after him and finish him after turning to shoot back a bit for show.

After sleeping for a few hours in the house I secured I get another errand and get my car and start heading towards it. I sneak around the guard post I was told to seek out and do some scouting up from a cliff. I get a call from my new boss and am told about a hostage in the building front of me. Great. This is not going to turn into a babysitting job, is this?

I spot a group of enemies gathered together down amongst the buildings, and decide to sneak closer, my lead idea being a grenade taking them all out at once. They will probably spread out before I get close enough, but I figure they will gather in the same spot again if I just wait a while. So I cross the road and go around the facilities, but before I find a spot to hide someone somewhere else apparently sees me and opnes fire. I don't know who or from where, but I start running wildly to what I think is the opposite direction. They get a shot or two at my back while I run, but I manage to get behing a big rock and catch my breath. After I come out of hiding I notice only one hostile followed. I nail him and go back to the same cliff to gather some intel and find out what I exactly I have against me. Some son of a gun spots me though and opens fire. Cursing I back out again, and start searching for another way in. My map shows the routes to get around in this country are stupidly narrow, so I have to bite the bullet and get in from the direction they are expectin me from. I don't see anyone around so I feel safe enough to get a bit closer in completely open, even if I do think even while I'm doing it that it's maybe not the smartest approach.

I spot an unsuspicious looking guard in the distance and get an idea. I open fire from afar, trying to get them to come to the open. I'm not sure if I'm able to finish the unlucky victim, he either falls on the ground dead or just wanders off my field of vision. I do get some goons running at me and am able to open fire at them before they get close enough to start shooting themselves. Like sitting ducks, I chuckle to myself. One of them manages to get quite close though, close enough to get a bullet under my skin. I almost panic thinking I was too careless again, but am able to solve the situation and finish rest of the guards coming out of their hiding places. At one point I celebrate a bit too early and start counting my loot too soon before all hostiles in the vicinity are dead, but fortunately I spot movement in bushes soon enough to back out before it's too late. I finish the remaining enemy, collect any ammunition from my victims and start carefully advancing towards the building containing the hostage.

Part one: The purple beginning

Five minutes in this country and it's clear - things are about to go very bad. The UFLL and the APR are gearing up for open fighting. My mission is simple - to kill 'The Jackal' - the bastard that armed both sides.

So I take a taxi from the airport to get to a hotel. Pleasant enough ride, the nice views and driver's stories fill me in on the country's general mood. Except that in the very end I pass out from malaria.

I wake up in what might or migth not be my room in the hotel. The Jackal, the gun dealer I was sent to assassinate, is going through my stuff. Hands off, you little desert rat! Don't touch...*cough* Bloody sickness renders me helpless. My mark starts ranting about life and death. Just be silent and give me a gun if you dare, and we see who decides if you die or live. If I just could stand from this sickness... Hey, what do you know, a wall blows up, I'm not too good but I better find the strength to walk out of here or I'll be toast... The Jackal's gone, for some reason he spared me my life. Even left me with some hardware. Said something about me not being a threat... Bah! I never leave job unfinished. If a job is unfinished after me, it means I'm dead. I take a pistol and a machete my target left and wobble out of the room.

I figure I should get out and get some distance between me and the firefight, and find a place to lick my wounds. I'm in no condition to fight right now. I grab an abandoned assault rifle and jump out of a window in the backside of the building. There's noone here, great. I start advancing towards the way out of the town, but find out that a grassfire is blocking my way. I really don't want to start wandering around or go to the front side of the building where I can hear gunshots coming from. I decide to wait until the fire dies out from between me and the shortest way to safety.

Seconds feel like minutes. I'm all the time expecting someone to come and shoot me in the face. When I'm finally able to advance, I spot one hostile I hastily manage to nail. I hesitate a bit should I shoot or take cover from a second one, but figure that he only has a shotgun, it's not gonna be a problem from this distance so it should be safe to peek around the corner... except now he has at least two buddies. Maybe even more, I don't stay to find out but start running away. I get a feeling I'm gonna pass out soon again and stop to wait for it... Seems to take a bit long, I even have time to turn around and start shooting at this fellow following me from the village. Eventually I do indeed pass out again.

I wake up again in somewhere a bit darker and meet this dude who claims I owe him some errands because he lost underlings in the firefight. Duh, what did I ever do to get them killed. However, I figure it would not be too wise to start making more enemies than I absolutely need to, so I grit my teeth and do as I'm told.. for now. I arm myself and after a moment of searching find a car the lazy bum inside telss me to repair and set off to a mission he gave me.

Far cry from Africa

The Internet seems to be crawling with bloggers documenting their attempts to finish Far Cry 2 without dying once. I often attempt such self-imposed challenges myself when playing various games, and it's a good way to earn the mastered-status for the game in my backloggery, so I decided to join the crowd and try the same thing myself. Some seem to be doing this as a kind of social exercise, to see how their actions in the game change when they know they can't reload a save after failing. I myself do this just to make the game more interesting. It's more entertaining to me this way, when I know all decisions I make and actions I take are permanent and I have tip-toe my way through the enemies in the game. The downside of course is the frustration of dying 15 hours in.

Once I get an idea in my head it is hard to get it out of there, so even if I fail now I will probably try it again some day, and keep doing it until I succeed. My original idea was to finish the game first and only then publish the blogs to avoid a situation where I'm blogging my fiftieth time of securing my first safe house, but I decided to change my mind. For no special reason, really, I just... changed my mind.

I have read the first entry of Ben Abraham attempting the same thing, but have otherwise not followed the other players imposing the same challenge on themselves. I haven't finished the game yet myself and I want my games unspoiled. My plan is to write in much, much shorter segments and publish a recorded gameplay video of each segment.

The rules of the game are as follows:

-PC platform

-Infamous difficulty (the hardest available)

-No DLCs installed

-Dying once means game over

-No reloading saved games to undo actions or change decisions or anything to that effect.

Please note that the gameplay videos are edited: I've cut out most segments where there is something else than actual gameplay footage, such as menus or help screens instructing me to jump/crawl/throw grenades or whatever. The purpose of this is to give more immersive watching experience, I guess. It can cause some anomalies, though, such as the background music skipping forward a lot between two frames. As a side effect it also makes the videos shorter and take less hard disk space, I'm running low on that. That was one factor that made me upload the videos now already and not after I'm finished: now I can upload the videos and then delete them from my hard disk as necessary.