I absolutely agree with some of the posters here, I enjoyed Far Cry's single player FAR MORE than I did Half-Life 2's. Half-Life 2's single-player had my heart racing for about 5 minutes, and that was just the initial rush I got since I had stayed up until 3am so that I could unlock the game at the exact instance Valve let me, and all the sudden I'm getting chased by the mysterious combine. That was the only moment in the entire game where I felt compelled to say "holy shit, that was fucking sweet."
And while Far Cry's mutants kind of broke the game - and I say "kind of," as the mutants filled me with a sense of
fear that none of Half-Life's enemies could ever hope to do - 95% of Half-Life 2's gameplay broke the game for me. Half-Life 2, in my mind, was nothing more than a string of gimmicky missions, very loosely strung together by some barely coherent and hardly-present story.
I agree on the balance of Half Life though. If Far Cry had quick saves and a better ending (after getting through the terribly hard ending you are presented with a "boss" that you shoot once to trigger the last cutscene) it would have been game of the year.
I thought one of the patches added a quicksave?
This comment was edited on Jan 31, 15:56.