Far Cry 2: Some More Thoughts

I've played some more Far Cry 2 over the last week or so and I've experienced the core gameplay at this stage and these are a few of my thoughts about the things that I liked/disliked:

• Immersion: Every aspect of the game is portrayed in first person view and the HUD tends to be minimal or context sensitive. There are no cutscenes and the player always has control. An aspect of this is that if you pick up older guns they can jam easier than newer guns and even if you're critically wounded you'll use a knife to pry a bullet from your flesh of pat down the flames around your body.
• Character: A major issue that I've found with the game so far is that the character is almost meaningless, I know nothing about my background or motivation within the game, this creates a big disconnect for me as I feel no empathy towards my avatar. One of the design goals for the game was player generated narrative but this has been a disappointment for me so far and I feel the design widely missed the mark in making the player feel invested in the outcome.
• Checkpoints: Not the save game type of checkpoints but rather the in game type where a group of NPC's with machine guns and a jeep shoot at you as you try to make your way across the map. This is becoming a deal breaker for me, every time I want to get somewhere theres generally plenty of NPC's to be dispatched along the way. I think a bribery system or less checkpoints might have been a better, even if less realistic, option. Another idea for this would be a territorial acquisition minigame where the player tries to capture as many checkpoints as they can to neutralize the NPC's and these NPC's wouldn't respawn after you drive away.
• Emergence: Every so often the game shows moments of pure brilliance, times when the player is given a set of tools and a goal and can use their own ingenuity to reach that goal. For example starting a bush fire can allow the player to flush the enemy out of a hiding spot and maybe eliminate a few as well.

Overall Far Cry 2 is a game with heaps of potential but it just seems too constrained, too confused about what exactly it is and what the point of it is to actually be engaging. I might put some more time into exploring the open world and maybe come back to it every now and then but I don't think this will be a game I finish quickly, at least not with Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light waiting to be installed!