I just finished the game. Has anyone else played this to completion?

And if so, can anyone else explain why my character felt the need to give himself a hot lead injection after bribing the border guard at the end of the game?

From Wikipedia: The Jackal offers the player a choice; he can detonate the explosives, or take the diamonds and shoot himself upon leaving the country, either way ensuring the civilians' escape.

I understood the choice when he explained it to me, I just don't understand why the choice shakes out that way. Once I've given the guards the diamonds, what possible reason do I have to end it all?

It's about bad bad men like you and the jackal not belonging in this new and pure utopia that you have created.

You can kill the Jackal with the mortar noclip bug. I wonder what happens if you does and if you can become overlord of Africa <_<

I did the bomb... I figure there's no reason to go out in a p**** wimpy way like shooting yourself in the head. Blow something up!

never finished the game. Fallout 3 was released too soon....

The ending of the game is pretty unsatisfying. There's no character development of the player, so your suicide is only "moving" in that you no longer get to play with your sweet golden AK. Your relationship to the other Mercs and to the Reporter is undeveloped for large sections of the game, so that when they betray you, or he saves the villager, you just don't care. The villagers/civilians themselves are never visible AT ANY POINT during the game, one of my largest complaints, so when you set about to save them, it's basically "who? where? why?" and it's very unsatisfying.

Despite all that, the gameplay itself tickled my fancy enough that I spent 50 hours on the campaign, and really enjoyed it. Story-wise, however, it's quite weak.

Oh. Well, that sucks. Now I wish I'd taken the car battery, gone out in a blaze of glory, and let the Jackal go all out of existential angst about what a terrible human being he is.

Yeah sneaking around, shooting, capturing safehouses in really neat locations, etc. etc. were all really fun for me.

I didn't find the gameplay all that interesting. It was ok, but not good enough to make up for the games other problems.

You guys got to sneak around? That's funny, every time I tried that the enemies (and by that I mean everyone in the god damn game) shot me full of holes through layers and layers of foliage.

Wow, you suck at sneaking

For me it seemed like sneaking only worked consistently at night, but even then the moment you stand up, fire a (silenced) gun or have impure thoughts about your buddy the bad guys will know exactly where you are. But it worked well enough to do some pretty awesome stealth infiltrations to plant bombs without having to engage a single enemy.

I thought the most annoying part of the gameplay was not being able to lean around corners and not being able to move while your guy was doing things like pulling shrapnel out of his arm. Other than that it was great.

The stealth system in the game IS stupid (basically, if you have the camo suit and STAY STILL at night, nobody will EVER see you but as soon as you move you are visible) but sniping is pretty easy if you're far enough away. You can shoot someone in the leg and watch them all run around like idiots, then pick them off while they try to help the guy(s) you shot.

I felt similarly. not just the story, but the level of immersion was terrible. from the totally illogical bus system to the respawning enemy camps to the magically teleporting weapons dealer to the target cars that drove endlessly in circles to the ****ing buddies who came to your safe house at random intervals to watch you sleep, it seemed like they were barely even trying to make it seem like you were in a real place.

plus the characterization of the main character was bizarre--i didn't play too far in but i remember saving some invisible civilians by getting shot the **** up in a church and then almost immediately afterward destroying an entire town's supply of malaria medicine . It's hard to get invested in a character when the **** he does doesn't make any ****ing sense.

I don't know, unless the mechanics of being detected by the AI were different for me, then it has to be that you guys just didn't understand HOW to sneak properly :/

If you moved slowly, avoided standing up, crouched consistently, waited til enemies were looking away, used cover, ditches, etc, fired and relocated to a new area, etc, avoiding being riddled full of holes wasn't too hard.

Agreed. Some of those loose ends or shortcuts just reeked of laziness, and that kind of thing draws attention away from "this is a merc driving a car across the landscape doing something, i don't know what, but IT'S REALLLL" to "this prop car is goin round 'n' round".

It works, just not consistently. Here are two situations I encountered all too often while playing:

1. The dead of night, crouched in the brush, I take a shot at someone with the dart gun from a good 450 feet away. I miss and he turns around, instantly knowing where I am, and starts shooting. Alternatively, I hit him in the back of the head and all his friends turn around, instantly knowing where I am, and start shooting.

2. It's the middle of the day and I casually wander into a checkpoint and walk right up beside someone without him or anyone else noticing. I stand around for 15 seconds until the AI eventually catches on.

When stealthing actually works it's awesome, but when the above happens it's pretty goddamn annoying. And I know I'm not the only one that had stupid stuff like this happen to them while playing.

That said, it's still a freaking great game.

I never had any real trouble not being seen. I mean, admittedly my whole strategy was to try to keep my distance and dart-rifle bad guys until I ran out of darts, but I certainly never found that this didn't work.

My advice: Don't miss with the dart rifle. Ever. They will somehow instantly find you. I rarely, if ever, had the AI figure out where I was based on a hit.

People complained about the 10 round carrying capacity for the Dart Rifle, but there were really few situations, provided that you don't miss, in which more than that is necessary (also provided that you have the silenced Makarov handy :)).

My favorite part of the game was getting the bottom-tier grenade launcher and finally turning the tables on those ****ing jeeps

BOOOOM

I got the second tier rocket launcher at some safehouse somewhere, right before I went on my first convoy-killing mission, it was great.

Hide behind a boulder, pop out and destroy the lead Jeep, reload, destroy the flatbed, switch to primary wep/grenade and destroy final jeep/dudes.

I remeber getting the bazooka and carrying it around for a while until it was fairly rusted.

I took it out for that one mission in the rail yard. The thing exploded and set all the grass around me on fire. The missile took off, spazed out and then exploded in the air.

It was awesome. And then I burned to death.

yeah i got the bazooka later on but I still think the GL is way more badass

it goes

"thoop"

so does yer mother

duly noted

My usual loadout is:

Silenced Makarov or Dessert Beagle
SVD or Silenced MP5 (I prefer the SVD to the AE8540340SniperCannon)
Dart Rifle or IEDs or Serious Bombs

And Ma****ty.

Also I like to return to safehouses with views and surroundings that I enjoy instead of just the closest one.

Machete.

I typically went with the MGL-140, MAC-10, and dart rifle. I'd either take out as many people quietly as I could with the dart rifle and then move in with the MAC-10 to clean up, or just start blowing **** up with the MGL if my first plan fell apart.

You can do a lot of damage very quickly with the MGL.

The MGL is so freakin broken and made the game too easy for e.

My favorite loadouts were

Deagle + Sniper cannon thing + aim-guided RL for packing a punch

or

Uzi + AR15 + Dart Rifle for nimbleness

Mike: why MAC10 instead of Uzi?

B'scuse me sir, what are you on about?

It absolutely blows my mind that no games other than Thief and Splinter Cell have properly implemented stealth.

Yeah, anyone interested in a challenge should skip it. I was just interested in blowing **** up.



I never got around to buying the Uzi. The MAC-10 was good for bringing people down quickly at close range, so I never really felt the need.