I have recently picked up Farcry 2 on a Steam sale, and was excited to learn that the game had implemented firearms stoppages related to weapon cleanliness and condition. However, when I actually started to play Farcry 2, I was dismayed to see that the weapon stoppages, and the remedies to those stoppages, were not portrayed in a realistic manner. Apparently the game designers had gone through all the trouble to very detailed but wrong way to try and remove stoppages, but inexplicably did not take the small amount of time it would have required at the beginning of the project before doing any animation to learn about the types of stoppages which realistically occur, and how to realistically clear them.

This bothers me for two reasons. In the first place, the designers of Farcry 2 went through a lot of trouble to try and create an immersive and detailed game world, albiet one in which after the intro taxi ride every single person you encounter goes out of their way to initiate suicidal all-out lethal force assaults on you the moment they so much as catch a glimpse of you, and when I see incorrect animations relating to firearms, to me it greatly undermines the sense of detail and realism the game is trying to create. Secondly, because the animations are detailed, many players who don't have the opportunity to work with firearms in real life might get the wrong impression about how to correct problems with their gun should they ever have one in real life. Today, I participate in shooting competitions, and I hold an NRA Range Safety Officer certification; however, many years ago, I lived New York City, where the powers that be have a psychologically disordered obsession with keeping military pattern rifles out of the hands of law abiding citizens. At the time, many of my impressions about operating firearms, including clearing stoppages, came from the early versions of America's Army, which turned out to be a good thing, because that game tended to portray all aspects of firearms operation in a very realistic manner with very detailed animations from which it was possible to absorb a significant amount of knowledge regarding how to properly aim a rifle, the importance of posture and stability with regard to accuracy, and how to reload and "unjam" an AR 15 or M 16. The animations from America's Army gave me a reasonable starting mental framework for when I began to handle and learn about firearms for the first time from a qualified instructor. However, as I played Farcry 2, I felt like the detailed animations were likely to give people misconceptions about the safe and professional operation of firearms, and that someone could even put themselves or others in danger if they attempted to act out firearm manipulations as portrayed in the game. Therefore, I have decided to write this article outlining why the animations in Farcry 2 are incorrect, and how to clear the most common stoppages when they happen to your firearm in real life.