Customer Reviews

Far Cry 2

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(22)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

What defines a good sandbox game? Sandbox game design is a relatively new genre made possible by advances in processor and graphics capabilities. But what makes one sandbox design good and another one bad? This is not an easy question to answer, given that a sandbox is designed to provide a variety of gameplay experiences which can lead to different, subjective opinions on the matter. I've been playing Far Cry 2 lately, and unfortunately I think the game has helped me understand ways a sandbox game can fail.

I attribute most of these design flaws to the changes that were made to convert the original Far Cry design from a "partly" sandbox game into a fully open world sandbox game. In the original Far Cry the player was presented with a series of islands to traverse, one at a time. Normally these islands would contain one or more enemy concentrations between you and your goal. This provided a good pace to the game. You were always working toward a clear goal, but due to the size of the islands, the draw distance, and the variety of combat strategies, there was freedom in how to achieve it. In the big picture it wasn't a true sandbox because there was no ability to set your own goals; you were stuck on a given island until you triggered the next cut scene by killing the right person, blowing up the right structure, or arriving at the right door.

With Far Cry 2 there is complete freedom to travel anywhere you want, accept the missions you want and perform them any way you want. Plus, many of the signature Far Cry experiences like long distance sniping, vehicles, and assaulting small enemy outposts are part of the experience. What could go wrong here?

A lot, as it turns out. You see, beyond the ability to set your own goals and achieve them in different ways, there is a third part of sandbox design sorely missing from Far Cry 2: Diversion. And I don't mean mini-games. Take for example two great sandbox designs, Oblivion and Grand Theft Auto. Both offer very extensive diversions. You can wander around either of those worlds without a goal and be entertained. How often did I lose track of time, watching how the pedestrian AI reacts to gunfire, or exploring a random cave for treasure, or climbing ranks in the mage's guild, or stealing cars for money. In a satisfying sandbox, freedom has to be met in equal measures with immersion, imagination and variety.

It takes more than a little gameplay in Far Cry 2 to discover something is missing. There do appear to be diversions. Diamonds in suitcases are scattered throughout the landscape, waiting to be found using a well-designed treasure hunt mechanism where your GPS blinks with greater frequency as you near a suitcase, or goes on solid when you are pointed at the suitcase. It is not a 'gimme' to find or get to every suitcase, yet it is not so hard as to be frustrating. There are also side missions to assassinate people or gain access to new weapons and equipment. There is even a side story about acquiring needed medicine. Ultimately though, they aren't diversions at all. Diamonds are the monetary system of the game and ONLY used to buy new weapons and equipment. It all leads up to very repetitive gameplay. I want a better weapon so I destroy a convoy to unlock it and then perform a primary or side mission for payment in diamonds to buy the weapon. Rinse. Repeat.

The lack of variety in how the game progresses might not be so noticeable except that the missions themselves are very repetitive in their constituent parts. The assassinations and convoy ambushes are all nearly identical in execution and only vary by the location they occur. Assassinations are always of a lone man wearing a suit in a populated place. Convoy destructions are always of a 3 car group (jeep, truck, jeep) that drive in a loop until you encounter them. Even main missions have a cadence to them. 1. Accept mission, 2. Take call from buddy, 3. Meet buddy, 4. Accept secondary mission, 5. Perform secondary mission, 6. Perform primary mission, 7. Save buddy.

After a while the only thing pushing you forward is a desire to acquire new weapons for combat and perhaps a remote interest in where the main story will end up, though take note that not even the primary missions actually relate to the main story. They play out more like A-Team episodes, where every episode stands alone and has no relation to the prior or next one.

The environment of Far Cry 2 is the highlight of the game. There is a variety of landscape ranging from deserts to rain-forest like jungles. The landscape feels very fluid, flowing from one landscape type into another and the water ways look exceptional. Yet, even here there are problems. Though the flora is wonderfully done, the fauna is lacking. There are no civilians in this Africa. Almost everyone is either an enemy you are shooting at or an enemy you are not shooting at (yet). The only exceptions are mission givers in interior spaces or a "buddy" who is either rescuing you or being rescued by you. As far as I can tell, the only animals living in Africa are gazelles, wildabeasts, chickens, and a birds. And from the populations I've seen, they must all be endangered.

Given that the only thing you are going to encounter in this Africa are armed opponents, the combat better be good. By and large, that part of the game is a satisfying experience. The open environment does provide a realistic 'fog of war', where you can never be completely sure how combat will play out. There are a variety of weapons, and using different weapons will affect your combat approach. As with Far Cry, a good sniper rifle is always handy, and explosions are also well done, so I recommend lots of grenades; lobbed, launched, or rocked propelled. The fire effects deserve special mention. Even if you inaccurately drop a mortar round around an enemy outpost, you are likely to start a brush fire and either kill or flush out enemies for easy pickins'.

One disappointing element of combat is stealth. In my experience, effective stealth play requires giving the player feedback on their relative "stealthiness" and Far Cry 2 provides no feedback in that regard, so though it's easy to start a mission stealthy, it's nearly impossible to play the entire mission that way. Even a knife attack from behind at night somehow draws all enemies right to you, guns blazing.

Keeping with the theme of repetition, combat has it too. In this open world, there are an apparently endless supply of low level soldiers ready to man road intersections. To get from a mission start point to a goal, you will likely need to encounter 2 to 4 intersection outposts with 2 to 6 soldiers at each, despite the fact you've cleared those outposts out a half-dozen times, the last time 5 minutes ago. Even if you want to fast travel, you will have to fight your way to and from the bus stop. Compared with the original Far Cry, where every encounter was a planning opportunity based on the layout of the enemy base, in Far Cry 2 you end up attacking the same tiny intersections over and over and it gets damn boring. Driving off-road to avoid those is possible, but a hit-and-miss venture. You are very likely to high-end your jeep and have to hoof it back to the road to steal another. Actual mission destinations like fisheries, airports, train stations, etc., provide more opportunity for planning, but again, with no good working stealth mechanism, the most effective plan is to shoot straight and try to keep enemies off your flank.

Pretty much all enemies look alike, fight alike, and die alike. For variety, there is a small chance that a down opponent is not quite dead and will shoot their pistol from an immobilized position, or try to limp away. Those are especially satisfying trigger pulls.

By the way, this game has turned me into a heartless mercenary. Though the missions are straight forward killing people and blowing stuff up, the tack-on back stories are realistic for African warlords. "Kill this guy training our enemy to defuse bombs." "Blow up this machine that makes malaria medicine." Since you don't have obvious ways to advance the story without taking these morally questionable missions, I've resigned myself to the role of a mercenary with no conscience. If there were civilians in this game, I would perforate them for minor offenses like being rendered in my field of vision.

After the time spent with Far Cry 2, I can't help but think that this would have been a better game if they had just put an African locale with the improved story and used the original Far Cry design of sequential wide open levels. Far Cry 2 as a true sandbox has added mostly frustration and repetition to the gameplay, and has added little in the way of imagination, immersion or diversion.

Illustrative of my entire feeling about Far Cry 2, I offer this gameplay example: Whenever your vehicle takes gunfire, you have to get out and press the Y button to "fix" your vehicle, which consists of a single canned animation of you turning a wrench on the radiator. Who thought this would be fun or add realism to the game? The vehicle loses substantial peformance once hit, so this isn't even a gameplay choice. You simply have to exit your vehicle and enjoy another instance of watching yourself tighten a nut. Adding up all the time I've spent doing this, I've probably wasted 15 minutes of my life watching myself tighten a radiator nut. I can't get those minutes back and I'd like to make whoever's brilliant idea that was sit and watch it looped for 15 minutes straight and see how much fun they had.

STORY:
First thing's first: Far Cry 2 isn't Far Cry 2. That is, this game really doesn't have anything to do with Far Cry, other than its name. No Jack Carver, no Val, and (thankfully) no mutants. So, what is it about? Well, there isn't much in the way of story, but it basically goes like this: You are a mercenary hired to hunt down and assassinate a notorious arms dealer called The Jackal. The reason for this is The Jackal is supplying weapons to rivaling African factions, thus making possible an all-out war. In order to find him, you have to go to work for these warring factions so you can trace the supply line of arms back the target. So the game has you performing a number of side-missions that lead up to the Jackal in one way or another.

As far as your character goes, you have a number of people to choose from at the outset. I don't think it matters much, as you don't seem to gain or loose any skills or qualities based off who you pick. It does, however, change the game a little bit. Say you pick person A instead of person B. If you hadn't picked person A, he would have been a character in the game, and you could become allies with him along the way. Either way, I think your character of choice has little to do with the game's outcome. I don't know why they even made this an option.

Below is a basic break down of some of the game's other elements.

GRAPHICS:
The first thing you notice when you start the game is the amazing environment around you. Plants, water, buildings, character models, and even the weather effects are all beautiful. I've been playing games for a long time, and I can honestly say I've never been as awed by animated scenery as I have by Far Cry 2's. Environments are animated by the constant movement of shadows thrown by swaying trees, and there are plenty of little touches here and there, too - burned-out cars, rotting shacks, torn posters, rusting cans, and bites pocked into your forearms. Details are everywhere.
Now, I've heard people say that FC2 isn't up to Crysis standards, but I've never played that game, and, quite frankly, I don't care.


THE "WORLD":
After you've played the game for a while, the second most stunning thing about it is its sheer size and scope. There are something like 50 square kilometers (about 20 miles) of desert, rain forest, villages, plains, rivers, and roads to cover in this game.

GENERAL GAMEPLAY:
Much of this game has the player visiting various people and taking on and completing missions for them. These missions vary in that some lead to story progression, while others are just sort of tacked-on and have a very ad hoc feel to them. For example, in order to access some of the locked weapons at the gun shops found throughout the game, you can complete missions for the shop's owner. These missions usually involve blowing up arms shipments that belong to other dealers. Other times, you may find yourself being tasked by one faction to assassinate a member of another faction (which usually earns you diamonds to buy guns and upgrades). Also, you can find yourself doing something as mundane as delivering papers in exchange for malaria medicine (more on malaria later).

As mentioned above, this game is quite large. One problem with that is it takes a good deal of time to reach your mission objectives. In fact, a lot of the missions are at the edge of the map, and it feels like they purposely made it that way to artificially extend the game's length. Honestly, for better or worse, probably half of your actual game time will be spent just traveling to where you need to be. This can be interesting at times, but it is often tedious, as you regularly find yourself coming across and battling the same guard camps over and over again. This is truly the game's greatest flaw. Like Grand Theft Auto IV's cabs, there is a way to fast travel from one location to another, but this is done via bus stops, and you can only travel from bus stop to bus stop. This would be more useful if the stops weren't so few and far between. Expect to spend a lot of time traveling.

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COMBAT & GUNPLAY:
For all it's beauty and size, this is a dyed-in-the-wool first-person shooter. It's all about combat situations, and there are a number of ways to enter those situations in Far Cry 2. Often, you'll just stumble upon them as you're traveling, in which case it's time to let guns blaze and grenades fly. But you don't always have to fight in that style. When you're on a mission and approaching an enemy camp, for instance, you can of course go in guns blazing, or you can take the high ground and dispatch you enemies from afar with a sniper rifle. Or, you can attempt to take the camp by utilizing FC2's limited stealth system.

As far as actual gunplay, it's very fun, if a bit unrealistic. Enemies are tough... too tough in most cases, especially for having no better body armor than t-shirts. You can sometimes fire half a dozen rifle rounds into a bad guy's chest, and he is still somehow capable of running, let alone breathing. Or you can shoot him in the arm, but have it take no apparent affect on his ability to wield his weapon and aim. Head-shots are quickest. If I had to compare the gunplay to any other game, it'd be Half-Life 2.

One really fantastic element of the Far Cry 2 is its fire propagation system. Many things can catch on fire, including the tons of dry grass found in the game. This isn't just cool, it can be used to gain a tactical advantage in a firefight. For instance, if you want to cut off a wave of pursuing enemies, you can pull out a flamethrower, Molotov cocktail, flare gun, or whatever, and light the grass on fire. If you're lucky, the wind will be blowing toward you enemies and make the fire spread toward them!

When it come to enemy A/I and tactics, I feel some elements are good while others are quite lacking. The enemies employ good offensive tactics, such as two guys distracting you while another sneaks around and flanks. But defensive tactics are noticeably lacking. Enemies generally don't make use of cover, often opting to run around wildly. What's more, elements of stealth are somewhat inconsistent, if not non-existent. For instance, you can shoot a bad guy in the head with a suppressed weapon, and no one will notice, but if you take him out with the machete, it seems like the whole camp knows about it instantly. What's the deal with that?


WEAPONS:
As for the guns themselves, well, there are just lots of them. Assault rifles, sub-machine guns, sniper rifles, explosives of all kinds, even a flame thrower! And not only that, they are all truly useful and really FUN. Some games have these junk guns that might as well be thrown as fired, but not Far Cry 2. You will feel confident walking into a firefight with ANY gun in the game. Also, various upgrades can be purchased for your guns to make them more accurate and reliable (more on gun reliability below).

You can carry four weapons with you at any given time (not including your grenades) - they are your machete (you always have this), a primary weapon, a secondary, and a "special" weapon (RPG, dart gun, S.A.W, etc). You of course can pick up any weapon you see in the game, but it takes the place of the weapon you currently have in that slot.

One bad thing about the guns, though. Ubi Soft -- in an attempt to make the game more "realistic", I think -- included a gun deterioration feature to Far Cry 2. Every gun in the game is subject to getting dirty and rusty. The more you fire any given gun, the worse off it gets. This leads to it jamming (in which case you have to hit X again and again as your character struggles to unjam the weapon). Or, if it gets too bad, the weapon just blows up in your hands! The guns you pick up off of enemies are almost always in really bad shape, but the ones you buy new at the gun shop are pristine. And once you buy a given gun, you can go to the armory (right next to any given gun shop located throughout the game), and you have an unlimited supply of that gun there. As for me, I just switch out my gun for a new one every few missions or so. This does away with any reliability problems, but it is something of a hassle.

Now, I think they were going for realism with this, but it is actually kind of unrealistic that an AK-47, for instance, would jam and blow up after having a few hundred rounds go through it. Those guns have been known to fire tens of thousands of rounds and work for years with little or no cleaning. Anyway, I just don't know what Ubi was thinking.


VEHICLES:
There are a number of ways to get around in Far Cry 2. You've got Jeeps, buggies, generic assault trucks, generic cars, air-boats, hand-gliders, etc. Some are for just getting from A to B, while others have a machine gun mounted on them (you can't used them while driving, though). I question how useful the vehicles are, though. As with most games, the vehicles in Far Cry 2 take damage. The thing is, your vehicle gets damaged and breaks down so easily and frequently that it's often faster to just get to where you're going on foot; otherwise you have to get out, pop the hood, and fix the vehicle (which consists of turning a bolt with a ratchet for a few seconds), only to have it break down again. Breaking down in Far Cry 2 is about as fun as breaking down in real life.


THE SAVE SYSTEM:
The system in FC2 works fairly well. Unfortunately, you can't save just anywhere, but you can save right after you've completed a mission, at the number of "safe houses" you've unlocked, and at various other context-specific times and places in the game. You never feel stressed to reach a save point, nor do you have to waste too much time if you die and retry a mission.

THE HEALTH SYSTEM:
The health system in this game is one of the most balanced I've seen in a recent game. Your health meter is divided up into a number of segments, and unlike many modern shooters, your health doesn't regenerate after a few seconds, at least not all the way. If one segment is partially drained, it will recover after a few seconds if no more damage is taken. If one or more bars is fully drained, then you must restore it through the use of a syrette, which injects you with some miraculous healing drug. You can carry a number of these syrettes with you, and you even have the option to upgrade your medical kit at the gun shop, which will allow you to carry more. Fortunately, there are a number of places in the game that you can replenish your supply of syrettes, such as enemy camps, your safe houses, the gun shops, and a few others. I think this system works well, as it allows you to complete missions without dying all the time, but you also feel a bit pressed, because you only have a limited amount of syrettes to restore your health. I like to think of it as a good hybrid between old-school health packs, and modern instant health restoration.

Also, when you're health meter is depleted, and one of the friends you've made is on "standby", he will come and bail you out of the firefight by dragging you to safety. However, if you don't have any friends on standby, you simply die and have to reload your last save. I thought this was a nice touch.

MISCELLENEOUS:

Minimal HUD
One of my favorite things about this game is that there is nothing between you and the world around you. That is, there are no cross-hairs, health gauges, or blinking lights that are constantly on your screen. Now, you can press a button and your health and ammo status will temporarily appear, or you can choose to have cross hairs on the screen (the alternative is you have to manually raise your scope or iron sights in order to aim accurately). As far as navigation goes, your character physically brings up a map in his hands in real-time. This was a bit odd at first, but I think it's a great idea. Using it is much better than having to go to a start screen, or looking at a micro map in the bottom corner. Even when you are driving, your character can look down at the map he's holding in one hand, or, if that's a bother, you can put it away and look at the vehicle's on-board GPS display (they all have this). All of this serves to to add an element of immersiveness to the game.


Malaria
Right off the bat, you see that your character is sick. He has malaria, and immediately after the the opening scene, you wake up in what is basically your death bed. Later on, you have a little episode where your vision gets all blurry and you collapse, only to wake up again. You will continue to have these bouts of blurriness if you do not acquire the proper medicine, which you have to take about every hour or so (you are prompted to take the medicine when your screen gets blurry). In order to get this medicine, you have to do favors for "The Underground", a non-violent group. Now, I can understand that malaria is a rather common sickness in Africa, but I don't know what the developers were thinking by adding it in here. I mean, your character having to periodically deal with his malaria doesn't add to Far Cry 2 anymore than periodically having to change your peg leg would add to a pirate game. It's not that interesting, and it's certainly not fun.

CONCLUSION:
Despite its shortcomings, Far Cry 2 is a very game. It looks great, the controls are tight, the missions are somewhat varied and entertaining enough, and there are plenty of weapons and strategies to play around with. All in all, because of it's length and high replay value, I think this game is worth a purchase and not just a rent.

When I started to play Far Cry 2 I didn't know what to expect. I heard so many different stories and rumors about this game. Some people said this game was good and some said this game was bad. Well I found out this game is really, really good.

The first thing I noticed playing Far Cry 2 is how huge of a gaming world this game has got. I can't think of another game out there that has got as huge of a gaming world as Far Cry 2. At the beginning of the game you are in the back seat of a vehicle being driven around by someone and you get a chance just to look at the surrounding scenery. The surrounding countryside is very beautiful but at the same side you see signs of war everywhere. You are put into a war torn African country ripped apart by a civil war fought between two large rebel groups. While I'm traveling in the vehicle down a dirt road, I noticed refugees running past me trying to get out of this country. Along the dirt road there are checkpoints everywhere manned by different rebel groups. At one checkpoint we got stopped by rebel soldiers and my driver had to promised to bring back beer for them if they would allow us to proceed past the checkpoint. I couldn't believe it. You can actually use bribery in this game. I noticed there was a small plane flying above me and I found out that rich people with money are paying pilots to fly them out of the country. When I saw all this stuff I thought to myself that probably happens in real life in war torn zones around the world.

I have never been to Africa but I'm sure this is as close as you can get to the real thing. There is a lot of detail put into this game. For instance I noticed little things like leaves blowing off trees and plants swaying around. There are birds flying overhead and constant sounds of wildlife. I notice insects flying around all the time. I came to a railroad siding next to a building and notice a lot of detail put into the rail cars and the railroad track. There were crates and boxes inside some box cars and trash laying around the railroad track. I was very impressed by the amount of detail.

The AI in this game is very good. Rebel soldiers react to how you react. For example, I went into a large town and the town was already occupied by rebel soldiers. Well in this large town there was a truce between the two rival rebel groups where there was no fighting allowed in this town. So I was able to walk around throughout the town without being stopped by any rebel soldiers. I could actually walk right up to the rebel soldiers without being shot at. Everything was peaceful and quiet. But the minute I pull out my weapon and start shooting at one of the rebel soldier's, all hell broke loose. Rebel soldiers started shooting at me and some ran behind cover and some try to outflank me. I was fighting for dear life. I decided to get out of town because there were too many rebel soldiers to fight. Well I ran out of town and the rebel soldiers came right behind me. I had to hurry and think of way to slow down the rebel soldiers before they caught up to me. Well in this game you can slow down people that are chasing you by setting fires. So what I did was I went to a large grassy area and set the grass on fire. Pretty soon a large fire broke out and the rebel soldiers stopped chasing me because they couldn't get past the flames. I was able to get away. I was thinking to myself "How cool is that"?

In this game you can choose the battles you want to fight and you can fight your battles anyway you want. You can choose to fight during the day or you can choose to fight at night. Or if want you can avoid fighting all together by just sneaking around. In this game it's all up to you on how you want to approach your objectives. I would highly recommend for you to go out and buy this game. There is a lot of replay value in this one.

Far Cry 2 does not have anything in the least to do with the first Far Cry, which is okay but worth mentioning. This game isn't perfect, but none are, and it won't appeal to everyone. It is very realistic in its approach to combat, no crosshairs, weapon malfunctions, realistic load times and procedures, all great. The variety of weapons is nice, as are the possible uses.

A small note on weapon malfunctions and jams. You will often get weapon malfunctions when using enemy pick ups. I have seen it described as being unrealistic that an AK would jam, malfunction or destroy themselves after a few hundred round. Many of the weapons used by such groups in Africa have been used, carried, and abused for years and many thousands of rounds already. I have seen a large number of bent, broken and otherwise unhealthy small arms in several African counties. AKs, G3s, and FALs are amazingly rugged and reliable weapons but they are machines and with too much use and abuse they do fail.

The physics are quite nice, and its really nice to watch a fire you start burn its way across the plains. The shadows and lighting is great, but can be distracting. It is often times hard to find enemies shooting at you with the huge amount of shadows drifting about. Which again is fairly realistic, but will annoy players who are use to having little red dots to tell them where to shoot. The detail on the weapons themselves is also nice, though the designers have mirrored several of the models. I think they did this to add more detail and action to the weapons themselves. All of the weapons in the game have their bolts on the right and would eject that way. Not a bit deal but something that takes away from the illusion, at least for me.

The enemies are normally pretty smart (annoyingly so at times) and will try to take advantage of numbers and flanking, and usually even cover. Its not perfect but they offer a challenge, though a number of them seem to have eagle vision and have gone to several sniper schools before returning home to Africa to fight. By which I mean they are very good at hitting you with rifle fire from several hundred yards away, through cover and while running. The enemies in technicals also have an annoying habit of creeping up on you before unloading a light machine gun into your back.

There are two things that very much take away from the game in my opinion. The vehicles are a bit annoying but needed, driving is handled poorly and its hard to see where you are going often. A lot of the missions seems to require you to get in your car, drive across four maps, hit your target and then come back. During that trip though you will constantly be under fire from every person in the whole area. Every check point, every dock, every road, random people will be there to shoot at you. When you factor in the enemies ability to make remarkable shots and take massive amounts of damage, its gets old fast. The difficult levels are pretty out of whack. Easy may mean it is the easiest setting in this game, but it by means easy to play through. The story is rather lacking, though realistic, its sparse. Which suits the game well enough.

Another annoyance is that you contract malaria as soon as the game begins. Why anyone would go to Africa without getting their Doxycycline out of the way first is dumb. Your main character could also be in a bit better shape, getting blurry eyed and wheezy after even a short sprint. I suppose this can be forgiven since he apparently does have malaria after all. Small gripes for me but ones I am willing to live with.

I recommend this game as a rental, but if you turn out to enjoy it and not mind the short comings then pick it up. There is nothing worse than to drop your hard earned cash on a game to find it annoys you to no end. Plenty of shooting, burning and explosions, how could you go wrong? Be sure you are willing to deal with the annoyances and often dying.

(UPDATE) After several days of play I have to say I am getting utterly sick of the totally tedious nature of this game. The endless amounts of driving to get a mission done, just to drive across the entire map again and get another one is unnecessary. It is true there is a 'bus system' but you still have to travel from the stations to your targets. Add to this fact that from getting your mission and getting to your target sight you will get in at least five gun fights is ridiculous. Then when this is added to the save system and the rebels later heavy armament, you waste a huge amount of time to accomplish nothing. I have to move my recommendation to a rental on this one, if at all. Too bad though, there is a lot of promise in this title.

This game has gotten a bad reputation. Some people have complained the story is lacking and gameplay is repetitive and i suppose i agree with them. But i didn't buy Far Cry 2 because i thought the story was going to move me and i came into it knowing that it was going to be me, a gun, a grenade, and an unending supply of bad guys in a jungle setting with vehicles. That being said, this game is entertaining. I really like the fire propagation even if it isn't entirely accurate, thats some fast spreading fire geez. The fire adds a "smoke em out" strategy that i haven't seen in a game before. Its a blast to pick a spot and start firing your flare gun into an enemy camp and watch them run in a panic as you mow them down with a silenced mp5. I have to agree with the whole respawning thing, it is a bit ridiculous. I also don't care for the malaria thing but it doesn't happen that often. I haven't run into the nasty save bug i've read about, but im sure if i did, my opinion of the game would drop.

Everyone has their own favorite games. For me, this is the best game I have ever played.

Far Cry 2 was somewhat of a gamble for me, i was hearing mix things about the game, i had never played the original Far Cry, but i was itching for a new FPS(first person shooter)and wasn't feeling the new Call of Duty:World at War, and Fallout 3 hadn't come out yet, but in the end my FPS addiction took hold and i went for it. And after about 25 hours of gameplay this is what i've found...

The Goodness -
The graphics are great! The Africa setting is well done, it all looks how you would expect a current gen game to look that was set in Africa. Vegetation, rolling hills, desert, jungle, grasslands which all have a distinct feel to them, as well as some animals here and there that liven up the various areas.

The guns all have a solid feel to them, plus there is a nice variety of them, vehicles handle well and there is plenty of stuff to shoot at as well as fire propagation which is a nice touch. Everything in the game is done from a first person view even including the cut scenes, as well as healing oneself by various over-the-top quick fixes, such as taking a bullet out of your arm with a knife or cracking your arm back in place, etc.

Being able to do most things in the game how you want too. No set path you have to walk on.

The actual gameplay and story are just alright, they could've been better, theres a lot of moments that are repeated through out your playing experience that make you wonder what the developers were thinking.

The Badness -
Enemy AI, no matter how hard i tried sneaking up on enemies is extremly hard to do in this game(not in a good way), i could be up on a ridge half a mile away from the enemy camp behind a tree and the moment i stick my head out all of them seem to know i'm there??? Kind of odd. And once you take out one enemy, whether its with a sniper rifle from a far, up close with a silenced weapon or with your blade, some how all of the other enemies in the camp know somethings wrong which sucks you right out of the experience.

Guard post, when you're doing a mission you usually have to travel an insane amount of distance from point A to point B and between you and the mission is about 2-3 guard post, now it usually takes about 10 minutes to get to where you need to go and having to fight to get there becomes annoying very quickly, especially that once you're done with the mission, you have to drive back and do it all over again becuase the guards within the guard posts re-spawn after a short amount of time and instead of it being fun it's just frustrating because you have to eliminate everyone once again.

Driving, shooting, driving, shooting, mission, driving, shooting, etc...by the time it's all done you've added 20min to your mission, which is a lot when you have to do that for EVERY SINGLE MISSION. A fast travel save system would work much better(think Oblivion), granted there is a fast travel bus system in the game, but the actual mission areas are usually far enough away from the drop off point of a bus to still be annoying.

Malaria, you get malaria early on in the game and you have to do certain missions to get more pills, know what that means? More driving and guard post. They should've just made it one mission for the cure, not just more pills which you constantly have to do throughout the game, come on now? Think i say, think!

Multiplayer -
It's okay, nothing that's going to tear you away from whatever your current online game is now. They do have an unlocking system within their multiplayer, it's more of a thined out version of the Call of Duty 4 unlock system without the addiction quality of COD4. And one of my pet peeves are online games that make everyone in the lobby click "ready" to play, which just slows down the game because you always have some people that don't click ready for some reason, take the option out like most online shooting games and things go alot faster. Because of this, i would be in the lobby for close to 5 min sometimes, just waiting for everyone to be ready.

The randomness -
This has happend twice to me all ready in this game and it's just weird. Apparently the enemies send off a crazy driver after you every once in awhile, they're usually in a truck with a mounted gun but sometimes it's just a bad guy in a car, it's really hard to hear the car coming and a lot of times when i've been on foot i've actually been run over by this random car that comes from no where, i'm all alone, walking to the next mission, no enemies in sight, and BAMN! run over by a car, just a little awkward.

Final verdict -
I don't think is game is worth $60, its worth $40, but not $60. They get points for trying something new. Some good ideas, awesome graphics, but some of the decisions that were made by the developers don't make sense. Some ideas work, most of them are just annoying. Definitely worth checking out, just do so before you buy it. I would give this game 3 1/2 stars.

I only went as far as playing the demo for the first game and hated it. Upon reading enough reviews for this game I finally took a chance and bought it. And it paid off. The graphics are beautiful as well as the elements of realism this game has. Not super realistic as in you get shot twice and you die like in splinter cell or something. But my buddy watched a grenade explosion and said "That was the most realistic grenade explosion I have ever seen, except you would have been killed from where your standing."(I was like 25 feet away.) He is a SGT. in the US Army having served 2 tours in Iraq so I took his word for it, since the closest I have been to war is Black Friday at Wal-Mart. So far with all the exploring you can do in this game it has a lot of longevity to it, as well as a map editor and a decent multiplayer. I highly recommend this game.

Far Cry 2 does something that a lot of famous First-Person-Shooters DON'T do - it gives gamers the opportunity to say, "What would I like to do next?" At any given time there are probably close to a dozen different options, and that alone gives this game a 4-star rating.

Far Cry 2 was built to have a lot of realism. This is both good and bad. The ease and ability of creating brush fires is ridiculously fun, and eerily scary at the same time. The same fire you set to wipe out baddies can end up cornering you between a rock and a hot place. Guns will jam on you when you least expect it, which can make for some awfully panicky game play. There is no radar, and there is no pandering. If you hit a guy with a truck, he dies. If they hit you, YOU die. I took a headshot during a gun battle. I know it was a headshot - I went from full health to falling to the ground. Luckily a buddy "saved me," relieving my need for a reload.

And that's the basis of Far Cry 2. There's a LOT of challenges in the game, from jamming weapons, to the need for Malaria medicine, to frequent and recurrent gun battles all over the map. But you can PREVENT a lot of these from becoming issues if you prepare yourself.

Tired of guns jamming? Stop by the gun shop and buy a new one. Or at least pick up a new one if you've already purchased it - brand new guns are available (once purchased) in every segment of the map.

Malaria medicine? Not that much of a problem, really - I got the first bottle and haven't run out yet. It'd be nice if they gave us a quantity left, so that I could know how long until I need some. I'll admit it's a useless addition to the game, but again, it hasn't really posed much of a problem.

Tired of fighting the same battle in the same place? Once you've scouted a guard post, just barrell through in your truck of choice, or go crashing through the jungle to avoid the battle entirely. I've avoided many confrontations this way. Also, ride the rails whenever possible - very few areas of hostility along the train tracks.

If you're expecting a gunfight (which you should ALWAYS be expecting,) make sure your female "buddy" is ready to save you. You only get one save, then you have to stop any any pre-established safe house to "reset" her - then she'll be ready to save you again.

The graphics of FC2 are amazing - simply amazing. You can actually start to recognize where you are - it's not like the city sand-box games where it all just blends together. There's dizzying heights and deep rivers. I really like how long a day lasts - games like Grand Theft Auto run through a game-day in about an hour. FC2's game-days run about 4 hours, maybe even more. It really lets you plan your strategy and never makes you feel rushed.

I get irritated by a few things, like how a civilian drives past me and feels compelled to jump out of his car and open fire on me. Or how guns you're carrying seem to just dissapear... Turns out if they jam and you don't hit the unjam button, he'll just throw them away.

When a first-person shooter can keep you entertained for 30+ hours, that's a feat. Few games can pull that off. Yeah it's not a perfect game, but there's a lot to do here if you understand the intended strategy. I've actually enjoyed playing Far Cry 2, and I have already found myself aiming for various "completionist" achievements because once you get past the challenges, there's a pretty fun game inside.

For me, that sums up this game rather nicely. Both games have sprawling sandbox worlds, offer tons of hours of gameplay and feature great graphics.

You would think that all that would guarantee this to be a 5 star game, but alas, that is not the case. So on to the pros and cons . . .

PROS:

MOSTLY SOLID GAMEPLAY: Walking, running, shooting and operating vehicles is all very smooth and seamless. The controls are set up very well, as is.

LOTS OF GAMETIME: Like Oblivion and the original Farcry, you can spend countless hours roaming the world doing real missions, side missions, or just doing your own thing. A complex landscape guarantees that no two firefights will be the same.

NICE WEAPON VARIETY: You get several types of handguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, rocket/grenade launchers and other explosives. Personally, I found the Sniper Rifle (primary), Mac-10 or Uzi (secondary) and RPG (special) combination to work really well.

JAMMING WEAPONS: Finally! A game that actually adds the realism of jamming weapons. To make it more realistic, the weapons of your enemies are more prone to jam compared to your freshly-purchased weapons at the store.

GRAPHICS: The least important to me, and although I've never been there, it definitely looks like Africa. This game does for fire what Bioshock did for water. And some of the sunsets are truly breathtaking.

CONS:

GLITCHY SAVE SYSTEM: I often noticed that sometimes I wouldn't start off where I last saved. Sometimes one or two saves back, even. Fortunately I kept 3 saves on file in case something like this happened so I could roll forward to the correct one.

TEDIOUS GAMEPLAY: This game is very nonlinear, meaning you can approach your target from different directions or even take alternative missions, but in the end, you'll find yourself having to take out at least one or two guard posts along the way. The times you bypass the guardposts you'll more than like run across a gun truck/boat.

MALARIA: Like Oblivion had the Vampire sickness, Farcry2 has Malaria. The difference is that while Oblivion's Vampire sickness was conditional (you only got it if you got bitten), in Farcry2 you START the game with Malaria. So what does the Malaria do? It makes the scene go blurry, but if it happens X amount of times, it ultimately warps you back to the doctor who tells you that you need to get medicine. Unfortunately, sometimes these Underground shacks with Malaria medication are far away, meaning that you might get sick once or twice along the way, which then automatically transports you back to the doctor if you don't get to your destination in time.
If you do get the Malaria medication, it's only a few pills and doesn't last very long. Also, there is no counter to tell you how many pills you have in stock. Sometimes when you rattle your prescription bottle it might sound like you have 3-5 pills in there when you really only have 1.

BUGS: This following bug prevented me from beating the game (I was at 62% completion). I had to get some more Malaria medication. Sounds easy enough. But every time I went to this shack I killed all the enemies . . . yet the door wouldn't open--an indication that there was still an enemy out there that I had to kill to trigger the script to open the door. I thoroughly decimated this little shack and the surrounding area, making double and triple sure that my enemies were dead, yet the game still bugged out, telling me that there was at least one more bad guy out there which is why the door wouldn't open.
So I figured I'd just try and finish the game without the Malaria medication. No can do. After two or three instances of sickness, you get automatically sent back to the hospital. Not enough time to finish some missions.

OVERALL: If it weren't for some of these bugs, this would easily be a 4 star game. But as it is, I was unable to complete it. So my rating stands at 3.5 stars. Hope you fair better in the wilderness of Africa than I did.