I give this game 4.5 stars, but I rounded up.
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, and you don't seem to gain or loose any skills or qualities based off who you
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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 is something like 50 square kilometers 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. For instance, 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 huge. 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. 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.
COMBAT & GUNPLAY:
For all it's beauty and size, this is a dyed in the wool first-person shooter. There are a number of ways to enter combat situations in this game. Often, you'll just stumble upon them as you're travelling, 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 take the camp my favorite way: with stealth. My load-out often consists of a suppressed MP5 and a suppressed pistol. I like to crouch down, scout out the camp with my monocular, get a fix on all the bad guys and then quietly take them out one-by-one.
As far as actual gunplay, it is very fun, if a bit unrealistic. Enemies are tough... too tough, especially for having no better body armor than a t-shirt. You can sometimes fire half a dozen rifle rounds into a bad guy's chest, and he is still some how 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 game 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! Talk about a FIREfight! Ahhh!
When it come to enemy A/I and tactics, I feel this game is mildly lacking. The enemies don't seem to have a sense of unity about them. I mean, they'll all be attacking you at once, but they don't seem to really employ any clear cut strategies against you. Also, they generally don't make use of cover, opting instead to run around wildly. What's more, elements of stealth are somewhat inconsistent. 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 pistol, 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 the game. 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 guy 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. Now that I think of it, I haven't had any issues with store-bought weapons. For one thing, once you buy a given gun, you can go to the armory (right next to any given gun shop), 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.
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. Likewise, no other gun used in the game has such a real-world reputation for unreliability. At any rate, I don't know what Ubi was thinking.
VEHICLES:
There are a good 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. 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), 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 this game works well. You can't save just anywhere, but you can save right after you complete a mission, at the number of "safe houses" you unlock throughout the map, and at various other points and places throughout 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 in probably as good as any. 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. To heal yourself completely, though, you have to use a syrette to inject yourself 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 really make this game immersive.
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. I mean, I don't see how playing with one eye would add to a pirate game game, likewise, I have yet to see how the malaria song and dance adds to this one.
CONCLUSION:
Despite its shortcomings, Far Cry 2 is an amazing game. The controls are tight, the missions are entertaining, and there are tons 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 buying and not just a rent.
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