Far Cry 2 - not a far cry from greatness. (Far Cry 2 (PC))

Member Name: TheMadness

Product:	Far Cry 2 (PC)
Date:	20/12/08 (102 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free-roaming world. Total freedom. Amazing immersion.

Disadvantages: Respawn timer on the guards is a little fast, but none otherwise.

Far Cry 2 is a game by Ubisoft, and the spiritual successor to the Far Cry brand, and the game Crysis. Not sequels to either as such, it instead makes use of the same engine. Whatever link to the first Far Cry is not really existant, so don't expect anything else from Jck Carver.

This game is another in a long line of "free-roaming" games that allow you to pick your own tasks and choose your own path, and it delivers on this, simply giving you a task ("Kill the Jackal") and then sending you on your merry way. You are free to follow this objective, or you can choose to do missions for any of the other mission-givers out there, ignoring the main quest altogether.

So far, so Oblivion, you might say. Far Cry 2's unique selling point is that the storyline that you follow, and the people you meet are completely randomised, at least from the beginning anyway.

At the start of my game, I was picked up by a UFLL lieutenant and ordered to rescue an American mercenary from a nearby APR camp. After a lengthy firefight which serves in part as the game's tutorial, I rescued the mercenary and so met my first Best Friend in the game, Warren Clyde. Your game will likely be completely different, with a completely different character to save, or even another scenario completely.

From there, my path was completely open to me. I could travel back to Pala and take a mission from one of the two warring factions, or I could travel to Mike's Bar and accept missions from my Best Friend, or even take missions from the local arms dealer, the result from those missions being more guns to buy. If you choose to take missions from the two main factions, your Best Friend phones you and offers an alternative way through the mission, one that usually gives him/her a profit, culminating in a pitched gunfight next to them at the tail end of a mission. However, don't expect your Buddy to survive indefinately; I lost Warren after one mission, finding him lying in the grass after I took out his attackers. I'd found him like this before, and had saved him with a well-placed syrette. This time, one didn't work. So I used another. Nothing. He was lying there in pain, and I was out of syrettes. I couldn't save him.

My choices now were stark; did I leave him to die, or did I have the balls to pull out my sidearm and finish him off, sparing him the pain. Tears in my eyes, I pulled out my pistol. He reached up and pulled it to his mouth, obviously wanting me to do. I pulled the trigger and glanced away. His last words, "quicker than morphine" haunted me even as I stood up and walked away from his corpse. That's how much the game sucks you in. I wish I could have saved him, but the third syrette would have likely been fatal anyway. Better this way.

Of course, one of the game's greatest strengths is also it's greatest flaw. Sometimes it feels too large, with the later missions being across the 50 kilometre map from you. The trip is easily dealt with by jeep, but then you have the problem of running into the many guard posts along the way that respawn as soon as you leave their area. Often, you will have to fight your way through the same camps twice; once getting to the mission, and then on the way back. Obviously they couldn't leave the guards unspawning, as a typical gamer would rip through them easily, leaving the landscape barren and unihabited, but I can't help thinking that they could have come up with a better solution than that.

I'm being petty, it's not really that big a deal. At worst you just have to shoot the same guards you've already killed not long ago. It also doesn't take long to get used to the layout of the camps, so you generally know where to find the numerous explosive barrels that nicely speed up the process of travel for you by killing so many guards.

The weapon choice is fairly impressive. You can get AKs, bazookas, pistols, flare guns, rifles and many more weapons. It never really feels like too much, and the weapons can be pleasingly humourous: setting a guard on fire with the flare gun never gets old.

You can carry three at a time; a sidearm, a main gun and a special choice. Personally, I favoured the sniper rifle, with a Mac 10 sidearm for if things got up close. I generally stuck with the RPG launcher in case of ambushes and to deal with the cars that roam the map, apparently picking off random people. At least, that's the only reason I can think of for why you're constantly attacked.

This review seems negative, but it's not meant to be. The game is incredibly. It's a higher 90% game for sure. The first time I got a clean machete kill I was wooping like a guest on the Jerry Springer show, and you fail to feel satisfied after taking out an entire guard post without giving away your position. One mission for a arms dealer, I was tasked with taking care of a convoy of arms he didn't want reaching it's destination. Instead of lurking in a bush overlooking the road like I normally did, this time I decided to take a different approach: standing in the middle of the road, I faced down the first jeep in the convoy, lobbing a grenade just far in front of it so that it detonated with the jeep over the top of it. Startled, the driver of the truck of guns put his foot down, speeding past me. No time to stop him as I faced down the next jeep, filling the inside of it, and it's two passengers with bullets from my Mac 10. From behind I heard a crash, and as a turned around I saw that the truck had crashed into a tree, making it easy pickings. Mission successful. Just as planned... yeah.

Even if the most part of that was luck (and you better believe it was), that's where Far Cry 2 shines. In letting you take the world by the reins and eltting you forge your own story it keeps you constantly on your toes. Simply running into a camp and taking the guards out with no prior plan is exhilirating, and starting your adrenaline going before calming you with the peaceful African surroundings feels like the work of a genius.

In a shorter way: excellent game, higher recommended.

Summary: Amazing.