It's fun but tedious. Didn't vote since it's neither awesome nor smoldering garbage.

Weres the middle ground answer :( ? I liked it but it has many , many flaws that keep it from shinning

I thought the gameplay was flawed, but awesome.  If that makes sense... I totally enjoyed the game but acknowledge it's shortcomings. 

Weres the middle ground answer :( ? I liked it but it has many , many flaws that keep it from shinning

I haven't played it, so this is the only answer I can give:
 
  

I never stand on far cry 2.

Awesome really though heavily flawed and bugged by things like "oh you like far cry 2 well f*** you your savegame is broken".
Hyping for Far Cry 3. 
That is all.

It is a game I just bought yesterday.

Soooo many damn nice things in this game. Found myself killing tons of people with Molotov cocktails and the correct wind direction. Cool story, and huge maps.

One of those games, I sit with in the hand from time to time, but end up not reinstalling again.

Fuck those stupid security checkpoints and the endlessly respawning enemies.

@Aetheldod said:

Weres the middle ground answer :( ? I liked it but it has many , many flaws that keep it from shinning

If only it was moddable, it would be one of the best games ever made.

Unfortunately, it will forever remain mediocre and dissapointing, due to some crappy design decisions.

Middling. Some good times to be had in it, some awful times to be had as well.

if they tweaked enemy respawn times that game could have been something special

I kind of liked it,but I wouldn't call it awesome.It's a pretty decent open world shooter in which you spend way too much time driving from point to point.Also a tip to the OP,if you're doing a poll about game's quality,always add a middle ground,because there are a lot of people like myself that didn't it was awesome,but also think it's better than something you would call a piece of garbage.

The game has some serious design issues, but I still love the hell out of that game.

It's an awful game, it manages to be even more repetitive than the first Assassin's Creed.
 
Shouldn't be called Far Cry either.

Not a single answer could just say that the game was bad?

I tried to go through it many times but I just fell asleep. There was just no reason to keep going.

I do like it, but I'll never play it again.

Had great promise but was ruined by respawning enemies repetitive missions and Malaria I had more fun with the sandbox editor that came with the game and that wasn't even half has good as crytek sandbox editor.

It's got some really good decision choices that were marred by some really bad design choices. 
 
The open world idea sounds great, and it allows different approaches to different objectives. The shooting, for the most part, feels good (when your gun isn't breaking) and most everything else is really well done. 
 
However, I feel that they could have done some other things. I know that the PC version includes a way to save anywhere, but for some reason this was left out of the console version and you can only save at safehouses. This is fucking infuriating. What if I want to do something completely stupid and then reload my last save so its consequences go away? What if I all of a sudden need to get off of the game for some reason and I'm 30 minutes from any save point? This was just a horrible decision for consoles, and I don't have the money for a gaming PC right now. I did buy a Far Cry 1 and 2 pack on Steam for like 7.50, so when I do get a computer that can run it this complaint will go away. 
 
My other major problem with the game is its weapons. They seem to break only after a few reloads. I don't think that's realistic - if it was, guns would be a lot less handy - and it's a very bad design decision to have guns break on you in almost any game. They should at least last a whole lot longer than they do. 
 
As for the map, I feel like they should have kept the whole thing on the screen even when you're walking. The complete bottom half cuts off for some stupid reason. 
 
In short, I cannot in good conscience say that the game was bad because so much of it is presented so well and it contains some very good, very well-executed ideas. I also have a very hard time saying it was good because several decisions and ideas severely hamper the experience for me. I've had several moments of the game that are great fun, but several moments that have also been tedious and annoying because of bad design. So I honestly can't pick either option on the poll.

I liked the first half of it, but when the second half was just the first half all over again, I put it down and walked away.

Middle ground.
 
Idea is great, workout is horrible, I loved the openness and the gun buying/modding.

I enjoyed it quite a bit. I'm a sucker for open world games though.

I have eyed the game up a number of times, but I never actually bought it.  It seems like an interesting game and I would like to try it if only to pass my own judgment.

I love it for all its flaws and crazy one-of-a-kind experiences you can have. 
 
And allow me to be the first to say: Bird noise, the Wizard, a grenade rolled down a hill.

I hated it when it first came out. Recently tried it again and it finally clicked and I enjoyed it. Plenty of flaws, but also lots to build on for the 3rd.

I didn't care for it. But I didn't hate it.

I found it to be very boring, tedious, and frustrating.

I loved Far Cry 2, some parts were a little annoying (respawning checkpoints) but once you figured out how to get around them or through them quickly, I found the rest of the game beautifully made.

If you're used to Halls of Duty though, the open world and free roaming nature of the game would probably be tortuous for you.

It had so much potential, and was actually a lot of fun for awihle. But the missions were boring, and the respawning enemies was fucking tedious.

The first hour is cool, but the rest is a grind. 
 
I wanted wildlife in Africa, like using lions by throwing meat at guard posts (WHICH SHOULD NOT RESPAWN).

I really liked it a lot, but I do recognise that there were a number of ugly flaws; I'm sorry that I'm not polarised enough for you. Having said that, I don't really understand the seething hate some people have for this game...
 
Anyway, my opinion in list form:
 
Good:

• Graphically, the game was amazing (for me, more so than Crysis)
• Vast open world with a lot of enjoyable exploration waiting to be done.
• Unique setting. It's great to play a game set in a rarely explored setting.
• A great selection of guns, most of which I thought were very satisfying to use.
• No HUD. For me this is a huge plus (particularly in an FPS). It makes a 'realistic' game like this that much more immersive.
• Great soundtrack. I think the soundtrack and they way they implemented it really worked to enhance the game's atmosphere.
• A great variety of playable characters/NPCs. A huge breath of fresh air from the kinds of bland (~30 year old and, caucasian) characters in other games.
  
• The wonderful (and occasionally brutal and gory) healing animations.
• Dynamic environments - especially the nice day/night cycle and weather system.
• The buddy system; I always find it great when games have a down but not out mechanic.
• A large variety of things to do and multiple ways to do them.
• The fire mechanic was interesting.
  

• The last act. No spoilers, all you need to know is that the last act was bad in several ways...
• Absolutely irrelevant in every single way to Far Cry 1 (well, you shoot things from a first-person perspective).
• Malaria - really, this was just unnecessary.
• Some truly awful AI moments - enemies driving into trees over and over, enemies not seeing me standing right in front of them, enemies spinning aiming at walls etc...
• No playable female characters, perhaps not a huge issue, but it seems confounding to have a bunch of female characters and not have them playable.
• Fake sense of 'moral choice'. When it comes down to it, there's not much reason for choosing one mission over another - it's basically be a jerk or be a different kind of jerk.
• Jeep product placement. Ugh.
• Aside from unlocking new weapons, the other upgrades seemed relatively useless.
• Lack of fast travel options/bus stops and several missions taking place a long way away from where you are currently.
• A bunch of annoying glitches - diamond cases not opening, the GPS light giving false information, enemies that mysteriously become invincible. And a whole array of other oddities.
• The rail shooter section at the start of act 2.
• I felt that some of the diamond cases should have had more value. I would have liked some of the harder to reach ones to be worth 4 or 5.

I was pretty letdown by Far Cry 2, but I wouldn't say it was garbage either. Ubisoft just made the "Molyneux Mistake" of promising a lot more than they could deliver. When it debuted, I remember thinking it was going to be something a lot more like what I heard S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was. I wanted to go around doing missions for various factions in an open world where I could sneak up on a group of enemies, use my map and binoculars to stake out the situation and mark enemy locations, infiltrate the enemy's  perimeter to sabotage their vehicles with a timed explosive and when the time was right, make my assault.  
 
Instead, I was attacked every five minutes while trying to drive anywhere, was seen instantly any time I tried to sneak up and plant a bomb, making bombs absolutely worthless, and spent hours looking for cases of diamonds. On top of it I had to deal with sudden Malaria at the worst times and every gun I picked up off a bad guy who had just fired off 3 clips at me without the gun jamming, it would magically jam after 2 shots and would continue to jam every 5-10 shots afterward. And then there was all the crashing and doing the same 5 mission types 20 times. On second thought, maybe it is garbage.... 
 
Even still, I have to say FC3 looks interesting, despite all I know of it's predecessor. 

I wanted to like it but god damn it was fucking horrible to play. Like other people have said, those fucking enemy checkpoints ruined the game entirely. I really liked the premise of being in a massive open world in africa, a place that is rarely seen in games, but the unavoidable checkpoints and seemingly rather closed off environments (most of the time a lot of the land seemed impassable due to cliffs either side of the road and stuff)  didn't let me have any fun whilst playing.

It remains one of my favourite games of all time.  The setting, gameplay and emotional response it managed to illicit in me were all superb. Crytek are by far my favourite FPS developer largely because of this game.

Like others have said it was a great idea marred by some terrible design flaws and execution. 
 
When I dicked around with it for a few hours, I enjoyed my time enough, but the problems prevented me playing through it. The multiplayer was surprisingly great.

Great weapons and firefights but just too repetitive. It was just too little content stretched too thinly, something Ubisoft tried with Assassin's Creed. I thought the world was drab, and hated driving for ages to get to missions and having to stop at those damn respawning checkpoints. Plus a kind of nonexistent story.

Far Cry 2 was a bad game that I put far too many hours in to ever feel good about it. I love me some open world games, but the problem with Far Cry 2's open world is that it's completely empty of anything except endlessly respawning dudes at checkpoints. More than half of that game is spent driving from point A to point B and fighting off endless waves of bad guys, even with the fast travel mechanic. The actual shooting is fine, but whatever crap they made up in regards to it's dynamic nature isn't true, and the story itself is amazingly dull in all aspects. Yeah, I can approach a mission from any angle, but at the end of the day it's all about driving from point A to point B and shooting dudes for a good 20+ hours.

When it clicked, it was awesome. Stalking a group of bad dudes, silently taking them out one by one, all under the cover of darkness in an incredibly beautiful landscape. Or the first time I was rescued by a buddy. I had no idea what was happening but it was awesome. Excellent stuff. 
 
But damn, the tedious travelling, made all the more frustrating due to respawning checkpoints full of enemies, was a real bummer. The malaria system too. Some great ideas in that game, and I think the shooting itself is really solid. Which for a FPS is a pretty important thing. Also, when bumped up to max settings on PC, the game is capable of producing some really beautiful vistas. Plus a map editor. 
 
All in all, I feel that for the price it goes for these days, the game is a must-buy. Not even to play through the single-player mode, but as an epic sandbox to dick about in.

It remains one of my favourite games of all time.  The setting, gameplay and emotional response it managed to illicit in me were all superb. Crytek are by far my favourite FPS developer largely because of this game.

It was fun, but it had so many major faults that I couldn't bring myself to finish it.

Is anyone else surprised how majorly divisive this game seems to be? Some people love it, some people hate it, and some do both at the same time.

I played the 360 version when it first came out and got super frustrated by the horrible save system. That combined with the random malaria and weapon breaks was enough to turn me off the game. I recently played it on PC and just being able to save anywhere goes a long way to make the game more fun to play. It still has some problems, but I think the PC version is much better than the 360 version.

It's a crap game. Tedious, boring, repetitive, unfair and uninteresting.
 
It looked nice, though. Also liked the fire mechanics. That's about it for pros.

I got about two hours in and got distracted with another game so I can't really answer that.

awful and repetitive, however it had nice graphics for its time.

  
had to go for smoldering garbage only because there was no middle ground
wish there was a 'decent' or ''good experiment' or 'could've been amazing' option 
 
its a great game to get immersed in but there are certain elements (enemies seeing you from miles away and respawning immediately / gun degradation or inability to maintain a useful state long enough) that keep it from being really great, it could have been one of the best, if not the leading example, of predatorily based combat - or outright bloodbaths if you go that way, but there are numerous detractions and the story is hard to get into or care about
 
i spent most of my time, and still occasionally, in the editor, its a lot of fun, and the main reason i bought the game after having it shown to me by a friend