Sometimes technically impressive, but has a few annoying quirks.
There is a lot to be said about Far Cry 2 for its technical feats. This open world game based seemingly somewhere between the Tropic of Cancer and Equator of Africa gives an impressive realism to this environment. Much like other open world based games there is day and night time passage and weather systems. The terrain models of Africa vary between dry Sahara desert to lush jungle. With wonderful lighting, a realistic sense of atmosphere, and nice touches of animation of grass and plants lightly blowing in the breeze, Far Cry 2 is a beautiful game to explore its maps and stop every once a while to look out across a grassland vista during sunrise. A bonus to the technical feat is the ability to burn down this African paradise as there is a system in place to start brush fires that realistically spread and burn down any tree or structure in its path. The environment of this game has received a lot of love and attention to detail, sadly the rest of the single player game hasn't gotten the same treatment.
The premise for Far Cry 2 is noble. You are a merc who is sent in to an unnamed African country torn by civil war to kill a weapons dealer supplying both of fighting factions. The storyline from there becomes insignificant as it really serves as a placeholder excuse to do various missions. Mostly it involves doing some type of mercenary task for one or the other factions, which it never seems to matter for who or why you are doing these things, as long as you get paid. You also have, of course, happened to get malaria in the first few seconds of stepping foot onto Africa. This works against the game as it serves as an occasionally frusterating inconvenience. Plus its a poor taste stereotype of Africa that the first thing that happens when you go over there is getting malaria. The one thing that gets me about the story in Far Cry 2 is that IT HAS NOTHING TO DO with the first game.
An interesting addition to the main storyline are buddies that are found along the way. These buddies offer another line of missions, and alternates to storyline missions. You can only have up to three buddies at a time, but they can also die or be abandoned and be replaced by one of the many others available. Buddies also offer support in missions. First it requires asking them for help if you find one at your safehouse, then it involves dying and having them come to revive you. Even though you can't have them support you when ever you want, which is one of the odd gameplay choices the developer made, they are nice to have as a second chance if you bite it in a mission.
Weapons in the game feel pretty good, and there is a good selection that will fit anyone's gameplay style. You can get your weapons by picking them up from dead guys, or unlock them by doing missions for a weapons dealer. The weapons dealer also offer various upgrades for guns and vehicles and such. Guns do wear over time and will jam, but they don't break completely, or it has never happened in my playthrough, and this touch of realism while inconvenient, still for me felt forgiveable.
A small selection of vehicles are offered, even replicas of actual Jeep brands, but you will only need two vehicles, a swampboat, and a jeep-like truck with a mounted gun. Even though there are plenty of roads, using waterway are really useful as more direct routes that also avoid many of the guardposts on the maps.
There are two things about this game that nearly broke it for me. One is the ending which fortunately lets me play most of the game first. The other is the AI that is more persistent and prominent than the flies in Africa. When you just want to get from point A to point B you will have to deal with these fucks over and over again through numerous guardposts, or random vehicle patrols. You cant outrun them either by vehicle, which is very odd since they drive the same car as you. Somehow when they drive a car is is magically twice as fast. This means that you have no choice but to stay and fight, when you'd rather just get to where you want to go. I put the game on Easy because of this annoying AI, just because I didn't want to die because of a stupid random encounter.
The single player game is still overall good, even though it has some odd let downs that somehow passed playtesting. Sometimes its good to turn on this game just to drive around and explore the rich environments it offers.
I have not tried any of the map making or online stuff as I am internetless right now
