Potential not fully realised
Far Cry 2 is an open world sandbox game and you play it like a normal first person shooter. Unfortunately the shooting action or navigating the environment is not fun.
THE CALL OF AFRICA
Story sets you as a lone mercenary who has come to a nameless African country to kill a man named The Jackal. This arms trader has sold guns to both sides of the conflict and the situation is very tense. Getting in touch with The Jackal is not easy and you need to do some dirty work to all sides of the conflict. In the process you will also make friends and enemies. Story has nothing to do with the previous Far Cry games and that has been what the designers wanted. It’s all interesting and kind of a modern stuff, but unfortunately the actual gameplay is not so fun.
PLAY LIKE A GRAND THEFT AUTO
Structure of the game is the same as in any Grand Theft Auto: you go to a marked spot on your map, accept to do a mission, (usually) drive to a location, use your guns and then collect your reward. Of course there are main missions and side missions. Sometimes in these kinds of games the side missions are repetitive and boring, but in Far Cry 2 you can unlock new weapons, make friends and get all kinds of bonuses that really help you to make progress.
SHOOTING AND NAVIGATING ARE NOT THAT FUN TO DO
One major aspect in Far Cry 2 is combat. You can only carry one weapon in a specific class so it means that you are usually carrying 1 melee weapon, 2 fire arms, 1 special weapon and some Molotov cocktails and grenades. There’s a ton of guns in this game and they can be upgraded, but still the shooting action is not fun. Mostly this has to do with your enemies: AI is stupid, it has an amazing x-ray vision, it takes too many bullets to kill them and combat usually takes place when you are just travelling from place to place. You almost always feel interrupted and irritated when shooting starts. After a fight you usually need to heal yourself and these animations are cool to see: bullets are coming out from your arm or leg and a bandage is being put in place.
The second major aspect is navigating the environment. This happens by taking a map and a GPS to your hands: no minimaps to tell you where to go. World is big and you’ll learn to navigate in it, but it’s just boring to do so. There’s nothing more to do than to just look at the nice scenery. The world of Fallout 3 was boring to navigate too, but there you could warp quickly from place to place when you had first discovered them. In Far Cry 2 there are bus stations to do just that, but they are way too few and far between. There are also frequent checkpoints which always guarantee a fire fight. For some reason enemies respawn to these checkpoints and when you’re driving through them they ALWAYS come after you. This means that in a regular basis you need to step out of your car and do some killing even if you don’t want to do that.
SAVE SYSTEM DONE WRONG
For some reason you can’t save anywhere and anytime, which would have cleared most of the frustrations in this game just like they did in Fallout 3 for example. Saving happens in specific spots on the map and sometimes even in mid-mission. Chances to save are plentiful, but still it feels like an unnecessary extra work that the game puts you through. Maybe the designers thought that it would add some realism to this game and actually it does just that, but sometimes realism is not fun.
A SOLID PRESENTATION
Graphics are good and while the texture popping is frequent the star of this game is clearly the world itself. Trees move like they should, day and night cycles and the weather changes dynamically. Character models are good, but rag doll physics are a disappointment. All in all I must say that while Far Cry 2 is not the best there is the game world is still seamless enough to create a feeling of a big open world. Sound design of course adds to the mood and the music is just there to bring you to that right atmosphere. Sound effects are good when it comes to weather effects, but the voice acting is not the best I’ve heard. So to put it in a nutshell Far Cry 2’s presentation is solid and maybe even above average, but not the best there is.
MULTIPLAYER WITH A MAP EDITOR
Multiplayer is up to 16 players and it’s a standard stuff like you’ve seen in a million games before it, but there are a few twists that are worth considering. First the time of day can change from match to match, but more dramatic effect is that the weather can change: it’s a very different thing to shoot someone in daylight than try to do the same at night in a thick fog.
There are 16 standard maps to play with, but there’s the thing called Map Editor, which allows you to do build your own map from scratch and then publish it online. If you like Far Cry 2’s multiplayer then this is the way to keep you busy for a long time.
POTENTIAL IS NOT FULLY REALISED
Far Cry 2 has a solid presentation while adding many new ideas and elements. Unfortunately in the end the actual gameplay is not that fun. Save system hinders the experience, navigating is just boring and combat is irritating. Multiplayer is standard stuff, but the map editor has a huge potential. Go check this game out, but be warned: you may not like what you find.
