Great First Half, Repetitive Second half
For everything that Far Cry 2 seems to do great, there is an opposite coin of where it seems to drag on. Moments of it seem brilliant while other parts seem down right boring and repetitive. On the whole Far Cry is a very competent open world shooter. It is flat out gorgeous looking and the shooting mechanic is fun. The weapons are for the most part OK and the novelty of many of them wears off after a few hours of use.
Mechanically the game is very sound with only a little bit of the "jank" that is commonly found in open world games. Some of my most satisfying moments of course came from some of that "jank" when I was attempting to capture a base and a pack of dogs or someone accidentally wanders into the base.
The strongest part of the game is by far most of the characters. I say most because for as many characters as there are that are awesome there just as many who are bad. Vaas is of course the standout, but your german compatriot in the second half as well as the Dennis are also great characters in the game.
Much of the failings in this game really boiled down to the repetitiveness of everything going on. The world is huge and if you dive into the side missions right at the outset as my OCD required me to you can get access to almost everything you need right out of the gate. I had completed most of my crafting requirements within the first few hours and also had enough money to buy practically any weapon before it opened up to be free. The side story missions in the game also tread the same ground. Taking over the first few bases stealthy is fun at first, but by the end I was just strolling in with a rocket launcher. Same goes for the exploration of the towers and the surrounding areas. In the end they just became tedious.
Speaking of those towers, there is a whole lot of Assassian's Creed in these moments. They game also has a ton of other gamifying quirks to it too like the tagging of enemies and the hallucinations. I won't spoil what those all actually mean but I was a little disappointed that the whole game wasn't just a trip through an animus. That actually would have been a nice curve ball to throw at the story.
Overall it is a fun and good looking game. A very competent open world shooter and the stealth action is really well done. Just don't let your OCD force you to do every side mission or you will quickly get bored.
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