I only barely knew of its name (and knew nothing about the game) but bought it during Steam's summer sale, and I love it. The checkpoints can get tedious, but that's really the only detractor I can find. I actually kind of like driving 15 minutes to get places, I'd just rather not have to get out of the car at checkpoints. Guns feel good, shooting is good (although I wouldn't mind having bullet drop), nice cars, interesting interactions with the people, and extremely immersive.

I'll be honest, the buddies feel like the most realistic AIs I've ever interacted with in a video game. They truly seem like people I'm interacting with, and I actually have some small semblance of care for them. Very dark, very visceral on the injuries and everything. I rip a bullet out of my leg. My buddy goes down and I'm out of medkits, and I put him out of his misery. And of course, I'm choosing to do morally ambiguous things. I execute a king. I can kill the radio operator after I have him send the wrong coordinates, even though he's not really a "bad guy". I'm working for men who extort, steal, and kill their own people. I played the airport level on Modern Warfare 2 and felt like I was only shooting so many pixels, but Far Cry 2 had me feeling genuinely mildly uncomfortable with some of the acts I was doing.

I got a little off-topic there, but back to the buddies. On one of the missions my best buddy, Josip, went down. We were under heavy fire, and were both pretty severely injured. I had to use 2 medkits on myself, and 3 to try and keep him alive, but he was too far gone. Finally I had to put my pistol to his forehead and look away. That was one of the most sobering moments I've ever had in a game, as I just had to mercy kill my best friend. I actually felt something. Within the context of video games, that's pretty unique.

@Example1013 said:

I only barely knew of its name (and knew nothing about the game) but bought it during Steam's summer sale, and I love it. The checkpoints can get tedious, but that's really the only detractor I can find. I actually kind of like driving 15 minutes to get places, I'd just rather not have to get out of the car at checkpoints. Guns feel good, shooting is good (although I wouldn't mind having bullet drop), nice cars, interesting interactions with the people, and extremely immersive.

I'll be honest, the buddies feel like the most realistic AIs I've ever interacted with in a video game. They truly seem like people I'm interacting with, and I actually have some small semblance of care for them. Very dark, very visceral on the injuries and everything. I rip a bullet out of my leg. My buddy goes down and I'm out of medkits, and I put him out of his misery. And of course, I'm choosing to do morally ambiguous things. I execute a king. I can kill the radio operator after I have him send the wrong coordinates, even though he's not really a "bad guy". I'm working for men who extort, steal, and kill their own people. I played the airport level on Modern Warfare 2 and felt like I was only shooting so many pixels, but Far Cry 2 had me feeling genuinely mildly uncomfortable with some of the acts I was doing.

I got a little off-topic there, but back to the buddies. On one of the missions my best buddy, Josip, went down. We were under heavy fire, and were both pretty severely injured. I had to use 2 medkits on myself, and 3 to try and keep him alive, but he was too far gone. Finally I had to put my pistol to his forehead and look away. That was one of the most sobering moments I've ever had in a game, as I just had to mercy kill my best friend. I actually felt something. Within the context of video games, that's pretty unique.

I'm glad to hear from someone else who actually liked the game. The majority can't be wrong, and I respect their views, but I know what you mean about the game 100% (my buddy was Warren I think for most the game).

Hopefully Far Cry 3 maintains the good points of the second game and fixes on the stuff that everyone else hated.

Don't like it.

@Giantstalker: Yeah, I completely understand why many people would find issue with the game and the annoying design decisions, especially over the course of the entire thing, but I guess that stuff is just less of an issue for me. Not having any hype for the game to live up to helps as well. If Far Cry 3 can take everything I liked about Far Cry 2 and make it better, it'll probably be one of the best games I've played.

Never played it, but it can't be worse than the first one, which was just a pretty-ass tech demo with a shitty story, no character development, piss-poor voice acting, generic gameplay, and the lack of a decent saving system, among other things.  But damn, did was it nice to look at.
Also, I mad.

I am not going to say it is awesome, but I had fun with it! I kind of don't mind janky games as long for the most part they are not all out broken or glitchy. Like I loved the original Mass Effect even though there was a lot of jank to it. I also really liked STALKER once the stalker mods came out to make it much more playable.

Far Cry 2 is one of the most immersive games I've ever played.

I thought it was a fun game, had its faults

No middle ground between awesome and garbage?

It's a great game with a lot of problems.

@TheMustacheHero said:

Far Cry 2 is one of the most immersive games I've ever played.

If no one wants to read my (admittedly awesome) wall of text, this is basically what I was saying.

I didn't like it, but it's not that bad.  

It's great. A bit buggy but still great.

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 enjoyed it quite a bit but certain things about it are damn infuriating. It had cool weapons, a cool setting, a decent story, and entirely too much driving. Every single task always seemed to involve driving clear across the map and the respawning enemy checkpoints became a nuisance fast.  Plus the world was a bit empty, with no really awe-inspiring locations to explore. I'm super-pumped for Far Cry 3 though. Enough people bitched about Far Cry 2's flaws that I sincerely doubt Ubisoft will make the same mistakes.

There were excellent ideas hindered by bad execution in some places, and the fact that it was very repetitive.  Guns deteriorating was a cool idea, but they do so so very quickly that it's unrealistic as all hell and it was just a major nuisance.  The world was cool, but too empty.  The missions were very repetitive and boring.  The AI was ridiculously over-powered.  If those issues were not there, I would have loved that game so very much.

I sincerely doubt Ubisoft will make the same mistakes.

I played around half of it, and enjoyed it, especially the combat. Finally though the driving got to me, and I quit while putting around in the middle of nowhere, southern end of the map I believe.

I love it!

No neutral option?

Again, I quite liked it. Thought some parts were pretty cool, but it was very repetitive, I never had the drive to finish it.

I enjoyed it, the enemy encounters outside of missions became repetitive though. (Pass through checkpoint, vehicle chase, get onto machine gun, kill them, back into the car, rinse and repeat)

It was mediocre. There were parts that I loved (especially near the end), but almost the whole game was a chore to play. Driving a half-hour to and from missions is a stupid gameplay decision, and I still don't like most of the AI constructs.

It was mediocre. There were parts that I loved (especially near the end), but almost the whole game was a chore to play. Driving a half-hour to and from missions is a stupid gameplay decision, and I still don't like most of Crytek's AI constructs.

Once i looked past its flaws, i found one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had this gen. Really hope they fix the problems in the sequel, if they do that and keep preserve the qualities that made 2 unique, it'll be a special game.

It was a game with a lot of potential, but it was freaking terrible. I absolutely hate it.

Absolutely hated it. Found it ridiculously frustrating.

I really felt that it was great...

For the first 4 or 5 hours. Then it was the same fucking thing, over and over again...

@Spoonman671: You're right. My bad. But, still. AI was not good.

one of the glitchiest games i ever played. complete mess.
 
also, keep your stupid driving and vehicles out of my fps. spent 75% of my time in that game driving around and trying to look at that stupid map at the same time. other 25% going WTF at all the glitches

@RobertOrri said:

Fuck those stupid security checkpoints and the endlessly respawning enemies.

This is the only thing that keeps FC2 from being a top 5 game for me. Why they took the game this way is beyond any of us to understand. It was so weird to hobble it this way. Makes exploration a chore and not the sublime experience it obviously should have been.

So Fucking Gamey.

edit: if there was a mod to fix that AI it could still be one of the best games this year. Just incredible looking.

It's alright, but repetitive like clockwork and the voice actors sound like they're either drunk or stoned. So to answer your question: Mixed.

OH man that game is bad. I liked the first one but my problem with the second was constantly dealing with malaria and it took forever to get to the next objective. There was constantly respawing enemies that made the trips even longer and they always saw you from miles and miles away. It was awful.

Great ideas ruined by repetitive elements and malaria is no good as a disease or a game mechanic.  Who'da thunk it?

A brilliant mise en scene effectively showing the multiple shades of gray mortality within its setting with a "antagonist" that actually was an interesting character.

You know but the gameplay sucked.

Unfortunately it's none of those choices. The game is fun; has a nice atmosphere surrounded with great graphics and sound effects; the guns are fun to shoot and there's a nice variety to them, but with little story and somewhat bad voice acting describing that minimal story, there's not a lot of motivation to go through it. It's a really hard game to want to get through no matter what system you play it on (I have it on 360 and PC). I'd probably give it an 8.0, or four stars if I really had to put a score to it.

I stand on its fucking throat crushing its larynx and chuckling to myself.

Far Cry 2 might be slightly non-garbage if you've never played a real open world shooter before, but it just feels like a massive failure at a Stalker game for consoles to me.

@Thule said:

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

I agree with this. Moddability is not only what rescued Stalker, the followups even incorporated dozens of the tweaks the community engineered. I was really excited for Far Cry 2, until I found out that what you saw was all you got.

il let you know. im going to start it over again for a 3rd time, but this time on PC. but i'll say this. the first time i played i was so disappointed! who ever came up with the road block/checkpoints should be shot (in my humble opinion) it takes you 20 mins to get from point A to point B. the game tells you to bring your own guns because ones you pick up will jam ( i kind of like that) however... by the time you get to where you needed to go, your out of ammo for the weapons you brought and now have to rely on the shitty ones. 2nd time. i knew what i was getting into and kind of enjoyed some spots and hated others. im pretty sure i stopped playing because something better had come out and i only rented it to kill time in an off season. today on steam its 4 bucks. and its yet another off season (however stuff starts coming out next week) so here's to me most likely not beating it for a 3rd fucking time. in a nut shell. game had some really great ideas. brought down by some really really bad ideas.

I really liked the game, but it falls into every "open world" trap there is. It just feels so constructed and stilted, and turns boring on you after a while. Which makes everything all the worse because there is so much awesomely good stuff in there. Hard to beat the feeling of success when you lure a posse pursuing you into a field of dry grass, then set light to it and watch them run and/or burn.

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

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.