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    Far Cry 2

    Game » consists of 16 releases. Released Oct 21, 2008

    The sequel to the original Far Cry dispenses with Jack Carver, and moves the action to a war-consumed Africa complete with an open-ended storyline involving civil war, several hours of missions, heated gunplay, and a slew of dynamic elements powered by a new engine.

    shadowmoses900's Far Cry 2 (PlayStation 3) review

    Avatar image for shadowmoses900

    A boring and repetitive shooter, save your money

    Pros:

    -Nice graphics

    -Interesting setting

    -Extremely large open world to explore

    -Great map maker

    -Some interesting gameplay ideas

    Cons:

    -Overly repetitive gameplay

    -Too much focus on realism makes the game frustrating

    -Storyline and characters are weak

    -Lack of fast travel options

    -Stupid and annoying AI

    Far Cry 2 is a game that has good ambition, but flawed execution. Some of it's ideas could have been beneficial, but due to it's overly dull gameplay these elements are never fully realized.

    Being set in war torn Africa, Far Cry 2 allows you to create your own character and freely explore the open world of a fictional African nation that has become engulfed in a violent civil war. It is your job to hunt down a mysterious figure known as "The Jackal", a gun runner who is supplying arms to both sides of the conflict. The setting of this game is bold and quite realistic as these conflicts happen in 3rd world countries, especially in Africa, all the time. But Far Cry 2 does not quite deliver on it's premise. The characters in the game, including your own, have almost no personality, they also talk extremely fast which makes it hard to follow the dialog. You get to choose a character to play as from a handful of others, but this does not really matter as you will never once hear your character speak and none of them provide any differences in gameplay.

    After selecting your character you begin in the back seat of a taxi, as you drive through the country side the game's theme and setting immerses you, which also owes much of it due to it's gorgeous graphics. Dirt kicks up off of ground, tall fields of grass are beautiful to look at in the sun, tress move as the wind blows....it all looks great and it makes the world feel more alive. As you spend your time admiring the scenery you start to fall ill of Malaria, which will end up becoming very annoying later in the game. After you make it to your hotel all hell breaks loose and you will meet the Jackal for the first time, unfortunately due to the hyper speed of the dialog you cannot understand what his monolog is about.

    As you fight your way out of the war zone you will eventually pass out and wake up in a new area, rescued by a soldier faction that will teach you the basics of the game. The shooting mechanics is solid, guns kick back and feel realistic, the driving is quite smooth, and most of the other basic gameplay elements are solid, at least on the surface. The big mistake that Far Cry 2 makes with it's gameplay is realism. Realism it's self is not an issue if it's done well, but Far Cry 2 does not provide a pleasant experience. Guns wear down over time and can begin to jam (at least for you, never the AI), healing yourself when out of health surrengis requires you to do painful and slow field surgery on yourself which involves snapping bones back in to place, pulling out bullets, and all other hard to watch surgeries.

    This process is also very slow, which is shame when you're in the middle of a fight and have no means to heal yourself, it makes staying alive harder than it needs to be in Far Cry 2. Then there is the malaria, probably the most annoying aspect of the game, you will suffer an attack at random and it will constantly happen unless you find medicine for it, which is a chore in it's self. It involves doing a long and repetitive mission to bring pass ports to civilians, while the effort may make you feel like a good guy, the reward is simply just ONE malaria pill. And you need more than one to get through this game.

    This brings us to another big flaw in Far Cry 2, the travel system. The game world is large, very large to say the least. And while you can use bus stations to get around a little faster, these are few and far between and only go to other bus stations. The other modes of transportation like driving and boating are simply too slow, and frustrating as you will constantly be attacked by enemy patrols, who for some strange reason can always drive faster than you can, even if it's the same exact car. This means that you have no choice but to stop your car and fight them, you will do this constantly as the enemies will always re-spawn again and again, it causes travel to become tedious and far longer than it needs to be.

    Don't even bother with walking, you will NEVER make it. The game world is simply too large for that. The AI it's self is also another issue of Far Cry 2, it's dumb but also frustrating, it doesn't provide a challenge as much as it just provides cheap ways to kill you. For example choosing to take a stealth approach is almost always pointless because as soon as you shoot or get spotted, ALL the enemies in the area know exactly where you are at.

    The enemies do not carry radios nor do they alert each other, they just all zero in on your location regardless, and are just cheap as they seem to have infinite ammo and can pull of instant head shots on you from several distances away. The physics of the AI is, oddly for a game trying to be realistic, is unrealistic. When you shoot them they seem to be non responsive to your bullets as they keep charging at you. You are not alone in combat though, you have a "buddy" in the game who will come to your rescue, but even then they are hardly reliable as they can die and their AI is just as bad as your opponents.

    The world of Far Cry 2 is quite diverse as it is large, you have dense jungles and harsh deserts, mountains and rivers, villages and savannas, and more. And it's stunning to look at. Unfortunately there is not really much to do in this big world, Far Cry 2 offers little reason to explore it's vast world. There are few mission types such as finding lost diamonds, stopping gun trucks etc....but these grow tedious fast, throughout Far Cry 2 you will be doing the same routine over and over again.

    It grows old and boring fast. Playing through the game feels like a chore. Outside of the boring story mode, there is online. It provides a decent amount of features and modes, including a very in depth map maker (probably the best map maker to date), but it still retains the same repetitive and over realistic gameplay.

    Final Verdict:

    Far Cry 2 had so much promise, but it failed to deliver. It's interesting aspects and ideas would have been more appreciated if the game offered better a better gameplay experience. It is not worth your time or your money.

    Far Cry 2 get's a 2/5

    Other reviews for Far Cry 2 (PlayStation 3)

      Far Cry 2 is a solid action game, although it's not amazing. 0

      I started playing Far Cry 2 a couple of weeks now, and I have realised that for the six pounds that I paid for it was damn good value for money. This game is pretty huge, and you can invest over 10 hours playing this game. Far Cry 2 is an open world shooter with a lot of the game based on realism. For example, if you are driving around, and someone shoots at your car, you have to manually repair it. If you get shot up in the middle of combat, you have to literally perform battlefield surgery on ...

      1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

      10% awsome 90% Mediocre 0

      A few weeks ago I had beaten all the holiday season games and had nothing to play.  My older brother said that he had just beaten Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 on the PC and that Far Cry was ok and that Fallout 3 was garbage.  So I went and bought Far Cry 2 since he had a few good things to say about it.  The game is about a mercenary who is sent to Africa to kill The Jackal, an arms dealer who is arming both fighting factions in the country.  Before you start the game you are able to choose what char...

      1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

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