Being an avid first-person shooter addict and Far Cry fan, I was excited to pick up a copy of Far Cry 2 the day it came out. Now, after playing the game for nearly a week, I can say without a doubt that it is a great game! You've all heard about the storyline, characters, level design, multiplayer, map editor, and other

ha ha. FC2 is a sad attempt by Ubisoft to lure in fans of the PC original to buy the game. And to link FC2 to any critical acclaim and hype from the origianl. I imagine that it would have sold half as well under the title Mercenary spy in Africa. They bought  the Far Cry IP and copy/pasted it onto this completely unrelated title. They destroyed Far Cry IMO. Suck it ubisoft!!!

I got it for Christmas, but I have put off playing it because I was playing so much of Fallout 3.  I started playing some of it the other day and I feel kind of torn.  It has so many great ideas, but just some of them don't feel like they were done that well.  Overall though it is a good game, I loved the first Far Cry

Far Cry 2 really disappointed me !!!  the game was extremely repetitive and it had the worst voice acting ever  >_<

I sort of liked Far Cry 2. I hated the combat for the most part but loved the weapons (does that make sense?), the graphics and world. I enjoyed it; it just wasn't all it could have been. Brad had a good review.

I really don't enjoy Far Cry 2.

I think it's a good game, although I could easily mention at least 4 key design decision changes right now that would definitely raise its metacritic average by a few points.

I have to strongly disagree about it being a great game. I don't even think I could be convinced that is even a "good" game.

Glad you like it man.

I really want to like this game - but it feels like a chore.

I agree with AlwaysCrashing. Glad you like it though!

"I think it's a good game, although I could easily mention at least 4 key design decision changes right now that would definitely raise its metacritic average by a few points."

"Jayge said:

"I think it's a good game, although I could easily mention at least 4 key design decision changes right now that would definitely raise its metacritic average by a few points."

I'd like to hear what your design changes would be.  I've played through half of the game so far, and the biggest thing that I would change is the guard post encounters.  It happens wayyy too often.  You know that every time you get to a guard post they'll spawn, so I eventually started driving through the brush whenever I got near one.  If the encounters were unique or different, I'd appreciate it a lot more. "

1. Most obviously, make allied faction checkpoints... allied. There is no possible reason to care about what the "implications" are. They are in the middle of a barren African country and all the civilians are pretty much gone anyway.
2. Link fast travel to discovered allied checkpoints. At first, limit the players to the buses, but as they explore more of the map and scout more checkpoints (allied and non-allied), why not reward them? When they are unlocked, make it possible to freely fast travel between discovered allied checkpoints, in-mission and out-of-mission. Of course, who you are "allies" with will change throughout the game, so you'll still need to do some heavy exploring and your tactics will still be changing throughout the game. This allows for a certain amount of flexibility for the player. If not, then make safe houses travel-points. Also, regardless, the player should always be able to warp to an arm's dealer.
3. Saving. I'm not saying that any version needs to have an all-powerful quicksave feature (although the PC does), but the console versions would certainly benefit from some form of progressive backup. I would have any time you enter/take supplies from a checkpoint be an auto-save point. This would provide a useful checkpoint-loading system for players who are still exploring and have to drive all the way to the mission point. It would also reduce the frustration that can come with several tedious repetitions of a task, because the spot you're loading from would most likely be a lot closer than your last hard-save.
4. Controls and basic tweaks are necessary, and all fall under one criticism from me: the gunplay. Weapons are cool, have nice sounds, and are fun to use, but a problem with the game is the way it uses accelerated aiming. I'm not sure if this is prevelant in the PC version. I've played it a bit at my buddy's house, and it seemed alright there. In the console versions, though, Ubisoft created some odd momentum-based aiming system, where the longer you hold the stick in a direction, the faster it picks up speed to aim. This is a failed system. It makes the game awkward, makes tracking moving characters awkward, and it just makes all the shooting even more tedious. Changing it to a standard direct move->aim setup like almost every other game in existence has would make this fine. Once that problem is fixed, all that would be needed would be a reduction of the ridiculous bullet sponges they call enemies. Seriously. I know they want to make the game slightly challenging... but making everyone soak shit up like they're on PCP isn't the answer.

I think far cry 2 is great, it's not far cry 1 definetely but it's a brilliant game.  I do agree that maybe having a few less checkpoints or maybe make half of them friendly would make the game a little more tollerable on your longer journeys but I don't find any of your other comments bug me Jayge.  I like the fact that I have to drive between checkpoints strangely (I hated it in GTA4). 

The thing that actually gets on my nerves the most is actually one of the things I like best, the healing system, I hate having to fish bullets out of my leg in the middle of a firefight.  I die through blood lose a lot more than I die due to enemy fire.  That said, the animations are pretty brutal and I like what it tries to do for immersion rather than use the vastly over-used magicly healing body which has been in every shooter since Halo: CE.

The aiming system seems fine to me,

"

The aiming system seems fine to me, I've never had a problem hitting a moving target.  Maybe you're just not very good :P j/k"