Far Cry 2

The Good
I liked the idea behind the game. Unfortunately...

The Bad
... it just doesn't work.

From the absolutely horrible and most annoying rapidly re-spawning enemy AI ever to feature in a video game, the immersion breaking "town" which contains six mercenaries and a priest, the maze-like map and right down to stupid details like road signs coloring to indicate which path to take (as if the ever-present GPS and a detailed interactive map weren't enough). It just doesn't work.

The Bottom Line
Here's some selective commentary on the typical Far Cry 2 session.

You arrive back into the "town" and check the map for a triangle with an exclamation point (indicating quest givers). This will invariably be one of the two faction HQ's for the main missions. You arrive at the door and all your weapons are removed by the guard to prevent you from ending the game early, upon which you ascend the stairs and listen to the mission details. You then either accept or refuse, although you have to accept to progress in the game, making the choice rather pointless. The faction leader then gives you twenty diamonds and tells you that it's a super secret cover ops mission, so don't expect any helps from his troops. In fact, he says, they will actively engage you. This is in a way convenient since there's no way to distinguish, visually or otherwise, between the two sides anyway. There are no civilians whatsoever anyway.

You hoof it back to your vehicle or take a conveniently placed re-spawning town vehicle and immediately get a call from your best buddy to meet him in some safe house or another. You check the map. Oh great, your friend is on one side of the map, and the mission objective on the other? Oh well, lets go. Wow, this car sure feels like a spaceship. Is that a shack I see at the end of the bridge? Suddenly, machine gun fire everywhere. A second after you pass the checkpoint you're being pursued by an amazingly fast accelerating assault truck that's carrying a gunner who hits you with sniper-like accuracy with a heavy machine gun, all while speeding down Africa's dirt roads at 90 mph. The inhuman assault truck never ever gives up.

Okay, you made it to your friend's safe house at the other side of the map either by destroying five assault trucks or stalking through Africa walking or swimming. Your friend tells you how she would like you to alter your mission to suit her. Why exactly couldn't you have told me this over the phone?

Ten assault trucks later, you arrive at your mission objective. You snipe (sniping is easy, no bullet drop, perfect aim, always a kill) a few stupid enemies, throw a couple of grenades and it's over in a minute. After this pseudo-climax, you feel very empty and alone.

But wait, your friend calls you. She's in trouble just a bit off the objective. You rush to help her, kill a couple more stupid AIs and you're presented with a menu option "press X to medicate your best buddy" and "press Q to mercy kill your best buddy".

You press escape, click on Quit, click Quit in the main menu, confirm that yes, you do want to Quit and are thrown onto the desktop. You bask in the ineffable complexity of situations which bothered to publish this trash.

The Good
I’ll disclose this up front - I’m a bit biased. I married into an East African family, so there’s a special place in my heart for a game set in Africa. Although the story is set in a fictional central African nation, the scenery looks very East African (and the development team went to Kenya for research).

And when I say “looks”, I mean it “looks fantastic”. The graphics are just gorgeous. Big, open plains. Exotic vegetation. Grass slowly moving in the wind. Zebras and other animals roaming freely. And a dynamic time-of-day and weather system. You’ll find yourself on a river, gazing at the early morning fog tinting everything in yellow.

So let’s get into the story - you’re a mercenary, sent to said country to assassinate an infamous arms dealer, the Jackal, who is selling weapons to two big warring factions. However, you've barely even landed and immediately contract Malaria (wow, that was quick?!) and pass out, waking up to see the Jackal mock you. With your mission now basically failed, you spend your time doing random jobs for the two major warring factions.

Those jobs are pretty similar - go somewhere, kill someone or destroy something. As you play, you’ll meet random NPCs who can become your buddies. Those serve several purposes: For one, they serve as a “get out of jail free” card - if you’re about to die in a firefight, a buddy will appear and save you. That works once every day or so. (The silly part is that a buddy will save you whenever you would have normally died, even if that was because you fell hundreds of feet. How does the buddy save you? Scrape you up off the ground and put you back together?!)

The other purpose of a buddy is to provide an alternate solution to a mission. Once you receive your assignment, your buddy will call you and offer you a different way, which usually includes additional waypoints, but results in an overall easier job.

I have to say that the buddy system actually works quite well. You always have one primary buddy, and you almost feel something like an emotional bond to them. They can actually die - you can save their lives, but only so many times. At some point, they’re mortally wounded on the ground, and the medication that used to immediately heal them stops working. That leaves you with the option to put them to rest by over-medicating them, abandoning them, or shooting them in the head, which allows them a final line like “I’m sorry, mama”. I was impressed how effective this is when you experience this scene for the first time.

There are side-missions as well, but there’s not much to them. You can receive assassination missions (go to position X, kill person), or jobs to destroy convoys (which conveniently drive in a circle, waiting for you to ambush them).

How you go about a mission is up to you. The map is open, so you can approach from different directions. You can be stealthy. Or just blow everything up. Engage in lengthy firefights or try to rush through the opposition.

The Bad
This game is repetitive! There are so many missions that feel identical: Go to contact person. Receive mission. Get call from buddy about alternate route. Go to waypoint A. Firefight. Go to waypoint B. Firefight. Rinse. Repeat.

What’s really annoying is that enemies always appear at the same location, even outside missions. Every major intersection and every checkpoint has a bunch of people out to get you. You can kill them all, but drive for a while and come back, and there’ll be another set of people waiting for you just where you killed (or ignored) the last bunch.

Really, it seems like you’re the most hated person in this country. Everybody is out to get you! Whenever you see someone, you can be sure that they’re about to take shots at you. There are no civilians in the game. Sure, it makes it easier to identify friends and foes, but it feels a bit weird.

The only mission that really stands out is the last one. It seems like all of a sudden, the level designers woke up. Why couldn't more missions be like that? Really, so many great things happen during the final 30 minutes of the game.

The enemy AI is a mixed bag. It’s touted as being super smart, and they sometimes appear to be tactical - they flank you, hide behind obstacles, etc. At the same time, they just look completely lost sometimes. There've been many occasions where I saw somebody in plain view, looking roughly in my general direction but not doing anything in particular. After staring that person in the eye for a few seconds, I wondered - was that an NPC? A civilian? Do those exist after all? So I walk a bit closer, almost touch him when he finally springs to life and shoots at me. So it was an enemy after all, just a stupid one.

As for the story, there are several problems: First of all, there’s the old problem of the silent protagonist. The entire game is played in first-person perspective. Even during “cutscenes” (i.e. people talking you, the camera never ever leaves the first person perspective), you’re fully in control of the player. You never say a word. It just feels weird.

Next, all the characters are completely and entirely interchangeable. I completely lost track of who is who. None of the characters have any distinguishing features or characteristics. Later on, you can somewhat side with one faction or another. But which one do you pick? I don’t know! They’re all the same!

Same with the buddies - they look different, but that’s the extent of it. If one dies, another one takes their place, but it doesn't seem to make a shred of a difference to the actual gameplay. You also have this reputation system, but it doesn't seem to serve a purpose. It seems like the developers initially planned a lot more depth but ended up cutting a lot.

At the same time, parts of the writing is actually nice - and the best parts are even kind of hidden. A little side quest is to find audio tapes of an interview with the Jackal, and those are great! But those tapes have no bearing on the rest of the game, so players are unlikely to find many of them. And it’s a shame, that’s where the writing really shines. It often feels like Far Cry 2 paired a great writer and a bunch of not so great level designers.

The map is big, which is nice. You can travel using jeeps or boats. The problem is that both are destructible, and there’ll often be random patrols on vehicles just chasing you and trying to take you down. It’s a matter of time until your car breaks down. You can either fix it if it’s not beyond repair, or you commandeer the vehicle of said patrol after you eliminate the owners, but sooner or later, you’ll be stranded without a car, forcing you to walk, run (which makes you dizzy after a few seconds due to Malaria), and eventually find a car. This can take a while.

This problem was solved in Red Dead Redemption with the ability to whistle, where a horse would appear within seconds. Grand Theft Auto avoided the issue by being set in a city where you are surrounded by cars (and starting in GTA IV, you could call for a cab on your cell phone). But here, in the big open plains, you’re forced to just walk for ages, in a huge open area with nothing but plants and a few animals for miles.

And for all the boasting about the game being so open and free, it usually ends up being pretty linear in the end. You go through the main missions one by one. In the end, there aren't that many different solutions to the core parts of a mission, and the game doesn't really handle you trying to outsmart it very well. In one mission, I was supposed to assassinate somebody with a sniper rifle from the building across. Instead, I managed to make my way into the building of the target itself... who simply stared at me, not saying anything, even after I started hurting him.

The Bottom Line
Again, I must remind you of my bias - I couldn't dislike this game. It does such a great job conveying the flora and fauna of sub-saharan Africa that I enjoyed just walking around and taking the scenery in. And the graphics are great.

The game itself isn't bad - lots of interesting guns, reasonable shooting mechanics, lots of driving and firefights. It just feels repetitive and unspectacular sometimes. The story barely moves at all (and the lack of cutscenes and the completely silent protagonist really don’t help here), and the characters are so flat that you couldn't possibly care about any of them.

And - don’t worry, this is not a spoiler - a word about the ending. A quick Google search reveals that it is universally hated. I personally loved it. It’s different and brings a nice touch to the whole storyline. But that may again be due to my attachment to Africa. People who don’t care much about the continent might not appreciate the ending.

The Good
A long, challenging and varied action game, with excellent graphics and sound. If you'll get tired from the non-stop, adrenalin-pumping action, you can always climb onto the highest cliff and stare at the beautifully presented African setting.

The Bad
Sometime can be repetitive and tiresome. Over-the-edge realism and the feeling that some ideas weren't polished enough before entering the game will frustrate you.

The Bottom Line
First of all, while carrying the same name, Far-Cry 2 is not in any way related to the original Far-Cry game, released a few years ago by CryTek. While the latter took place in a tropical environment and featured somewhat of a Modern Sci-Fi shooter experience, Far-Cry 2 takes itself very seriously, presenting a rather realistic campaign and storyline, involving arms trafficking and army uprising in a war-torn African country.

The game begins with our hero, whom his character can be chosen from a bunch of deadbeats mercenaries (though the game experience itself doesn't really change by this decision as all character plays the same) with a clear death wish, arriving to war worn African country, in the pursuit of an arms dealer called "The Jackal".

From the second you'll start up the game, you'll notice the big emphasis and efforts the developers have put on realism in Far-Cry 2. Picking a weapon or opening a door will show our hero's hand reaching to the handle, going up a ladder will remove our selected weapon and feature our hands climbing swiftly between the levels, jumping into a lake will make our character do "swimming moves" with his hands (removing the weapon from the screen). If you played Crysis you probably know what I mean.

Even when you'll treat yourself when getting hurt, you'll see your character injecting himself with a syringe, pulling out a bullet from his knee or taking pills, all from first person view.

But the realism doesn't stop in the visual aspects of the game. Weapons used throughout the game will wear out, jam and eventually explode in your hands, probably causing you to be shot and die by your enemy gun. Clicking the map key will actually remove the weapon and make our hero pull out a map in his hand. No doubt, these all help make the experience in Far-Cry 2 much more realistic, but the fact that you'll get shot while trying to figure out where to head next or while injecting a syringe can be tiresome, especially in your first playing hours.

The action in Far-Cry 2 is very intense. The weapon inventory is huge and varied: grenades, guns, assault-guns, heavy machine guns, missile launchers and even mortar weapons, all free to use and kill with.

You can cause mayhem to your foes in so many different ways it's amazing. You want to attack an enemy post with your guns blazing? Go ahead. You prefer to snipe them silently from a hill? Good for you, there's a hill right up there. Want to take the stealth approach? Be my guest. The game also features a cool fire system - just throw a Molotov bottle to a twig field in a hot day and watch your enemy burn up in the spreading flames.

On the highest difficulty levels, the enemy in Far-Cry 2 can offer quite a challenge. Enemy soldiers will often flank you and perform what looks like clever tactics. But while your foes will sometime act pretty smart, there will be occasions in which they'll act absolutely stupid - running over each other with cars, crashing into trees or just staring at a tree blazing in a flame you started, waiting to be shot.

Far-Cry 2 features a huge world to wander on. There are dozens of storyline and side missions that'll keep you busy for a long time. Some missions will reward you with diamonds (the money in the game), others will advance the plot or give you different perks. The missions are fairly what we're used to from other games in the genre, but the excellent level design greatly compensate for it, making each mission feel practically new.

The game also presents a nifty purchasing system to buy weapons, equipment and upgrades for your guns. A full day/night cycle is also introduced in Far-Cry 2, so you can choose whenever you want to perform your next assignment.

Throughout the single player campaign you'll venture hundred of real-life kilometers walking, swimming driving cars, trucks, assault vehicles, gunboats and licensed Chrysler Jeep models. Since mission goals and briefings are spread across the entire game world you'll find yourself spending a lot of time behind a wheel. And while driving a Jeep Wrangler throughout an African savanna is fun, long road trips can become repetitive and boring quickly.

Aside from mission locations, enemy soldiers can also be found in outposts and road barricades which are scattered throughout the land. Since there are so many of those, almost every road trip will require you to pass via one of these posts, immediately causing all of its residents to start shooting you.

Evading a post is possible by going around it (what will usually extend the trip) and attacking it will cleanse it only for a short while - until the next time you'll have to pass through that post - as enemy regeneration is used greatly in Far-Cry 2.

Strangely enough, there is no way to take more than one mission on the same time in Far-Cry 2. You'll often find yourself accepting a mission which its target is located 20 minutes of driving from the point you've taken it. And after you'll drive to the mission site and complete it, you'll have to drive all the way back to tell your employer you're completed the assignment. Add to those 2-3 outposts on the way you'll need to go through, some of them you probably already cleansed a couple of time before, and you'll get a nice recipe for frustration.

While the storyline in Far-Cry 2 is fairly banal, with all the usual predicted plot-twists, it is presented very well and indeed captures the African experience. Too bad though, that the developers insisted that Far-Cry 2 will remain a standard action game, and didn't add some adventure elements to it.

For example, through the game the player is acquainted with "Buddies", who are also mercenaries like him. They'll offer different ways to complete storyline missions and provide side missions of their own. Your Buddies usually hang out in shady bars which you can visit, and while you can read a (very, very) short background story on each of them, it would've been nice if you could actually talk with them about other things, beside the missions they want you to do.

The graphical setting in Far-Cry 2 is very pretty. You'll see lovely waterfalls and lakes, amazing sunsets, trees moving gently in the wind or being torn by storms. Zebras and deer will roam the land freely, if sometimes bumping foolishly in your car. The human models are also impressive, and the same goes for the vehicles. The animal models look a bit uninspired, but all-in-all they do manage to catch the overall feeling of the African savanna.

Sounds include various music tracks, which help getting in the African mood. The sound effects are really good, too. The guns sound great, vehicles roar as expected and the whistle of a mortar slowly getting louder and louder is really terrifying. The voice acting is also great.

Aside from the single player campaign, Far-Cry 2 comes with a great and easy-to-use map editor, and a 16-players online multiplayer option, which includes standard death match and classes based multiplayer games.

Far-Cry 2 took a lot of time to develop, and it can be seen in the product outcome. The journey to find and kill the Jackal is indeed epic, both in size and feeling, mostly due to the excellent graphics and level design. While some parts of the game are frustrating, it is no doubt Far-Cry 2 offers a unique and challenging experience that shouldn't be ignored by any action lover.