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
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.

The Good
I like that there's actually an ending in the game so it doesn't repeat itself more than it already does. Other than that, I don't like anything else.

The Bad
Those who cried about how Quake looked so brown, you will cry even more about this. There's is up to four shades of brown in this game. And some blue which comes from the sky.

All the missions are the same, go there, kill that, return. It's a long way to your mission. The enemies spawn way too fast. The weapons of the enemies never break when they use it but when you get it from them they do almost directly. Searching for diamonds is useless since the diamonds you find aren't worth a damn. The malaria feature is useless and always shows its symptoms when you're in a firefight.

The faction choosing is weird since you do one mission for one side and when you're done you can't go back so you must choose the other faction.

The Bottom Line
A loss for us veteran Far Cry fans, a punch in the groin and the face at the same time is too kind do describe how bad this game is.