Far Cry 2 review - Far Cry 2 Game

Far Cry 2 is a game I have long been anticipating.  I usually take pre-game hype with a pinch of salt, even if the Far Cry series has been one of repeatedly outstanding gameplay.  For those of you who have been happily oblivious to the hype, Far Cry 2 is a game set in a massive sandbox world where you drive around taking missions, blowing things up, and killing people.

This is the game in a nutshell, but it does these things so very well.

The storyline is a horrible load of Liberal guff about some arms dealer who is causing the deaths of many people.  Your mission is to kill lots of people in order to stop lots of people getting killed.  Despite this idiosyncrasy and the repeated Liberal preaching of "killing people is bad", the game presents a polished if dark storyline, which is in stark contrast to the highly comic and cheesy storylines of previous Far Cry games.

The game begins by throwing you into a jeep to assassinate arch villain of the game "The Jackal", which you would do if you didn't contract a chronic case of m-m-malaria leaving you bed ridden while he personally visits you to laugh in your face.  But hey, he can't be a bad guy this Jackal.  He lets you live, and thanks to him you have lots of people to kill.  If it were up to me I would alter my mission to give him a medal, not kill him as the game still goads you to do.

For the time being though The Jackal is far from your reach leaving you with the merriment of dispatching doyens of AI soldiers.  The AI of the soldiers demands a mention, because it probably is some of the best I've seen in a sandbox game, being good at laying ambushes, and will lay chase to you in jeeps should you attack one of their positions.  The AI is also fair - they won't spot you if you remain hidden in vegetation, when other games have enemies who can spot you from a mile away when you happen to be in dense undergrowth.  The AI does of course have nuances; for instance if you need to chase after a vehicular target that target will only drive around in circles, but these are fairly minor bugs and do not detract from the gameplay.

Missions in the game are similar in many respects to those seen in Grand Theft Auto et al, in that you meet a contact who tells you about objective X.  You drive out to complete objective X and do whatever is required of you, be it sabotage, hunting for intel, whatever.  Along the way to your objective you will pass dozens of checkpoints, which you can attempt to avoid or can attack full on.  This is a rather reductionist view though, in truth the missions are many and varied, completing them will unlock special features or give you a reward. 

The fact of the matter is that there are simply too many missions to go into detail, there are enough in the game to give you around 20 hours of gameplay which is a refreshing change from the paltry offerings linear FPS games have been offering recently.

The non-linear mission structure also makes Far Cry 2 markedly different to other games in the FPS genre, no other game has come this close to offering such absolute freedom in a game.  The fact you have absolute freedom to choose your plan of attack has always been an enjoyable feature of the Far Cry series, it is quite hard to quantify how much satisfaction you get from deciding a plan of attack, executing it, and succeeding.  The mission objectives are not rigid either, you have the option to alter them if you want, for example at one point in the game you have the option of feeding enemy troops false information which will move them out to a different location.  Whether it will make your objective easier to accomplish is left to your own best judgement.

How the game plays out is also up to you, according to decisions you make about the fate of some characters.  Should someone die or should they live?  If someone lives they may help or hinder you in the future.  All of this takes place within a dynamic and freeform world.  The dynamic world is worth a mention since the changing weather and bush fires are quite astounding, the latter of which can have a particular impact on gameplay - players can use fires to drive enemies away from them, equally the fire is a thing to be respected, especially if you happen to be stuck on foot in a large grass field.

It's hard to say whether the game looks better than the benchmark set by Crysis, but if it is or isn't is irrelevant.  The graphics of Far Cry 2 are some of the best ever seen in a game, looking great even on low settings.  Whats more the sunny environments make a nice change from the usual gothic sludge, nor are there any generic FPS settings either (eg sewers).  I don't think any previous engine has done such a good job of making such a believable world, save the aforementioned Crysis.

Far Cry 2 may be a good game, but it isn't quite perfect.  My biggest issue with it is that once you've toured the sandbox, you've pretty much seen everything.  There aren't any special baddies, bosses or enemies to offer variety throughout the experience - there are none of the trademark Far Cry helicopters, nor are there any of the tanks which made Crysis so varied.  The game would certainly have benefited from at least having lions and crocodiles for you to tackle, because basically the only enemies you face are rifle toting lunatics.

Another problem with the level design is that enemies are only ever located at checkpoints on roads, which can result in the player needing to stop their car before reaching a checkpoint.  This can make the gameplay rather stop and start, particularly since you can't fire your machine gun whilst driving a vehicle.

The weapons in the game are far from perfect too, they are a conceited attempt at realism but fail miserably in attempting to depict real life weapons.  For starters, an NPC is able to withstand 20 rounds from a heavy machine gun, but will be killed with a single sniper shot.  Another gargantuan niggle is weapon jamming, when your gun jams the player automatically starts wrenching the cocking handle back and forth, as if they're pleasuring the gun not fixing the blockage.  You do get some warning that your weapon will jam based on the amount of dirt on your weapon, but why are you not able to clean or maintain your weapon to prevent this happening?  It doesn't make the game any more challenging to have this feature, but it is a rather tedious and artificial feature to deal with.

The malaria feature in the game is also incredibly irritating.  You only have a limited supply of medication, which you need to replenish.  I would rather carry a hell of a lot of medication (or in real life, booze) than have to go through the chore of visiting an NPC who will give me some meds in exchange for completing a mission.

One final minor quibble is the lack of connection to previous Far Cry games.  Jack Carver is nowhere to be seen, there aren't any Trijens (I'm sure that that many will regard this as a good feature), and the "Far Cry" project has no mention either.  The game mechanics are so significantly changed that even gameplay has little in common with the original game, save for the battling of mercenaries in an open terrain.

These are complaints which I hope Ubisoft or the modding community will address - indeed I look forward to a Far Cry 2 modding community springing up here on MODDB, assuming that is Ubisoft release an SDK for modders.

Far Cry 2 takes completely reinvents what an FPS game could be.  It is a testament that games do not need to be oversanitized or linear.  It's just a pity there weren't more varied environments to explore with different NPCs to face off against.

The game is very polished and is good fun to play, so I heartily recommend Far Cry 2.  Just bear in mind it isn't quite the varied tactical gameplay experience offered by Crysis or Far Cry.