Price: 19.99 | Release Date: October 21, 2008 | ESRB: M (Mature) 

Passable, a decent game (rent before buying)

Far Cry 2 is the sequel to the highly acclaimed Far Cry that was released back in 2004. Far Cry has had many off shoots and ports but this is first official “sequel”.  Surprisingly, Far Cry 2 has very few similarities to the original Far Cry. New character, story, environment, play style, and even a new developer are all parts of the new Far Cry. Instead of Crytex (makers of Crysis) continuing with the series they created it was handed off to Ubisoft Montreal, and I must say, they didn’t do a half bad job.

So here is a quick overview of the plot. You are a mercenary who has been called into a power struggle between two factions in a fictitious African country. Your mission is to kill the arms dealer - “The Jackal” - who is supplying both the UFLL and APR and is generally considered the reason for why the fighting continues. In the intro scene you faint because you have contracted malaria in the whole hour you have been in the country. You wake up in a hotel room with the Jackal standing over you. He gives his big bad guy speech then leaves as the hotel starts to burn to the ground. After you escape from the burning hotel the world is open to you. The story is nothing to get terribly excited about; just two factions fighting for control over a country. Something that is far too prevalent in Africa today but it does add creditability to the story since it is actually happening in Africa. You play a silent character who is a murderer for hire so don’t expect much character development ether. This is a spoiler free zone and I will never put any plot spoilers in my reviews, but the ending goes against everything that has been happening in the story. I will leave it at that.

I played Far Cry 2 back when it first released on my Xbox 360. If my memories of the game are correct it looked very good on my 360 (if you disagree please let me know in the comments, it has been over a year since then.) Well now that I am playing it on my PC I have complete control of how good the game looks. When I max out the settings on the game it looks fantastic! It is easily the prettiest game I own, but in full discloser I haven’t messed with my settings in Crysis since I got a new graphics card and I usually play RPG’s and RTS’ which aren’t usual known for their killer graphics. Far Cry 2 is huge - like 50 miles or something. The environment is great because it isn’t the bland Africa you might think of. This fiction country has jungles, deserts, savannas, giant lakes, sprawling rivers, cliffs, and even an enormous waterfall.

The lighting is what really impresses me in Far Cry 2, trees, buildings, bushes, even grass have their own shadows that move depending on the time of day. I had a friend who isn’t a gamer at all over at my house a few days ago. I was playing the game and it was night in the game, he barely gave it a glance and went back to listening to his iPod. Then he went downstairs to get a drink and when he came back up it was the middle of the day in the game. He instantly put down his drink and pulled up a chair and asked if this was the same game I was playing two minutes ago. He was surprised that a game could look so realistic because his idea of video games was still Mario on Super NES. Another really cool aspect is how realistic fire reacts in the game. Throwing a Molotov can have a devastating effect on the enemy because the fire will spread and envelope anything in its way. Trees will go up in flames, buildings burn everyone inside, and cars explode which will start another just as deadly fire. Once again if my memory severs me correctly I believe this was one of the big selling points of the game that Ubisoft was showing off at press events before the game came out. If you ask me they really delivered on that point.

The largest and most important change in Far Cry 2 is the total change in style of play from the original. The original Far Cry was semi-open world, meaning, you could approach enemies in any way you want but you were still funneled down a liner path. Far Cry 2 takes this and throws it out the window, the entire world is a giant sandbox and you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, in theory.

 In other sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto or Fallout there are main missions that you must complete to advance the story, then you have your side quests that are just for some extra dough or to spice things up. This is not true in Far Cry 2, your main missions come from one of the two warring factions and all your side quests come from gun dealers, underground characters, or your buddies. But just calling them optional side quests doesn’t actually make them optional. If you don’t do missions for the gun dealers than you don’t unlock better guns and if you don’t do missions for the underground then you end up dying from malaria and the game is over. The only actual optional side missions are the ones your buddies give you. Even those are almost required to complete the game, but you can manage without them.

After an hour or so the first really annoying game play mechanic of the game shows up. Since you have malaria you have to always have a bottle of pills for when the malaria hits you. The screen turns brownish green and a button prompts you to take your pills. If you don’t have any pills on you then you will just be sluggish and have the screen that color for about 20 seconds, for the first time. If you don’t have malaria pills by the time the malaria comes again then you will die and have to reload a previous save.  At first this is no real deal, just take a pill every hour or two and when you run out just go do the mission for the underground. But sometimes you run out of pills in the middle of a long mission for one of the factions, if that happens you just have to hope you can finish your mission in time to then go do another mission before you drop dead. If you run out of time then you have to reload a save from before you started your long mission and go do the underground mission first. This can waste up to an hour of your time! If you happen to be the type of person who hates having multiple saves then you can really be screwed over if you’re only save is in the middle of a mission. Have fun replaying the whole game!

Every flaw in Far Cry 2 can be described with one word: repetitive. Just about every problem I have with the game comes from receptiveness of the game. It seems like Ubisoft Montreal spent a lot of time creating a really fun 20% of the game. Then after the 20% was done they simple cut and pasted it four more times onto the design document. Every time you want to unlock new weapons from the guns dealer you are forced to do the exact same boring easy mission. All you do is ambush a supply truck that is carrying competitor’s weapons. The first time you do this it is actually pretty fun because you get to decide when, where, and how the truck is destroyed. But when you are ambushing a truck for the eighth or ninth time it really loses its fun. The same thing applies to the “main missions” that the two factions give you. While the variety of the environments is great and helps with the repetitiveness it doesn’t excuse the fact that every mission is one of three basic types, destroy a building/object, kill someone, or take an object of some sort.  The game even repeats key plot twists several times.

After you take a mission from one of the factions you get a call from your buddy who is just a fellow mercenary trying to make a profit in the war. They always have an alternate way for you to complete the mission you were just assigned. This usual involves doing something for them that will make them a profit or get them revenge. These alternate missions are usual twice as long as just doing the original mission you were given, your only incentive to do them is the fact that your buddy will upgrade your safe house in some way if you complete them. (Safe houses are exactly like they sound.  They are houses where you can rest, change the time of day, and switch weapons. Later in the game if you complete the alternative missions that your buddies give you then you’re safe house will have ammo, health, and vehicles.)

The multiplayer community is almost non-existent since it has been out for so long. But if you can manage to find a game then you might end up having a good time. The multiplayer doesn’t do anything new or different then every other shooter on PC but it is still fun.

A great edition is the map editor that comes with the game. I have spent almost as many hours building my own crazy maps as I have spent playing the actual game. The map editor is robust yet simple to use and you can jump into your map with a simple button press. Building a immensely tall tower of exploding barrels and shooting a bullet into it and watching the entire map explode as the barrels rain fire down upon the trees and foliage is the most fun I had with Far Cry 2.

THE VERDICT: Far Cry 2 is a beautiful game with rich and lust environment that is a joy to shoot your way through.  The game play is just fun! Walking into a fortress and blasting your way through dozens of armed guards to kill a king who is returning to the country he abandoned is just fun. Being able to approach the enemy anyway you want is very fun and rewarding. The mission style is bland and boring and the missions themselves are typically unimaginative. Don’t get me wrong there are some incredibly fun missions, but overall you are just asked to the same things in the same way over and over again. If you can deal with the repetitive nature and pretty dull story of this game then you will find yourself with a beautiful African landscape to kill people to your little heart’s desire.