Remember Far Cry for the PC? Well Far Cry 2 is a Far Cry from it. It has nothing to do with the original characters, story line or location.
In Far Cry 2 you are a mercenary playing both sides of a civil war in a country in Africa. You are there to kill the Jackal, the man who armed both sides. You are transported to a hotel in a small town and quickly come under attack only to pass out and find yourself in another building being helped by a faction of the warring parties.
A man gives you a bottle of pills for your malaria and sends you on a mission. Little by little you rescue prisoners who become "friends." You do jobs for them and others. Doing jobs for your so called friends gains you reputation but by the time you get to the end you learn those friends can't be trusted. Doing jobs for the factions gains you diamonds with which you can buy weapons as they are unlocked for you by the gun shop owners. Doing jobs for the gun shop owners unlocks more weapons.
There are walk-throughs that tell the story step by step so I won't bother to go into the details. There are certain things I like in games and other things I feel are not fun or productive. I've built missions for other battle software that provided mission builders and gave those missions away on line. I would rather build and test my own missions than to play most of the missions that are created by the games' creators.
The things I don't like about this game outweigh the good. The fact the enemy regenerate the moment you step out of their area box is extremely frustrating. At first it's not so bad but the missions require you to roam around two maps to complete your objectives. There are road blocks, patrols, and armed obstacles constantly. If you kill a group of enemy on your way to a mission you will be required to kill them again on your way back. After doing this a few dozen times it becomes extremely frustrating. Enemy should not regenerate for a full 24 game-hours from the time they are killed. You can literally kill a mobile patrol at one end of their patrol, enter that area and have them reincarnate and attack you from the rear before you can get out of their area. If you have nothing but guns the enemy can wear you out from the constant fighting. The hand held single shot grenade launcher takes them out in one shot and was an arm saver for me during the game. Enemy patrols will try to run over you if they can. I soon learned to do the same for them every chance I got.
The controls are the keyboard and the mouse. When driving a vehicle you are either full on or full off. All the way left or right or straight ahead, joystick is not allowed. This makes controlling a vehicle difficult at times. There are bus stations that I didn't use during the first half of the game but learned to use during the last half. These will get you around enemy road blocks by transporting you to another area of the map.
You can take weapons from fallen enemy but most of them are only good for a few rounds before they jam then explode. Some weapons wear out very quickly, my favorite the sniper dart rifle being the worst. The dart rifle is silent single shot with excellent range and fair accuracy. The problem is it's only good for around 20 shots before it must be replaced. The good thing is once you buy a weapon you can return to any gun shop and replace it for free, just grab another one and go again. When the weapon is new it has no rust but the closer it gets to jamming and exploding the more rust it will have.
This brings us to another undesirable thing in the game and that's the fact the player's character is so frequently looking at and messing with his weapons. This is also extremely annoying especially if you are trying to hide while watching for an enemy.
The world the game creators have made is very impressive but they've gone to great lengths to prevent the player from reaching the high ground. Things that would be simple for a real person to overcome are impossible for the game's character. You can walk, jog for short distances and you can jump. It seems to me if they go to such a great effort to build those large mountains with rocks and trees they should provide a way the game player's character can get up there to see it. I ran into this same problem while playing Far Cry (1) but thanks to a cheat program and a flying mode I was able to overcome those problems and explore the high ground. As far as I know there is no such cheat available for Far Cry 2. Why the game developers don't make paths to reach the high ground I do not know. They went to the trouble to make it, why not share it with the player? In that respect it seems they applied a good deal of effort to prevent the player from having a little bit more fun with their game.
The AI is fair, I've seen worse. Unlike so many other games, if you have the right gun scope you can see and shoot enemy with sniper rifles at a great distance. If you shoot someone standing next to someone else with the silent dart sniper rifle and someone else sees them fall or finds their body they will alert others nearby and begin searching for you. A few steps away however someone may be standing there humming to themselves oblivious to the fact they are under attack. This can work to the player's advantage. I have shot an enemy so far away with a sniper rifle that I could literally turn around, take a few steps away then come back to find the enemy reincarnated and alive once again! Another reason why when you kill someone they should stay dead for at least a "game day."
Throughout the game your player's character is sick and has moments of blurred vision and inability to function. You must pick up passports and deliver them to the underground in order to receive more drugs for your illness.
The airboats are fun to navigate the rivers and lakes.
Challenge level can be set from easy to very challenging. Even on easy the enemy can and will kill you if they get the chance. If you make a mistake and get killed you get to reload and start over from your last save point. If you get shot down but not killed your rescue buddy will come to help very quickly. Sometimes you get to help rescue them.
The variety of weapons a player can buy is impressive. They will allow the player to decide which weapons are the best over-all and which ones are better for certain missions. I prefer in the place of a pistol to carry the single shot grenade launcher. It can stop any vehicle in the game with one shot and can take out several enemy soldiers with a single well placed round. Primary weapon use the AR-16. It has as spot scope and can take out enemy at range as well as point blank fairly quickly. The single shot silent dart sniper rifle is good for medium to long range and doesn't alert the enemy to your location. You can frequently shoot several enemy while they are trying to figure out where you are. In some cases if you pick and choose targets at night you can kill most or all the enemy. You can't place weapons in a vehicle and you can't drop them, you can only exchange them or use them until they explode and vanish. You can buy weapon cases and place weapons in them. These cases appear in all of your safe houses where ever they are.
Diamond hunting is done during free roaming. You use your GPS to locate diamond cases that may contain 1 to 3 diamonds. When you get near a diamond case or cassette recorder (messages from the Jackal) a light will appear on the GPS. You can use this to locate the case. Some cases are easy to reach while others present a challenge. Some are on ledges out of your reach and require the player to use another method or find a hang glider and fly to then land upon the ledge. One diamond case I never did get was on the first map in the North West segment on top of a rail car. There was a hang glider not far from there but it was facing away from the petroleum well so that I could not use it to reach the diamond. I even used a flat bed truck and loaded a pickup truck with machine gun on the flat bed, parked it beside the rail car and tried to jump onto the top of the car. It didn't work.
Doing most of your toughest missions at night and using stealth weapons is preferred. At other times when you have a grenade launcher vehicle you have unlimited rounds and can literally pulverize a base camp or area before you enter. There's almost always one or two soldiers you can't kill using this method but you can kill most of them. Remember a grenade launcher makes a lot of noise and if the camp you are attacking is near other camps you will attract enemy from these camps.
At the end you and the Jackal both get to die. There is no resolution and no way to actually win. Playing a game that can't be won is no fun. I was actually happy when I got to kill my character and be done with this game.
I would not recommend this game. I've seen worse but I would say read my review and make a decision. Once they know what's wrong with the game and they still want to buy it then it's their choice. I enjoyed the game enough that I finished it but I have no intentions of playing it again. When I pay $50 for a game I expect some replay value. This one just doesn't have it.
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