Far Cry 2 Review

I didn’t play the first Far Cry, as back then my computer could barely support anything. When I finally managed to upgrade my computer parts, well let’s just say the hype for Far Cry was over and I was never a large fan of the FPS genre.

But I got myself a copy of Far Cry 2 anyway. I liked the premise that they built this game on. You don’t get many games that revolves around Africa, and even less that revolves around a civil war. The story of the game intrigues me as a few months ago I did a research paper regarding the Rwandan Genocide. To me, the story of this game is actually quite plausible.

I installed the game, powered it up and was blown away…

The Good:

•Stunning visuals
•Easy on the PC
•Action oriented gameplay
•Intriguing storyline
•Challenging but not frustrating
•Buddy system

The Bad:

•Traveling can become a hassle
•NPC respawns too quickly
•“Save” spammable
•Malaria annoyance

Crysis delivered absolutely gorgeous visuals and physics, but at the cost of a computer that the majority of gamers can’t afford. Far Cry 2 on the other hand manages to balance its stunning visuals while maintaining a relatively low PC requirement. The visuals of Far Cry 2 are really beautiful. Explosions are realistic, with debris flying everywhere, sun beams are beautiful, reflections are detailed and realistic, the blinding bloom of the sun shining on the desert sand is also executed very well. Coupled with the 24 hour day system, engaging a firefight with the sun just rising in the horizon is a moment hard to forget.

Hint: Try lighting a tree on fire in the middle of the night, and watch the flames spread up to the sky in a beautiful display of “tree-on-fire”!

And while I’ve stated before I won’t comment on the performance factor, I’ll make an exception today. I’m running games on a Vostro 1500 with a 8600GT 512mb and a 2GB memory stick. Well, the game chugs steadily at about 30 FPS with medium-high settings.

When you first start the game, you’ll be a little surprised by the lack of a crosshair on screen. FPS games usually have a crosshair to assist with the run and gun style, but in this case it’s the total opposite. You’re not given a crosshair (you can turn it on, but it’s really better without) and you can only aim by right clicking. Which brings forth the iron sights or the scope. What the game is telling you is that you should plan a little beforehand and be ready to duck and cover while trying to assault enemy areas. Which I think is a really good aspect. You spend less time running into the base acting like rambo (that’s what I did on Crysis, my reflexes ain’t bad) and more time acting like how a mercenary might. Scout, plan, assault. Oh, and in Far Cry 2 you can pretty much cancel out stealthing around. The machete draws attention, and the silenced weapons are few and unreliable to say the least. You’re better off with a Kalashnikov.

In the game, you play a mercenary toying with both sides of the war to get what you want: the death of the arms dealer “The Jackal”. The storyline has its fair share of betrayals and intrigue, mostly in the form of buddy missions and recordings found randomly. The story of the game isn’t something you can enjoy by blindly following the main missions, it’s something you can only appreciate if you spend your time finding Jackal tapes or your predecessor’s tapes (there was someone before you that tried to take Jackal out). Buddy missions are predictable, but they provide an interesting alternate method to attempt the main missions as well. By the way, did I mention that you get paid in diamonds? As in, blood diamonds? That’s a winner for me.

The game missions are challenging, with you always being outnumbered (well… you play alone so…) and such. But on the whole, it isn’t frustrating. With a little bit (and I really mean a little bit) of planning beforehand, every mission can be achieved without a restart. The enemy AI isn’t the smartest, and in a sense that’s good because the game’s already quite challenging. Particularly when one is still getting to the absence of a crosshair. Later on in the game, with better weapons and such, it can get a little bit to the easy side though. But the game never gets too easy either.

Far Cry 2 boasts of 50 kilometres square of land for you to travel on. Nice idea right? Yeah… That is until you realize that you spend most of your time driving around than anything else. The game doesn’t lack in cars, but it’s so huge that you have to spend a lot of time driving around and checking the map. The map isn’t too friendly with you when you’re driving either as it takes up quite a portion of the screen (rightly so too). Getting from Point A to Point B might result in a number of unexpected encounters (random enemies driving around or checkpoints) and if you’re a sniper user, don’t be too surprised if you don’t have enough ammo for your mission later on. There are however Bus Stops that allows you to “fast travel” around, but the points are limited and it isn’t all too useful at the end.

One of my complaints about the original STALKER was that the NPCs almost never respawns. I’m happy that isn’t the case with Far Cry 2. I am however slightly annoyed by the overly frequent respawns. The NPC in the game respawns very quickly, too quickly even. Leave a checkpoint for some distance, wait a number of minutes, turn back and voila! New Mobs on the Block!

The game has save houses and blue colored “save boxes” for you to save your game at. Save houses have to be unlocked by killing the militants occupying it, and can be upgraded throughout the game. They’re actually Safe Houses, but let’s just call it save houses shall we?. Save boxes are only found in a handful of places. It’s actually a very good idea to have save points in the game so that the player feels that in-game death is much more daunting, but the PC version allows the game to be quick saved or saved ANYWHERE at ANYTIME. To me that really ruined a large part of the game. The consequences of acting like a fool is much lighter if you can spam the quicksave anytime, and it also does in a way remove the whole point of  having “save boxes” or save houses. It’s true that Save Houses can provide you with weapon ammunition later on, but it does make it somewhat more unimportant thanks to the save system.

One last thing about the game that beefs me up. The Malaria attacks. While I do understand logically why it might attack any time, nonetheless it annoys me when I’m in a gunfight. Bang bang bang urgh…..

Overall, I believe Far Cry 2 is THE definitive FPS game of the year. That’s quite a praise coming from a general non-fps gamer.