Far Cry 2 (With Exclusive Steelbook)

A lot of people here have said bad things about the game play and still gave the game 3 stars or more so this made me think that there could be something to this game. Combined with the hype and the games pedigree the awesome far cry and (crysis to an extent) I decided to buy.

The naming of the game 'far cry 2' is a total lie. Its the biggest marketing con ever. It's the equivalent of naming, say a new crime thriller 'back to the future 4' just to get hype and more sales. It is NOTHING like Far cry. Crysis is more like far cry in every way. In this game I expected it to have at least all the 'improvements' that 'crysis' brought to the 'cry-X' series. Like the ability to shoot tires etc etc...... but no. The only way you know its a cry-X game is that some vehicles have a machine-gun ontop.

On the Dev interviews they mention loads of 'unique' vehicles. Again there are only 3 types. 2 Cars and 1 boat. The choices in cars are cars with guns and cars without. All cars Handle the same; have the same top speed take the same damage.

The immersion is impossible, because EVERYONE is out to kill you. There are no safe zones except the centre of the map where you receive your GTA:3 style missions. Outside this area its EXACTLY like GTA:3 at about police wanted rating 2 or 3. Not to mention enemies that come back to life like after 5min (I have timed.)

Your typical mission evolves driving somewhere to kill someone. But on the way you have to clear about 4 checkpoints on average that contain about half the men of your actual mission objective (you can't run through these checkpoints as the men follow you forever). Then, of course the mission takes more than 5 mins so you have to go back through the re-spawned checkpoints you killed. You spend about 45 mins doing a mission that took 5 mins the other time is spent driving and fighting with random people along the way. This would not be horrendous if perhaps they were not exactly the same people respawned, and the fact they do so in 5 mins is crazy.

Reasons to get are:
-You want to play GTA:3 in the jungle. ( I say GTA:3 in particular, because this game does not have any of the improvements that the newer GTA's and other freedom mission games have.
-You only care about GFX but your computer can't run crysis on full
Ignore the single player; I reckon this game will have great Iraq war mods for online.

Reasons to stay clear:
-Almost unplayable 'story mode'. (the fact it's called 'story mode' rather than 'campaign' should ring the console rubbish alarm bells)
-You do not wish to pay for a "jeep" product placement game.
-You do not like multiplayer (as the multiplayer potential is the only reason why I did not send this back ASAP)

P.S The A.I. Its good the A.I movement is great on a par far cry if not better because they are more mobile, but there is no stealth, night-time cover anything, it does not matter. No use for silenced weapons, as the A.I can see through shanty town buildings and through certain types of wood!lololol

From childhood games like hide and seek to board games like chess, a game is supposed to be a little challenging, but ultimately it is for fun.

With computer games,we've come a long way from counting to ten while everyone goes to hide, but with Far Cry 2, you get the impression that we've come to far. The game design from the superb lighting to the engrossing terrain is certainly realistic, but overall the game seems to take itself too seriously.

For a start there are the militants at the outposts, which inexplicably shoot you before they can even identify your clothing. At first they seem like a nice challenge, where you can strategically pick off your enemies. This idea is soon shattered however, by the shoddy NPC design. The AI is strong, but the scripted aspects of the enemy characters lead to some doubt as to Ubisoft's integrity. If you shoot an enemy with a silenced weapon, it appears at first that you've gotten away with it. But then, if so much as one patrolling militant sees the corpse, they immediately know where you are, regardless of whether you've moved or not. Similarly, before they've even had the time to be told, every other enemy in the vicinity knows precisely where you are, so you're being shot at from all directions by people who can see through solid plants. But then, if you fire a flare behind an enemy, they turn around to look at the flare, ignoring the blatant stream of smoke signalling the direction it came from.

After you clear one of the camps you'd be forgiven for thinking that the outpost is then cleared for good, but you'd be wrong. When you're less than a mile down the road they regenerate. These outposts are positioned in such a way that most of them can't be avoided so for every two minutes of driving you've 5 minutes of chore-like shooting. Sometimes to get Malaria tablets (yes, you have malaria), by which point you're wondering if everything in this game is just designed to annoy.

The mission design is also lazy on Ubisoft's part. While the similarly open plan Grand Theft Auto series features everything from simple assassinations to dropping bombs from an RC plane, Far Cry 2 has just one pre-set mission. Go into a base with the same NPCs you have to face every 2 minutes and either kill a man, take an object or blow something up. The missions become so mind numbing that if one of the common glitches kicked in and the leader of a faction suddenly turned into a gas tank, you'd not even think twice about it.

Unlike GTA, Far Cry 2 lacks any sense of fun. The adverts proclaim the wonderfully realistic wildlife, so where is the safari hunting mini game? The diamond cases (FC2s answer to hidden packages) are a chore because they're a necessity, rather than something you want to do. And while it's supposed to be a realistic environment, every 'citizen' is an armed man who pointlessly wants to shoot you. While it may sound sadistic, there is nothing more fun than shooting some passers by on San Andreas. FC2 however, is much more dangerous, because there's nothing to take your frustration out on in the game, so you end up wanting to punch a real person.

When the game is all over, after completing the relatively pointless side missions and collecting most of the diamonds, you want to just kick back and enjoy the environment of the game and do as you want, not as the thin plot orders (I killed so many targets that by the end, I didn't even know who I was fighting for). Unfortunately, you can't explore the only good part of the game, because, despite being open plan, it ends (where GTA is fun for a long time afterward).

I can see where the game gets it's name, this is a Far Cry from the good old days when games were fun.

Far Cry is one of the best PC games ever but this sequel is very poor.The graphics are great but the gameplay is just dull.There is far too much driving around and the maps are hard to navigate.Every mission is more or less the same.I would not recommend this game to anyone.Go and buy the original instead.

Oh yes, yes it was.
From the start, the game was frustrating to say the least.
Apart from the slow and seemingly over the top (click on him endlessly to get them to say what they have too) character interaction, it's not as open as it could have been.

The landscape looks great, but you'll soon find it tiresome, as areas you just cleared, seemed to be instantly teaming with the same guys again, after returning within seconds.
Plus when getting missions, they inevitably end up being the other side of the map, meaning long and repetitive trips.
Want to get up that small hill to shoot with your sniper? Well no you can't, your character seems unable to climb the slightest hill and gets stopped in his tracks by small logs etc.
So the open landscape you see, is actually very limited.

The weapon system.
It seems they have decided not to let you chose what weapons you would like to carry.
Sure you can carry different weapons, but if you want to carry say a sniper rifle and an assault rifle, forget it.
But at the same time they let you carry a sniper and an LMG????

Then there's the enemies you meet.
Each and everyone of them has X-ray eyes.
Not only do they know exactly where you are, but can see you through certain rocks and deep foliage.
Stealth on this game is not and option, because even with the stealth weapons, the enemies know your position right away.
It can be the middle of the night, and out of no where a guy on another part of the map starts shelling you, or a sniper the other side of a bunch of trees, starts shooting you.

Not the Far Cry 2 people were looking for or expecting.
Not a patch on the first.
This game could have been so sweet, shame they made such a pigs ear of it.

After all the hype surrounding this game and the high reviews from gaming mags like PC Gamer you can be forgiven for wanting to run out and throw your money at the nearest game shop cashier. But once you start playing the game you suddenly get hit by a hugh dose of reality.

The graphics amd lighting for the game are superb, the way fire spreads and day turns to night etc,but as we all know, these things alone don't make a game, it's the story and it's the story that moves a game along.
Unfortunately this is the games biggest problem, the story is weak at best, you have a main mission but are also able to do side quests for a number of shady characters and this is why and where the game falls down, it plays a bit like Grand theft auto but in the jungle. You spend much if not all of your time driving around undertaking side quests from shady characters and shooting at or being shot at by other shady characters. You can hardly move a few hundred yards in the game without ending up in a fire fight, which after about an hour of playing you start to feel as though you have already done this, and that is where you suddenly realise the game brings nothing new to the table and everything you do is repetetive.
The game map is hugh but you can't help but feel confined. It just feels a shame that with the amount of map area you can explore the developers could not make more use of it. You have mountain ranges which breaks up the map but you are unable to climb up or down them or even explore or use them as advantage points for either planning an attack, snipeing or to enjoy the view.
The other down sides to the game are the amount of weapons you can carry, for instance, one of you targets may be best eliminated from a distance hence you would use the sniper rifle, but to do so you can not carry your AK47 or any other machine gun, but because you can not move any distance without engaging in a fire fight (whether you want to or not) and a sniper rifle is not the best weapon for this. Tou can use an uzi but it's not accurate and takes nearly a full clip to kill someone.
The other problem is'stealth' and the fact there is none. you can not sneak up on someone without them knowing you are there regardless of how far away you are. You can purchase a stealth pack but this is not much help. A couple of the missions you are asked to do consist of assassinating an individual, now you can do this in a confined space with a silenced weapon, nobody else around but as soon as you pull that trigger everyone converges on your position guns a blazing. You might has well went in shooting up the town for what good stealth does. The other problem is you soon realise that the the side quest dissappear and you are then coralled into focusing on the main mission which starts to restrick your movements.

All in all the game is nothing special, if you enjoy FPS than you may enjoy this but be warned after a very short period of time you will find everything you do is 'VERY' repetetive and boredom soon takes over. Would i have bought this had i knowen what i know now/ probably not i think i would have waited until the price came down or it hit te bargain bin, which ever came first.

You have been warned