Far Cry 2

First off - let's get the plus points done. FC2 looks very, very good indeed. From fluttering leaves, to sun haze through the trees - it is a joy for the eyes. There is also very little in the loading times between sections - in fact, it's almost seamless - much, much better than the likes of Oblivion where loading times (no matter how short) hamper the play experience when moving about the land.

It sounds good too, from the atmospheric background noises, to the weapons firing, to the dialogue of people you encounter.

I also really like the jam/unjam situation with the weapons. Pick up a rusty 'ol AK-47 and you can almost guarantee that it will jam half way through a firefight. They are nearly always easy to unjam and it ranges from the characters hands bashing the mechanism to make it work to flamethrowers leaking fluid everywhere.

The fire effects are also great to watch (and utilise). Spot a small encampment nearby and its easy to lob an incendiary grenade into it and watch the grass, trees and shrubs catch fire and normally trap the people defending it.

As a game however, FC2 leaves a lot to be desired. As I said in the title, it seems really confused as to what it wants to be. Whereas the likes of Oblivion allows you to develop and grow your character's skills and abilities, FC2 does little other than allow you to buy experience and realiability upgrades for certain weapons. There is very little in the way of an RPG going on here.

But as an FPS game, it is severely lacking also. Enemies are too infrequent and when they do turn up, they are very easy to overpower and defeat. The rifles you pick up have 100% accuracy and have no deviation in terms of stamina, breathing, or whether or not you are crouched or fully stood upright. Spot an enemy at distance, simply aim with the rifle and line up the crosshair. It will ALWAYS hit.

I've now charged head-first into several areas of the game where I am severely outnumbered and have always come out the winner. Most smaller checkpoints have between three and five enemies manning them and are stupidly easy to beat. Pick off one or two men from a distance, then charge in and kill the remaining people with either an SMG or assault rifle.

The missions (so far) have been unoriginal and quite repetitive. Take on an assignment from an arms dealer to take out a rival's shipment and on your return, you get offered pretty much the same mission again, but in a different location this time.

And this travelling factor is by far the biggest issue within FC2. You need to travel everywhere to get anything done. So even when you are behind the wheel of a car or jeep, you have a lengthy drive ahead of you, through various checkpoints of dumb enemies. Made worse by the fact that they will normally jump into the their own vehicles and always give chase. Which in itself wouldn't be a problem, if the driving model 'felt' good. It doesn't. Basic car physics at best.

Then there is a malaria sub-story going on. What this actually involves is your character's vision being severely impaired unless you take an malaria tablet. If the developers meant this to be a 'neat' addition to the storyline, it offers little else than a frustration - especially when you run out of medicine.

FC2 is nothing like the linear story-based view of the original Far Cry. But in trying to make it extremely open-form and free-flowing, they have essentially made a game that is too few on its good points and full of many weak aspects that don't combine to make an engrossing and worthwhile game.

Once you have had enough of the pretty graphics and fought your way out of a dozen skirmishes - you realise that the FC2 experience is actually quite shallow. A shame.

It is refreshing to have a game as innovative as this whilst still retaining enough of an element of suspension of belief to be enjoyable. What I am saying is, this game is more realistic than other FPSs whilst still being a little unbelievable so as to be fun.

Whether or not you will like this game depends on the style of FPS games you normally play. I like a broad spectrum, however the ones that keep me hooked are the games that are a challenge. You have the brainless run and gun ones such as Unreal, CoD games and Halo, whaich are still all very good, but stupid as far as tactics and realism are concerned. I have call of Duty and whilst it is marvellous in single player, the multiplayer falls apart as the rewards system is a joke. A new player has a huge disadvantage as their stats are terrible plus they lack experience and on top of that they face veteran players with maxed out stats. This inspires a community of run and gun gamers, plus the damage these games allows you to take without dying is inhuman, I know body armour, and there is no body armour that would allow that punishment.

Next you have Games like Rainbow Six Vegas, or the earlier Ghost Recon games, (even to some degree Mercenaries 2) basically games that demand a tactical approach. Yes you are armed to the teeth and you can risk a guns blazing approach, but is it a good idea?

If you are a fan of these games, Farcry 2 will not disappoint, in fact it will perhaps engross you even more. The greatest parallel here is with Mercenaries 2. Imagine Mercs but less of the GTA feel and unrealistic elements.....

... basically, imagine Mercenaries 2 reimagined by Tom Clancy and you have Farcry2, if you like this, then go for it, at this price there is seriously no way to go wrong.

Here are the pros and cons...

+ Amazing attention to detail, pulling bullets and shrapnel from wounds and bandaging them is sweet. Repairing vehicles and getting rescued by buddies etc.

+ Very nice and relatively deep RPG elements also enhance gameplay and add a development curve.

+ Adds innovation that many FPS games promised to deliver but failed, eg, realistic spreading of fires which Mercs only slightly explored, hacking through doorways, guns jamming or misfiring, etc

+ Graphics, this is basically gun porn, if any of you played BLACK on the XBox, than you know what I mean, FC2 to this generation of consoles is what Black was to the XBox.

+ This game brings back health packs! yes no more magical healing from damage like in 99% of other FPS games today. There is minor injury recovery though so it is a good balance.

+ Map editor is sweet too and adds to multiplayer experience.

+ DLC available and apparently this is growing.

..........

- This may just be me, but I haven't been able to access, a hud or equipment menu that tells me exactly which weapons I have equipped at the moment, or when buying weapons a menu illustrating the respective attributes or statistics indicating which gun is better or worse than the other.

- It is sometimes HARD to see enemies due to the camouflage, this is not a criticism of the game itself, just a gripe I have, but I can't think of anything else to criticise so i thought I'd throw it in to not seem like a fanboy.

Enjoyable, but long

I got into this game quite quickly and the pacing was really good, the new structure that is truly free-form was great
Until about 20 hours into the game when having to drive to each and every mission got old, but I must be close to the finish surely, nope not even 50% into it yet, so this is a big game

I do enjoy the combat and pacing, I also love the idea of being able to go anywhere, but they could have at least made another mode of transport or even an NPC player to drive you to them if you wanted

That is my only problem with this game

The guns are great and feel quite realistic
The story I found to be interesting
And the graphics are stunning, not the best but still very beautiful, if you have a powerful rig then this game will wonder and delight you

But I'd recommend getting the Play.com Steelbook version as I did as it's the same price but looks cooler

With this being the first game on Ubi's new Dunia Engine, I think it was more of a showcase of the engine than aimed at providing an immersive enjoyable gaming experience to the player. If it was meant to be the latter it fell short of the mark.

The Dunia engine itself seems to be very impressive, the environmental detail is great, the fire propagation works well and the physics seem ok. The best part is that performs well on min spec PC's, certainly less demanding than Cryisis/Crysis Warhead.

The SP game is long which most will look on as a good thing. However, due to the lack of variation in missions the game quickly becomes repetitive and therefore boring. It's best to play SP in small doses of an hour or so each time.

The SP storyline doesnt engage you enough to keep you immersed from start to finish, I wonder if this was due to the sheer size of the sandbox environment, maybe it was too big for the devs to create a truly engaging storyline. Im not saying its really bad, but it could certianly be better.

Storyline aside, its like most FPS games out - shooting and blowing stuff up. Some of the more common dislikes of the SP game is the amount of travelling from one mission to the next, the other being the quick respawning of enemies in areas you have cleared out.

The Map Editor is possibly the best part of the game. It lets amateurs create stunning looking maps with ease, however more serious mappers out there will notice how limited the map editor features are. For example, you can only make MP maps, there is no scripting support, no support for custom objects, only 1 level of water in maps, so no waterfalls, no control of spawn times of vehicles/weapons, etc plus more.

The MP is unbelievable, unbelievably poor that is! This was without doubt the most disappointing part of the game for me, especially given how nice the Map Editor is. Several months after launch there are still no dedicated server files, how can a MP community grow without proper dedicated servers?

The whole underlying MP structure is poor, it takes ages to find a server with enough players to launch a game, the auto-balance only works in the game lobby, once the game starts the auto-balance doesnt work resulting in uneven teams. It makes you wonder if the person in charge of MP had a clue what they where doing. The MP in FC2 seems to be based on MP of 10 years ago, so many features you would take for granted are missing. The MP in Farcry 1 was certainly more enteraining and enjoyable than this tripe!

Overall:
This game has tons of potential, but several factors make it fall short of becoming a truly great game. I believe this game was shipped without being finished properly. This game could be saved by future patches, or if a SDK is released to the community.

Given the lack of official communication on the UBI FC2 forums since launch, I doubt this game will enjoy a long shelf life. Its worthy of a 'bargain bin' price range, but no more.

Great graphics and scenary. This game is best when approached from a tactical point of view. It's not realy a blast um up shooter. There can be some driving about and perhaps a variety of different vehicals requireng control skills would help this. The game though not the best out there is still worth having on the games shelf.
:-)