When I think of Far Cry 2 I think of fire. This is the most impressive element of the game. Actually I should generalize and say that the Dunia engine is impressive. This is the first game where I see wind, and it really feels and acts accordingly. If you start a fire in the savanna and the wind is blowing, the effect is guaranteed. This is a great game for all you pyromancers out there.... I kid, I kid.
Another thing about the engine is the rain. It is very well maid...first the wind is starting to blow, the clouds are forming and voila you have rain. After the rain the sun is making its appearance and if I mentioned the Sun I should say I saw the best Sunsets and sunrises in a video game...it's simply beautiful. They captured Africa's atmosphere quite good.
Enough about the graphics, let me tell you about the gameplay, another very important ingredient. As you know Far Cry's 2 single player takes place in a 50 square kilometer zone in an unnamed African country that is teared apart by civil war. You're a mercenary and your mission is to capture and kill the Jackal, the bastard that armed both sides of the conflict, actually most of the sides in Africa's conflicts. After you finish the first missions a message that says: The tutorial part is over, the game world is open and your mission is to capture the Jackal, or something like that, appears on the screen. I really liked this, it gives you a lot of freedom. It basically says ...Hey buddy you have this huge zone, do whatever you like to finish the game. It's not quite like that in reality but it's close. This freedom is not necessarily a good thing, I'll tell you later why. You have to do jobs for the different factions in the game, for you're buddies, some underground missions to get medicine for your malaria ... I forgot to say...you have malaria and the symptoms come up in the most inappropriate moments. There are other missions from the weapon dealer, to unlock new weapons...and from the mobile phone antennas in the area... when you go to an antenna between missions your cell rings and a strange voice gives you a target...I don't want an strange voice to order me around. I'll give more bad stuff about the game because they are a lot. The most annoying is the repetitive jobs...you basically have to go to an location and kill someone, take an object or destroy something. The long distance between objectives is killing me, mostly because everybody in this country is shooting at you...maybe I have a big target on my ass...I don't know. It's a shooter I know...it's supposed to be like this but I need a reason, maybe it's not the target on my ass and it's because I'm wearing a racist T-shirt. I don't know that because there are no mirrors in the game. In an traditional shooter it works when everyone is shooting at you because usually you're the intruder in that area, but here I'm a guy in a Jeep on a road in Africa. It's not enough that at every crossroad they shoot at you...but after you kill everyone in an outpost they respawn almost immediately when you turn your back and make a few steps. It's like all the enemies have doubles. The producers thought it's too boring just to go from point a to point b in your car so they implemented a system where every 5 minutes or so you are being ambushed by another car. Again it's like there is a tracking device o my car, or I drive the only red car in a sea of white cars. When a game wants to be realistic don't put shit like this in it. There's the AI too...it's kind of stupid and buggy. I didn't saw anything to impress me. When you start a fire near their outpost they don't try to put it out, they all have eagle eye vision and sometimes they shoot at you but they are facing the wrong way...WTH they shoot bullets out of their buts? It's hard to make the AI in an open game environment but it could have been better.
Enough about the bad stuff because I don't want you to remain with the impression that this is a terrible game. This freedom you have in the game has its good parts too, you can complete every mission from any angle you want...kind of hard the stealth approach, cause I didn't found any silencers for my weapons. When you are almost dead and heal yourself a very cool animation is played where you pull bullets out of your hands, legs, you put your bones back in place or bandage yourself. This gives the combat a very intense feeling...I can't get enough of it. The weapons have a nice feeling but you have to be careful cause used weapons jam a lot and can even blow in your face. You recognize a used weapon after its look...it is dirty, rusty you get the picture. I really like this details and the game has a lot of them, things that you don't see in other FPS's. The day/night cycle is well implemented; if you want time to pass faster you can sleep in your safe house. I almost forgot the sniper rifle. It's grate...the best feeling of a sniper rifle in a game. It's really put to a good use in this game, my favorite. The game is very well optimized, it squeezes every drop of performance from your rig, although it has some memory management issues that should be fixed in a patch.
I haven't had the chance to try the multiplayer but I hear it's great. The game also has an easy to use level editor that should make this game's life much longer.
As you can see the game has its ups and downs but overall it's a good game, you can get past all the bad things. Nothing compares with an off-road drive through the vegetation with the sunrise in your face and a gazelle or other animal running in front of you. I'll give it 8 out of 10. It could have been a 10.
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