A Delayed Far Cry 2 Review

I know I'm about 6 months too late for this but I've been buried in higher-priority releases and haven't had the time to give Far Cry 2 a proper review. That probably turned out to be a good thing because I've been absorbed by Ubisoft Montreal's jungle crawler for the last week. Looking back, I have to wonder how it was so easy to glance over this excellent experience the first time. This is truly a better game than even some of the largest blockbusters last season.

Ubisoft has taken the Far Cry series from the hands of the original developers Crytek, and maybe it's not fair to say but they've done a much better job this time around. There are no plot connections to the original and that's fine because nobody remembers anything from the original anyway. Gone is the sci-fi BS ham-handedly shoved in to please uber-geeks and this time you instead play as one of nine mercenaries sent to assassinate a legendary arms dealer in a small African nation. Two factions are vying for power in the region and both have turned to violent methods to attain it, while the Jackal profits from it all. Soon you will learn that they all intend to use you to their benefit.

Every merc has a different background, but their abilities and story arcs are identical so the decision is mostly cosmetic, but since you can't see yourself, it thus becomes arbitrary. After a harsh welcome you find yourself afflicted with malaria and must balance your time between completing your missions and acquiring medicine to keep from succumbing to your illness. Unfortunately, there really isn't much of a story conveyed during gameplay, and you typically only overhear conversations explaining the game's history. Sometimes you feel like a courier of sorts, in that you simply show up at one place and are told to go elsewhere to complete your job, except that you get to shoot a few faces along the way. When something does happen it almost always occurs inside of a protected building while your facing some NPC who's yammering about something you couldn't care less about, and it frequently comes off as intensely uninteresting. Much like any other FPS, the story in Far Cry 2 might as well not exist.

To compensate, Far Cry 2 has some of the best graphics and possibly the best environments I have ever seen. It's Dunia engine truly does bring life to the world as its name promises, and you will see it in every swaying tree, falling leaf, rain-storm, and waterfall the game has to deliver. There are swathes of lush greenery that shift into arid deserts seamlessly, the terrain is unkempt and occasionally mountainous, and it all constantly offers beautiful vistas and gorgeous sights to behold. The best part is that every inch of it is cut and highlighted by some of the best lighting effects I have ever seen, and without the severe performance punishment, too. Not to mention things blow up real nice-like, as well.

The textures bring grit and realism to the landscapes and shanty buildings, but aren't always as crisp as you might want to see if you spent more than $1,500 on your PC. However this becomes a null complaint after you toss a grenade into some bushes to watch them explode like a pillowcase full of tree-feathers. The animation is pretty typical of a current-gen FPS with procedural physics and rag-doll and all that, but it really excels when applied to world objects like trees and plant-life. Breezes brush the leaves of every tree around you, creating sort of a natural ocean-wave effect that had me pausing to gaze at the canopy more than once. The scale of the game is huge and you can roam it all freely, so it's hard not to feel like you're in a real place sometimes. I've never been to Africa, but I now imagine that parts of it look just like Far Cry 2. 

There really isn't anything to complain about in the audio department but I have to say that I rarely felt immersed by it. The weapons sound good and sometimes especially visceral, and hearing a jeep tear-ass over dirt and gravel to get at you can be genuinely chilling, but nothing ever sounds exactly right. Other mercenaries will communicate quite a bit and in different languages but it is surprising how often that turns out to be English. The music rises and pulses with exciting tribal beats during combat but this change in rhythm is caused by you firing your weapon, not by enemies attacking you. As a whole it's more than adequate, but there's no reason to call it special. Thankfully it is fairly pleasant to listen to the wildlife while wandering the plains, so at least the atmosphere never fails to add to the experience.

The combat itself is exciting buuuuut way too fucking easy. On the "Hardcore" difficulty (effectively one step above Normal) I had no trouble sniping away entire encampments of enemies before they could even hit me. The cheapest, lowliest weapon is more than enough to pick off enemies from afar, but I do have to give them (the bad guys) credit for firing back even at extreme distances. The AI is more than willing to flank your ass and will do so at any time it has access to more than one bad guy, but despite the constant surprises I was always able to level the playing field with a few machete swipes. Your foes will also help their fallen comrades, but all this ever does is turn 1 and a quarter effective combatants into 2 easy targets, so I wish this had just been left out. And it's not that the AI's stupid, because I never got that impression. Instead the problem seems to be that you're effectively the Master Chief to their grunt; while they're competent, you're a walking tank with a woody for blowing shit up and skull-fucking bitches.

Taking too much damage causes you to start to bleed out, and to stop this process you have to remain stationary and unharmed for a few seconds, giving your avatar time to complete a random grotesque animation of them healing themselves/seemingly making matters worse (the broken arm adjustment is especially sickening). Once you stop bleeding, a quick syringe-stick will top your health off and you can get back to fighting. I have to say this system is much preferable to the rechargeable invincibility that has become commonplace these days, and while the instant-heal syringes detract from the realism the Ubisoft team claims they were going for, I definitely think it has an overall positive affect on gameplay.

Outside of machete-gashing and rifle-drilling your opponents there a few additional combat strategies that you may find useful. Guard posts are constantly infected with soldiers but their encampments are made of little more than wood and nails, so it is often no hindrance to explode through them with a jeep or muscle-car. Some vehicles have mounted weapons (mounted weapons being easily the least accurate in the game) and explosives can even be attached to booby-trap them, but I never once found a practical opportunity to do this. But the best of all of course comes in the form of fire, because the plant-life in Far Cry 2 isn't entirely for decoration; if hit with a flame (be it Molotov, grenade, or flare gun), dried grass will quickly ignite, and its spread consumes anything and anyone in its path. This makes for an effective weapon as well as an incredibly useful defensive strategy. If you don't want to be followed, light the stuff behind you on fire.

You can purchase new weapons by completing specific missions and acquiring diamonds. Diamonds can be acquired as payment for jobs or found in suitcases littering the landscape, which you must hunt down using the handy GPS that blinks whenever one is nearby. I found this especially entertaining because it encourages exploration and often requires a bit of platforming, which breaks up the monotony. It would be nice if there were more creative tasks like this to participate in though, because driving back and forth between objectives and squashing measly peons can definitely become monotonous. It was perhaps too frequent that I found myself staring out of the side of a jeep and sighing as I passed the same landmark for the hundredth time.

Multiplayer is class-based and allows up to 16 people to try and light each other aflame with the typical grunt/sniper/spy/et cetera setup. You've got your standard Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture The Flag modes, and to fill out the list there's also a node-capture variant where only the designated team captain can capture the objective. During play you can unlock new weapons and equipment by investing "diamonds" acquired through gaining experience, but chances are this won't be tearing you away from Left 4 Dead any time soon.

The "Fortune's Pack" downloadable content has already been released for Xbox Live and the Playstation Network and includes new weapons, vehicles, and multiplayer maps. However, whether or not PC players will get the same any time soon is still to be determined. An excellent map editor also comes with the game and it's ease of use is well-known. With an excellent engine and a superior map editor, Far Cry 2 has some real potential for the future.

Unfortunately the game suffers from a number of crippling bugs that still have not all been fixed, and twice I had to rest at a safe house to reset a mission that I could not complete. There are numerous other complaints from fans and some are unable to finish the game, which is entirely unacceptable. Clearly this is one of the first things to address when Ubisoft finds some time between leeching away your money with weapon packs.

Now I've come to the point where I'm supposed to summarize my feelings with a sentence, and I'm having a really hard time not saying "this game is an easy buy". It's flaws, like the lacking storyline and redundant gameplay, are the same flaws I see with almost all other games and while I would like to see them fixed, I am unfortunately used to it by now. However, you may want to wait until there's another patch, so that you are not prevented from finishing it.

Ultimately, I can not ignore the fact that I have not just been playing the game for the last week; I've been immersed in it. Far Cry 2 offers an attractive and believable world and in most circumstances, how exciting it turns out to be is up to you.

At the very least this is a must-rent. Feel free to use that quote on the back of the box, Ubisoft.

-Unfather