by: Michael Ogunnubi

November 30, 2008

Amongst all the releases currently flooding the market, I honestly never expected Far Cry 2 would take so much time to review. There's plenty to experience in this game. What's more, you can cross out any potential involvement of unimaginatively designed models of mutated humans, extraterrestrials or the presence of fictional beings of any kind.
The game drops you in the middle of war-torn Africa. You embark on a mission to eliminate "The Jackal," a shady character whose efforts seemed to have sparked a conflict between powerful local warlords. Struggling to survive, your job is to play the factions against each other by whatever means necessary. The way you accomplish these goals is down to you, while the main task stays the same throughout the campaign - e.g. finding "The Jackal."

The first few hours of Far Cry 2 were unlike anything I've experienced in a first-person shooter. Sure, the GTA inspired gameplay involves plenty of driving and consulting the GPS for main tasks and side-missions. But it all felt amazingly real. Completing each task is really hard work. Essentially this is because missions usually require players to head towards a remote part of map. Completing the mission isn't necessarily the hard part. Getting there might be trickier, seeing as the roads are swarming with enemy patrols. Apart from random patrols, the entire region has quite a lot of guard posts, which you're bound to encounter before reaching the main destination. Clearing out the guard posts doesn't help much, since enemy sentries respawn each time your return to that particular spot. At first, this seemed a bit unfair, but in time I realized it makes each mission considerably more challenging, forcing players to make smart choices and plan out their routes carefully. Of course, you can always race through guard posts and just run over enemies. Even when you resort to the old hit-and-run strategy, enemy troops still show impressive resilience and determination. Once they see you drive by at high speed, they'll immediately chase after you if they have wheels of their own.

No matter how good you are at playing first-person shooters, the AI in FC 2 keeps you very busy throughout the entire game. However, reports from many players indicated certain unwanted symptoms such as unresponsive AI. This happened only twice during our time with the game. Still, it is something the developers ought to, nay, must look into. While they're at it, perhaps they should attend to another rather serious matter.

To receive certain assignments you must enter the HQ of different factions (UFLL or APR). Before doing so you are required to relinquish your weapons and leave them with soldier guarding the entrance. When I tried to do this once, I approached the entrance but there wasn't a sentry present, thus I wasn't able to enter the faction's base to receive the job. This bug is, from what I've read on many forums, very common and is solved by reloading your previous save. If you've been overwrighting constantly, you're going to have a major problem on your hands.