Without doubt, the original Far Cry for the PC was the prime example of next generation graphics technology in 2004. At the time of its release, it more or less defined the term 'realistic graphics', as gamers across the world witnessed the stunning beauty of the tropical island shooter. Sure, it was not nearly as impressive story-wise as it was with the visuals, but overall, it was an enjoyable action game.
A few spin-offs and pseudo-sequels later, four years later, to be exact, the true sequel to the hit FPS finally arrived, appropriately named Far Cry 2. It differs a lot from it's older brother and doesn't carry the original story onwards. It's more like an adopted child in the sense that the only relation it has to its siblings is the tropical, warm, sunny and partially aqueous setting.
An example of the impressive scenery in Far Cry 2. Developers went to Africa to do some research for the game, and it really shows.
Far Cry 2 puts you in the middle of an unnamed African country, right in the heat of the on-going civil war between the two factions; the APR (Alliance for Popular Resistance) and the UFLL (United Front for Liberation and Labour.) After having gone through the mandatory introduction to your, once again, visually stunning surroundings (about equally as stunning to us today as Far Cry was to us in 2004), you're thrown into the heat of the conflict. The conflict itself is rather complicated, two sides of differing opinions against each other, both resorting to making their statements through firepower. Though not based directly on any real war, the story is very believable and could very well happen in the real world. The development team has clearly taken inspiration from ongoing conflicts in Africa today, and have successfully managed to paint a realistic scenario to the player.
Your role in the war starts out as a pretty straight forward mission, which proves much harder to accomplish than you may first imagine. Your mission is to get to a mysterious man, colloquially described as the "bastard that armed both sides", also known by the alias 'the Jackal', and finish him off. You can pick from twelve different characters, with different background stories (which do not affect the story, it more serves as a means to enhance the relation between you and your one-man/woman-army avatar) and, of course, with different appearances, which shows in game. Which character you choose also affects which buddies you'll acquire throughout the game (since it choses from the other eleven characters.)
Your buddies serve as a sort of personalized last chance before being treated to the game over-screen. If at least one of them is labeled as 'rescue-ready' when you've taken enough hits to bring you down for the count, your stalwart mate will come to your aid, getting you back up on your feet and helping you out with the remaining bad guys. They're sort of the Far Cry 2-equivalent to the bottled fairies in the Zelda-series, if not even more helpful, as they carry guns.
But your loyal friends aren't always the helpful savior. During most of the main missions, the most loyal of your two partners will call you on your cell phone and ask you to take a detour to your main objective. At first, it seems no more than fair to do as your friend asks, even though it often means you'll have to take a sometimes unneccesarily long detour. Eventually though, you'll get tired of him/her always asking you to 'do this for me' before you 'do that for them', which negatively impacts on the bonding between you as a player and your virtual comrade.
The map and GPS item will be used almost as often as your firearms. You'll need them navigate the large, open world, and to find hidden diamonds along the way.
Unlike its predecessor, this game takes place in an open world, with the freedom to go where you please, within the boundaries of the map, of course. The tropical game world boasts an incredible fifty square kilometer map, so there's plenty of room to move around, and the enivronment has obviously been designed with the concept of alternate routes in mind. Most of the time, there's another way to advance to your chosen objective than the most obvious one. Usually this other route will prove less painful to take, as it often involves you choosing the path with fewer guard posts along the way.
The map size is definetly of large proportions, and to just hike or swim across the landscape would take way too much time and would also make the game boring very quickly. Thankfully, there are plenty of vehicles around that you can use. There are motor boats, off-road machine gun-equipped cars, hang gliders, dune buggies, generic cars and Jeeps. Jeeps as in the actual brand Jeep, with silver emblem on the front and all.
Though very useful to get to your goal quicker, vehicles have a tendency to break down very quickly, forcing you to whip out your trusty wrench to tighten some bolts. After that, you're good to go again. Not a very realistic way to fix an almost burning car, but it contributes with a nice effect to it, visualizing the process of the vehicle repairing instead of just showing a progress bar or something alike.
Although your main missions involves taking assignments from both sides, whichever side you're currently working for will still attack you. This basically means that even if you work with the APR on a mission to thwart the UFLL's plans, and there's plenty of APR soldiers involved as well, they'll still be turning their gun sights towards you. Your employers fend this behaviour off as you being hired for the mission undercover, so no one except the people sitting on their butts in the offices know that you're with them. In the start, it comes off as a lazy, in-game excuse for not coding allied behaviour into the generic soldiers' AI, but eventually, though perhaps reluctantly, you come to accept your place in the war as a lone wolf.
Taking screenshots in the heat of battle (without godmode) is about as hard as snapping photos of running animals with a cruddy camera, in real life, that is. If you squint, you can see some blood.
Aside from the story-advancing main missions, there are also various side missions that you can take on. These involves missions given by gun shop owners (usually involves destroying a shipment), the underground missions (to deliver passports to civilian escapees in exchange for medicine against malaria, a sickness which you've contracted and have to occasionally take pills against), and assassination missions, assigned to you by an unknown employer, who's presumably the same guy every time, since he says the same thing in the same tone for every mission. Sometimes, you'll be forced to take on underground missions, if your supply of pills has run out.
Although they contribute with a bit of variety over the main missions, the formula is essentially the same. You need to get from point A to point B in order to complete the mission, taking care of whatever obstacles may be in your way (such as guard posts.) Side missions don't involve your best buddy asking you for favours however, so the objectives are usually more straight forward and simple. The downside is that, other than granting you access to buy better weapons (gun shop missions), getting more medicine (underground missions) and stashing up with a supply of the game's currency, diamonds (assassination missions), the side missions don't increase the figures on your percentual game completion progress.
While the underground missions are purely there for your survival, the assassination and gun shipment sabotage missions are there to compensate for one another. Sometimes you'll need additional diamonds other than those earned during main missions, to pay for the weapons that were recently unlocked to you during your assignment from the gun shop owner. You get these extra diamonds from the assassination missions, and thus it grants all mission types a sense of importance.
One of many weapon storage rooms. In these, you can pick up a fresh new weapon from the ones you've purchased. You can also get more ammunition and grenades/molotovs.
Far Cry 2 sports an impressive and fun arsenal of weapons. While missions might become samey from time to time, you can make them slightly different by using different weapons. Depending on what primary, secondary and special weapons you combine, you can either make a sneaky approach towards your target, or you can select all automatic weapons and go completly insane on everything that comes between you and your objective.
However, to avoid rendering your character an invincible superhuman, aside from the usual ammunition depletion, your fun sometimes comes to an abrupt end when your favourite gun starts jamming. This usually happens if you've been using your trusty rifle for a bit too long, or if you've picked up a used weapon. The used weapons usually are in very bad condition and you'll constantly find yourself looking for some temporary shelter to hide behind while you unjam the gun. Eventually, if you've really been using your gun for too long, it'll blow up in your face. This rarely happens however, as there are plenty of gun shops to exchange your rusty old rifles at.
While being an effective element to add further to the game's sense of realism, weapons do have a tendency to jam at the most unfortunate times.
Another element that adds to the realism, and can be of either great use or of great despair to you, is the dynamic fire in the game. Using either a flamethrower, a flare gun, a molotov or blowing something flammable up, you can set your surroundings on fire. The effect is quite impressive and the flames spread around even more if the weather is windy.
The dynamic weather and day/night system in the game, while not being particularly unique, is used really well, and partially affects the enemies' perception and alertness. For example, if you attack a guard post at night, they might have more trouble seeing you from far away, even if they are more alert than during the day. In the light of the day, however, enemies spot you more easily but may not be as alert to do so as they are during the night.
The weather cycles between different states smoothly. Though most of the days it'll be sunny and bright, sometimes there might be a heavy storm or even rain.
One of the later missions in the game takes place at a small airport. You'll meet with pretty heavy resistance, especially in the last few missions.
During the course of the story, the game forces you on occasions to pick one side over the other. These rather tough moral decisions happen at the more major turning points in the game, often pulling you further in, in terms of immersion. Had the game's title been decorated with the word 'betrayal', then it would've certainly lived up to its name. On several occasions, you're backstabbed by the people you've been helping out for a long while, or by the people that've been helping you out. It's used quite a few times, but in an unpredictable and irregular pattern.
Eventually, you'll come to your long awaited goal, only to find that you won't be doing what you had planned to do from the beggining. Another successful plot twist.
The final mission serves as a rather powerful climax before toning down to the calmer ending. Unfortunately though, the curve of excitement from the last mission to the ending sequence isn't just steep, it practically goes straight down, hitting rock bottom. It is a realistic outcome for the conflict, but it's a rather disappointing ending, leaving much less of a reward for your hard work than you had hoped for.
Far Cry 2 is by no means a perfect, flawless game. Though relatively bug free, it suffers more from minimal design flaws and, as mentioned, a rather disappointing ending. The good sides however, namely the very impressive and beautiful scenery, fun and well balanced gameplay and small yet colorful variety of its elements, make it one of the best games of last year, getting in pretty close behind Fallout 3. With nearly an entire day's hours worth of main mission gameplay on the harder difficulties, it's definetly a game worth picking up and playing, if you haven't done so already. It's well worth its money, even for the collector's edition, and probably ranks among the top of my personal favorites in the FPS genre.
/Marcus out.
Far Cry 2 is the copyright work of Ubisoft®. The expressed opinions in this review are mine, and are not related to Ubisoft® in any way. Pictures used in this review are used as means to illustrate the look and feel of the game, and none of the content I've provided (text and images) are meant to harm the company in any way. It's merely a statement of opinions, and should be regarded as such.
