Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"All flash, no substance"

At first glance, the game is quite inviting. Lush environments, awesome combat scenes, and just some spectacular views, from cliff-sides overlooking a small river, you see treacherous bridges spanning gorges. But this is just about the best the game has to offer.

The beginning of the game is rather blurry as to why you are even in Africa, unless you bothered to read the manual and read the loading text like I did. If you didn't, you would have the feeling of "What the hell am I even DOING here?", and if you did, then you get "And why am I trying to kill this guy?" It doesn't do a very good job of putting the player into the game from the start, which is a nasty blow to any game.

They do introduce you to several mechanisms of the game at the very beginning, though. It gives you introductions to the very useful fire method of defense/attack, and also to the numerous road blocks that seem to get populated the instant you turn your back on them, and even if it's your own faction they still shoot at you. Makes you wonder if you really should be even working for anyone...

When you do get to town, you find you contracted malaria in the first 5 minutes of being in Africa! Not only is that physically impossible, you are in an advanced stage of it. Come on, if you are going to do something like that, don't make it seem like you are poking fun at it.

The first round of combat is interesting enough. The actual point is to DIE, which is a pleasant surprise. After getting carted off by some people I don't know, I wake up in a butchers shop, which I find ironic, and I'm given a job, because if I don't comply they'll blow my head off.

Now, at this point the game is rather linear while still retaining the open world. You have one, singe purpose: Get some damn meds so you won't keel over from malaria. But, you help out an old man, and oh look, I have some meds you can use, here take them. This is where the game just drops you off with the story. After this, I couldn't make heads or tails if what I was supposed to do. Blow this truck up-OH, I wasn't supposed to do that, guess I'll just have to run... The story quickly lost my interest at that point, so I went about to explore the world.

I can definitely say they kept their promises with the game. The world is MASSIVE. And, with it's no loading times of any disrupting sort, it actually feels like a world you are exploring, not little chunks. The atmosphere the game makes with it's environments I would say is hard to even think of replicating.

But, open has it's problems. Like, too open. They put too much focus on all the side content, the main plot, which IS the whole reason you would buy the game in the first place, is a half baked monstrosity that is hardly any bigger than a thimble, for all the notice it garners. And all the side content is the same. It's "go here to find diamonds which should be buying me a bazillion guns each but only get me one for every several hundred thousand dollars worth of them. It's a nice discovery feature that entices you to explore every inch of the map, but come on... to be honest it's something that is exceedingly boring, and is somehow vital to the main plot through that it actually gets you stuff.

Now, the guns, and the wear is quite breathtaking. I had been using an AK for several days, gunning down those annoying roadblocks that always crop up for some unknown reason, when I noticed I had jammed. I had to look for a few seconds to realize my AK was becoming tarnished and rusty. Some might say that it means that they did a horrible job of it. I say the opposite. It means the changing was so fluid, I had to pay actual attention to the gun to keep an eye on it's condition. That, is an achievement.

After floating about for a few more hours, doing odd jobs from cellphone towers that for some reason I had to jack into to get a signal and collect diamonds, I decided to try out it's multiplayer.

Worst idea ever. I can see how it can be appealing for the hyper-realistic demographic, but there is a fine line between a headshot kill and shooting-you-in-the-foot-while-you-are-at-full-health kill. The difficulty is very, very high, and I would warn any Halo players, or even worse, MW2 players, that there be dragons in there. Don't get me wrong, I can see how it amounts to a meaningful multiplayer, but it's targeted audience isn't exactly what most games try for. So if you aren't afraid of getting your ass handed to you, go ahead and try it.

As a conclusion, Far Cry 2 is a bit too much sandbox, not enough actual story to go on. It lures you away from the main story with all the secondary stuff, which incidentally is vital to your survival as you need better guns, so you have to do ALL of it, only to return to a half baked plot and story a 10 year old could write better. By far, Far Cry 2 is a wishful thinker who just tried a bit too hard to be different.