Far Cry 2 - Review

Added November 18th, 2008 by Justin McBride

Instead of developing the direct sequel to the landmark 2004 shooter Far Cry, Crytek moved on to bigger and better things with their recent PC-exclusive Crysis. To fill the void left in Crytek’s wake, Ubisoft took the reins of the Far Cry franchise and the challenge of developing the true sequel. As is common when a new developer takes over an existing franchise, skeptical gamers have wondered how it well it could fare. With an entirely new setting and more down to earth direction, Far Cry 2 has taken the series to new places, while still retaining much of what made the original so great.

The story of Far Cry 2 unfolds in a fictional African nation embroiled in civil war between two rival factions, the UFLL and APR. The protagonist, chosen by the player, has one primary directive and that is to find “The Jackal” and execute him. As can be expected, this task is not quite as simple as its description implies. To acquire leads, you’ll be forced to work with and against the two warring factions, accepting missions from both in an effort to flush The Jackal out of hiding.

Far Cry 2 is unlike the majority of first person shooters these days in the fact that it's mostly non-linear. Missions you receive from any of the many mission locations indicated on your map usually have one or two objectives which can be tackled from any angle, adding a very nice sense of freedom that most shooters just don’t have. There is little sense of urgency here. Once you’ve undertaken a mission, you can often take as long as you like to complete it. One of the more annoying things about accepting missions is that you can only do one at a time. It would be nice to have a Mass Effect or Oblivion-esque mission log, allowing you to accept missions from various sources as you find them and complete at your leisure.

To explore the 20 or so miles of open landscape, you’ll need a vehicle and Far Cry 2 offers many to choose from. Land based vehicles include tiny coupes and dune buggies, going up from there to the assault truck complete with gun turrets in the back. In an odd bit of product placement, there are Jeep Wranglers and Liberties as well. Gunboats can be found to assist in crossing the game’s many lakes and rivers.  To provide a better view of the land from the air, hang gliders are located in several spots.

Unfortunately, while the game does a good job in giving you reasons to explore the world such as the 221 briefcases containing rough diamonds, it doesn’t supply much motivation to do so. To appease those gamers who prefer instant gratification, they’ve included a fast travel option in the form of bus stations located in the four corners and the center of both districts. After a while though, my will to explore for the sake of exploring wore thin. I began to wish for a more convenient fast travel option such as what was seen in Oblivion.

At the beginning of the game, your character suffers from an outbreak of malaria, which persists throughout the game. Every 30 minutes or so, you'll be stricken with a resurgence of the disease in your system, which can only be temporarily remedied by taking a dose of medication. This medication is in limited supply. As your supply runs low you'll have to take on a mission for the Underground delivering travel documents across the land. It’s worth noting that, as your reputation increases, those giving you the missions will mention your notoriety and be reluctant to offer you the medicine you need.

Introduced here is a “buddy” system. Once you’ve chosen your character from a group of available preset characters, the remaining number become NPCs that you’ll be able to befriend in the game, usually after pulling them out of a jam.  Having a large number of buddies affords you certain benefits during regular gameplay. After you’ve accepted a story mission, one of them will give you the option of meeting and discussing a way to subvert your mission’s primary directive. Once you’re there, they’ll present you with a second option for taking on your mission. Usually though, the secondary objectives you obtain from your buddy is generally more difficult and time consuming than finishing the mission on your own. On the plus side, your buddies generally make completing your objective a bit easier.

Another perk to having buddies is their ability to help you out when things get a bit too hot to handle. One of your buddies will be “rescue-ready”, allowing them to come and revive you after you’ve been incapacitated. This can be quite helpful when you find yourself in over your head, which, at least in my case, was fairly often. They'll stay around after you are revived to help finish off the remaining enemy soldiers.

There is a very large selection of weapons, ranging from small caliber pistols to shotguns and various assault rifles to rocket launchers. Even the series’ trademark machete makes a return appearance. Each of these projectile weapons fall into one of three categories: sidearms, primary weapons and special weapons.  Only one of each can be carried at a time.  

Aiming any one of the many weapons in the game is a lopsided experience. Aiming and firing from the hip feels slippery and imprecise, no matter the sensitivity setting. On the other hand, aiming down the sights activates the ridiculously powerful auto aim. To say this overcompensates for the slippery aiming controls would be an understatement. As long as there is an enemy close to your aiming reticule, pulling the left trigger will instantly snap your aim to the nearby soldier’s sternum or in some cases, their forehead. The auto aim can be turned off, but then you’ll have to rely on the fairly loose standard aiming controls.

In addition, a weapon degradation system has been implemented, one you’ll undoubtedly become accustomed to very early on. It seems your enemies never clean or inspect their weaponry for defects.  Each weapon you pick up off downed soldiers tends to jam the instant you find yourself in a heated firefight, forcing you to mash the X button until the jam has been cleared. As your weapons deteriorate over frequent use, they inch ever closer to their breaking point, at which time the gun will cease to function. I had my first experience with this little mechanic during a hectic battle in which all three of my projectile weapons decided to break, one right after the other, the instant I tried to squeeze off a shot.

To combat this, it’s easily recommended that you find one of the many weapons dealers where you can purchase new weapons in pristine condition, as well as increased ammo capacity and reliability upgrades for each weapon. These weapons, once purchased, are readily available to you at the armory located near the weapon depots and can be retrieved as many times as you like. At first, the supply of weapons and upgrades you’ll have access to will be very limited. To unlock more of the store's inventory, you’ll need to accept missions from the vendor. These missions are all very straightforward and involve destroying weapons convoys being brought in by rival arms dealers.
 
Enemies you’ll come across during the story mode are fairly generic. There’s no variety between them besides their choice in weaponry, which steadily improves as you progress (i.e. snipers upgrade from the standard bolt action rifle to a Dragunov SVD). Enemy AI is very mixed in terms of intelligence. There are times when I was genuinely impressed by their tactics such as using cover, throwing grenades to flush me out of hiding, flanking and so on. Conversely, there were also times where they appeared to be brain-dead by running into a stream of automatic weapon fire or somehow not noticing me until I was five feet in front of them and aiming a rifle at their foreheads.

Far Cry 2’s selection of multiplayer modes is pretty standard for a first person shooter. There’s the standard deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture the flag (called capture the diamond here) modes as well as a new one named Uprising. This mode sees two teams with the singular goal of capturing control points. The lone twist is the fact that each team has its own captain and only the captain can capture points, thus creating a nice team dynamic in which everyone is forced to work together to both protect their captain and eliminate the opposing team’s captain.

The main draw of the multiplayer mode is the incredibly robust map editor. This map editor gives you the tools to create just about any sort of multiplayer map you could imagine and also the ability to share it with players around the globe. Once your map has been certified for use in one or all of the game’s multiplayer modes, you can upload it to the map server. From there, users can download and rate your map using the relatively deep search options. Based on my experience, the map community was thriving and finding great new maps to try out online was very simple.

Ubisoft has obviously done their homework when it comes to creating a vibrant and believable setting, as their envisioning of a fictional African countryside is one of the most impressive open worlds I’ve seen. The landscape is as varied as it is beautiful, featuring lush jungles, gorgeous oases, sprawling savannahs, majestic waterfalls and beautiful coastal retreats. Yes, that’s a lot of positive adjectives, but view this game on a good HD set and you’ll agree. Landscapes pop with vibrant earthy colors, nice texture work and featured a fairly good draw distance. Aside from the great looking scenery, everything else also features a good amount of detail. Man-made structures such as the small, metal outposts you’ll find scattered throughout the land are well detailed, character models and vehicle models are great, environmental lighting is downright stunning and explosions are wonderful. Aside from the shadows looking a bit off up close and some relatively minor pop in, there isn’t much here to complain about.

One of the most interesting aspects of the game is one that many games merely dance around. Fire. Fire is used to great effect in this game due to implementation of a dynamic fire propagation system. Because of this, fire behaves in much the same manner as you’d expect it to in real life, uncontrollable and indiscriminate. Fire quickly spreads to surrounding vegetation, leaving naught but charred cinders in its wake. Even the weather will have an effect on it. Surrounding winds will fan the flames, rain will hamper its progress, and through skilled use of Molotov cocktails and flamethrowers, it can decimate entire platoons of enemy troops for you.

One low point that consistently annoyed was the audio work. The game’s voice acting frequently sounded rushed, and hurried, as if the voice actors were speed reading their scripts. Sentences constantly blurred into each other, as proper pauses in dialogue were few and far between. I was also annoyed that every time an enemy vehicle would attack, regardless of which type of vehicle it was, it would make the exact same sound. Weapons sound nice and ambient sounds were well done, but overall I was pretty disappointed.

There isn’t much to complain about in Far Cry 2. As I’ve already raved about before, the visuals are gorgeous, the use of fire is amazing and the gunplay is viscerally satisfying. I do wish there was more variety in mission structure and pacing as, after the first Act, the game felt like it was repeating itself. I would’ve liked more of a reason besides the hidden briefcases to explore the world around you as well. There aren’t many first person shooters that venture into open world territory and fewer still that manage to do it well. Those who believe Far Cry 2 doesn’t make as big of an impact as its predecessor would be fairly accurate but that just goes to show how far ahead of its time the first Far Cry was. Even though Far Cry 2 is far from perfect, it’s still a great first person shooter that offers a relatively unique experience to those accustomed to more linear experiences.