Far Cry 2 Review
- Posted October 28th, 2008 at 07:41 EDT by Eric Blattberg
- 31 Comments
Review Score
- PSU Review Score
- 8.5
- Avg. user review score:
- 8.7
Summary
Far Cry 2 meshes high-octane gunplay with open world gameplay, and it does a damn good job. There’s a lot of great games coming this holiday season, but don’t let this one go unnoticed.
We like
- The remarkable depiction of Africa
- The versatile open-world gameplay
- The revolutionary map editor
We dislike
- The shoddy A.I.
- The outdated save system
See PSU's review on Metacritic & GameRankings
Tired of run-of-the-mill shooters? Far Cry 2, developed by Ubisoft Montreal, is far from generic. More of a spiritual successor to the original game than a sequel, Far Cry 2 plunks you down in a 50 square kilometer slice of Africa and sets you free. Is it the journey of a lifetime, or the stuff of nightmares?
Far Cry 2 features an acceptable narrative with astounding atmosphere to compensate. You’re a mercenary hired to kill the Jackal, an arms dealer fueling the flames between two warring factions. You play as one of nine characters, though you’ll know your silent protagonist primarily through his graceful first person animations and slick looking gloves.
Anyway, what truly makes the story shine isn’t the script or voice acting -- not that either of those are poor -- but the astounding setting accompanied with an incredibly cinematic presentation (which for a game that never leaves the first person perspective is quite a feat). This is Africa – snaking rivers, perilous jungles, arid deserts, rutted dirt roads, roaming wildlife, shantytowns and all. It’s evident that the developers made good use of their trip to Kenya in 2007.
Not only does Far Cry 2 feature a stunning recreation of Africa, it lets you tear it to bits. You are a mercenary, after all. In Pala, a central hub town, you can take missions from either the UFLL or the APR, the area's rival factions. Right after you accept a mission from either side, you often get additional or conflict offers from one of your ‘buddies.’ These are people you befriend throughout the game, and it’s worth getting on their good side, as they’re the folks that save your hide when things get rough. On the flip side, when one of your buddies is ailing, you can come to their rescue, or at the very least ease their passing. Be careful though, because once they die, they’re gone permanently.
The missions, while described differently each time, usually consist of traveling somewhere on the map and wiping out hordes of enemies. The travel times can be annoyingly lengthy, but that’s expected in a game with such a massive area. When you get to your objective, though, it’s all worth it. Combat is supremely satisfying. Using the four weapons mapped to the D-pad -- primary, sidearm, special, and machete -- you’re free to take out your targets however you wish. Just make sure you’re not carrying shoddy, low-grade guns prone to jamming, or worse, exploding. Tread stealthily and eliminate foes one by one, head in guns blazing and partake in an epic firefight, set the surrounding area ablaze and watch the fire propagate naturally to surrounding structures and individuals, or just blow everything up with an RPG. It’s entirely up to you.
Whichever course you take, you’ll meet some resistance along the way, but it’s not always the most intelligent resistance. The enemies in Far Cry 2 are meatheads. Sure, they’re fine half the time, but you’ll often find foes wandering aimlessly, shooting at you on the opposite side of an impenetrable wall, staring at you without taking any action, or otherwise spazzing out in some hilarious manner. To counterbalance such inconsistent A.I., Ubisoft Montreal effectively made your adversaries into human bullet sponges. On the normal difficulty setting, they can likely take 10 pistol shots to the torso before they go down. Headshots are pertinent.
There are some oddities with your health as well, but these are intentional, and turn out to be surprising successes. The game features a partial-regeneration health system similar to Resistance: Fall of Man, but there’s a big twist. You can heal yourself with any syrettes you’ve got on hand, and if things get too hairy, you have to hunker down and literally perform self-surgery, like tearing bullets out of your flesh with a pair of pliers. If you ignore a critical wound for too long, you’ll bleed out and die. The animations and visual effects linked to this mechanic are gruesomely gorgeous. The other gameplay element is even odder, but is arguably more effective in crafting a believable setting. When you arrive in Africa, you’re infected with a bad case of malaria, and ... (continued on next page)
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Comments
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chilledbreeze7
- 4:40am EDT - October 28th, 2008
- 4
I love playing Far Cry 2 at the moment even though the A.I. of the other soliders isn't that great. Having said that, the main Single Player game is still great and the online Multi Player is fantastic. The icing on the cake for me is the fact that is has a map maker built in for making maps for online Multi player games, which is pretty easy to use too. Great Game!
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KillerInst2129
- 4:45am EDT - October 28th, 2008
- 6
Sunrise every 10 mins, NOT very realistic now is it, hmm ? that means a full 24 hour day/night cycle every 10 mins, what is the point ?, the GFX might look awsome, but c`mon i hope you can set it so that you can have lets say for every 5 hours of game play is 24 hours esp in a big environment, make it look real atleast
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SpyroViper
- 4:58am EDT - October 28th, 2008
- 8
Lmao @ "Revolutionary Map Editor"
revolutionary.. FarCry for the 360 had almost the exact same system for making maps, so did FarCry and Crysis has as well. It isn't revolutionary at all. It's more "map making for dummies". Real editors are on the PC, for Warcraft 3, Starcraft, Counter Strike, UT3 etc.
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RabidCuj0
- 5:13am EDT - October 28th, 2008
- 9
He forgot to mention that the single player game likes to freeze alot- especially when your connected to the internet. And the voice acting IS terrible its like they have the dialogue in fast forward the entire game wtf Hardly anyone plays online- but aside all that its still a great game.
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KillerInst2129
- 5:21am EDT - October 28th, 2008
- 10
@DSSS91 ok, yeah i havnt actually played this game, lol, im just going by the review, /make note to myself to borrow the game, before putting my foot in my mouth, but still the gfx look amazing, but i never did like the first Far Cry
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lidders
- 6:12am EDT - October 28th, 2008
- 12
I agree this is a fair review - I'd give the game an 8 or so. In many ways it's more reminiscent of Mercenaries than the original Far Cry (but I haven't found the hang glider yet!).
The graphics are truly extraordinary though, especially when you introduce a flame thrower. Burn baby, burn! -
Shin-Karazu
- 6:30am EDT - October 28th, 2008
- 13
I'm looking forward to a future purchase of this game, looks really good.
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gingo
- 7:35am EDT - October 28th, 2008
- 14
psn id: gingo.... i think this game is incredible, definitely one of the most realistic games i've ever played, however i disagree about there being shody AI, i think when enemies jump in trucks to chase you or carry their wounded comrades to safety and heal them, i think that shows quite impressive AI actually
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HeartAttackSilv3rback
- 9:27am EDT - October 28th, 2008
- 17
well,for me personally i give it a 9.0 just for the fact that multiplayer is AMA-ZA-ZING in almost every way eccept 1 though (witch is y i gave it a 9 insted of a 9.5-10.)
its the mad STIFF controls of the charicter the REALLY piss me off on the game.. thats the ONLY thing i ever saw wrong with it... the AI was accually good IMO and riding a good amount of the time is realistic in africa.. if your traveling to distant war torn terretories and there's a car available,i doubt you want to walk in that heat.. so driving is great and you DO have the option to walk it as well but w/e.
i DO think this is a some wut good review.. rare but ive like about 95% of you dudes ratings here at PSU.. props broseph's.
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RabidCuj0
- 10:11am EDT - October 28th, 2008
- 18
If an enemy is 2 feet from you sometimes he will run straight for a truck, or sometimes they will stand there and stare at you till you kill them, or better yet he and his weapon is facing the opposite direction and they still shoot you. I think thats pretty bad A.I. imo
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chomperbull
- 12:09pm EDT - October 28th, 2008
- 20
this game is awesome way better than cod4 and for the people complaining about the map editor would u rather play on the same 5 maps like other games cough cough cod4-5 cough
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