By Stephen Holowczyk

This is a review I’ve been wanting to write for a long time, but I’ve had trouble putting into words. It’s really hard to put how I feel about Far Cry 2 into words, especially since I am Italian and speaking with my hands just comes naturally. I’m just going to lay this out as best as I can: Far Cry 2 was without a doubt one of my favorite games of 2009 but it is heavily flawed and I can completely understand why people would see it as a bad game.

The game places you in the role of a mercenary who has just arrived in Africa. Your ultimate goal is to kill The Jackal, an arms dealer who keeps all the assorted factions in this war-torn section of the country armed and well-stocked. The game starts off with you contracting malaria, leaving you bed-ridden and actually encountering the Jackal. I don’t really want to give too much away, as I think the story was actually really underappreciated and is obviously influenced by Heart of Darkness, with the voice and tone of the Jackal seemingly like a direct nod to Marlon Brando’s portrayal of Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. For the most part, the underlying story is pretty solid, aside from a few racist undertones (it gets sort of uncomfortable when the Jackal refers to the people specifically in the country as savage animals).

The actual gameplay is basically an open-ended FPS. It’s understandable to compare it to a first-person Grand Theft Auto, but that really wouldn’t be fair. You take missions from different factions waging wars for control of the country and its vast cache of diamonds. There are also optional side missions one can do, ranging from assassination missions to weapon cache destruction, but in the end nearly all of these missions end the same way: With you killing someone. Once in a while, you’ll have to blow up a building or a structure rather then a person, but other then that they’re all the same.

Words cannot even begin to describe just how many missed opportunities there are with this game. The faction system is absolutely worthless. You get the same exact missions every time, and each faction doesn’t care if you’ve been working for the other. Every person in the game world (which spans an impressive 19 square miles) wants to kill you regardless of what faction you’re working for. The reason? You’re extremely deep undercover. I guess this would have been an acceptable excuse if it wasn’t said for every mission.

The enemy AI is actually pretty impressive for the most part. In combat, enemies flank you, take cover, and avoid places that are burning. They’ll actually call out to other enemies to let them know where you are (not everyone magically knows where you are, which is also neat). It is, however, not impressive in terms of detection (something that also plagued Far Cry 1 as well). On lower difficulty levels, enemies are blissfully unaware of any movements you make until you get right up in their face. This is actually not a negative, as it’s way more fun to sneak around dumb enemies then get shot up by ones that appear to cheat and magically know where you are. On anything above normal, however, random mercs can pick you out while you’re crawling along in the bushes in the middle of the dark, making any sort of stealth plan fail instantly. This was especially infuriating to me, as I wanted the combat to be actually difficult without stealth being frustratingly hard.

The gunplay is solid and fun, albeit a few quirks. It’s got the now-standard regular-aim-plus-iron-sights system that most games have nowadays (however, if you don’t turn off the crosshair, you are not deserving of this game). Most of the guns sound meaty as well, from the lowliest pistol to the big fifty-cal sniper rifle (the sound design is especially one of the best aspects of this game). The weapon balance, on the other hand, is not as good, as most of the assault rifles tend to be useless outside of the best two. It also sucks that you can’t lean, which was obviously taken out due to the fact that it had to be ported to the consoles.

The much-hyped buddy system is absolutely completely wasted, which is honestly what upset me the most. Basically, you can befriend a bunch of other mercenaries, who will upgrade your safehouse, give you missions, and save your life if you ever die in the middle of a mission (the sight of which never really gets old). The problem is that outside of that, they’re never used. The worst part of all of this is that you can’t even take buddies on missions or give them orders. I cannot begin to describe how much this breaks the game for me. This game would have without a doubt been in my top five games of all time if you could have taken a buddy on an actual mission and give them basic orders, like “cover me”, “follow”, and “stay”. It wouldn’t have taken much. One of the times that the lack of this really hurts is when you’re driving. Most of the vehicles are designed to have someone sitting in the gunner’s seat while one drives, but since you can’t have anyone allied working the gun, it’s useless, and you have to constantly change positions. Really though, the lack of a solid buddy system is apparent throughout the game.

So, a bunch of missed opportunities, (at times) frustrating gameplay, and repetitive missions. Why then, do I continue to defend this game? Because, at least to me, it’s fun as hell. It’s basically everything I’ve always wanted in an action game (well, almost). Many, many, many games have made the claim that it is putting you into an action movie that you control, and many game reviewers have backed up these claims. However, for me, Far Cry 2 is one of the very few that actually does it. The actual gunplay is “Hollywood-realism”, with an emphasis on flash-and-bang but still somewhat grounded in reality. The rest of the gameplay tries to be as realistic as possible without being annoying (although I would have liked custom options a la Crysis), with a game map you actually have to look at, having to pick up pills for your malaria (seriously), and raiding outposts for extra guns. All of this fully immerses you in the game world. Also, there is nothing like having a standoff in the middle of an enemy camp, your buddy lying dead and you bleeding profusely while a vehicle filled with three badass mercs comes gunning for you. You slam the last clip into your .45 and take cover. It is situations like that that make the game, and they happen often.

So, in the end, is Far Cry 2 worth purchasing? It depends. If you’re the kind of gamer that likes realism and a persistent world, yes. If you can overlook a whole mess of glaring and obvious faults, yes. I really hope that Ubisoft does something with this series/franchise. The mod scene that was supposed to be thriving with the release of this game never happened, and it doesn’t look like there’s going to be a patch (or even a fan-patch) to fix the numerous problems with this game. The best we can hope for is an expansion pack or a sequel. I really hope we see it, because this is one game I absolutely want to see done right.

Score: 8/10