Far Cry 2: Not That Far From Perfection

IT’S RARE that I play a new game and find myself in love, in awe and utterly amazed at just how good the game is. Welcome to Far Cry 2…

There are so many things that the development team got right with this game, so many things that just amaze me and constantly surprise me, but it’s also not without its problems and issues, however thankfully the good outweighs the bad by a huge margin.

Before I get any further into this review let me just say a few things to clarify my position:-

GO OUT AND BUY THIS GAME NOW!

OK. Fan boy attack over. Let’s look at this logically for a bit shall we? To start with let me summarise the game. It’s a successor to the seminal Far Cry, set this time in Africa. You play the role of a mercenary, caught up in the dirty little war between rival factions which quickly gets totally out of control, and that’s where the fun starts in earnest. Let’s deal with the good first then shall we…

Ever Wanted That Perfect Sunset?

I can say without hesitation that this is the most beautifully rendered game I’ve ever seen, and I’m a gaming nut so I’ve seen them all. The graphics are simply stunning; trust me when I tell you that you have never seen anything like this before. Ever. Sunrises and sunsets are so good, so absolutely mind blowing that frequently you will find yourself admiring the view (Deserts, jungles, rolling hills and deep valleys, grasslands, swamps, shanty towns, rivers, lakes etc.) instead of paying attention to the sneaky bugger who has outflanked your position and is about to put a bullet in your head. You sit there amazed as the grass and bushes sway in the wind (and wind direction is important folks, trust me!), your jaw drops regularly and you will find yourself uttering words like ‘Fuck Me!’ and ‘Bloody Hell’ when you see the effect you can have on your environment. It is simply stunning. Period.

Flame Wars

Without a doubt the implementation of flames and explosions in this game is the best I’ve seen yet. You can set fire to the grass, the trees… hell you can blow up and destroy pretty much everything you can see (with a few minor exceptions). There is something quite hypnotic when you lob a molotov cocktail into a group of buildings and watch the fire leap from one to the other based on wind direction (Tip: Always check the direction first or you will find yourself running away with your ass on fire as you scramble to inject some badly needed medicine and bandages.

Animations

The animations are quite amazing. From pulling bullets out of your leg to applying bandages to your arms, from exploding jeeps and buildings to exploding heads and limbs. Hell even getting into a damn jeep is perfectly handled, so if you climb in on the wrong side you end up ‘scooting’ across to the drivers position. Likewise when you switch from a gun position to a drivers position or vice versa. It’s just beautiful and never gets old. Even the buddy animations (if you make enough buddies in the game they will come and help you when get shot down sometimes) are cool as they drag you from the battlefield, shooting at bad guys in the process while you apply some medications and get back on your feet. It’s brilliant, really.

Those Wonderful Surprises

The more I play, the more I discover and inevitably the more I find myself smiling, laughing out loud or simply whooping with joy at the pleasure of discovery. This game rewards you for thinking outside the box, for going where no one expects you to, and from thinking before leaping. I don’t want to spoil it for you so I’ll just say the following. Don’t stay on the roads forever – go exploring. Go as far off the beaten track as you dare, and you will be amazed at what you find. Oh and here is a little tip – if you find a bunch of bad guys standing around some ammo… drop a grenade in there and watch the fun as the ammo ignites and fires off in every direction. The watch what happens to the surrounding grass, jungle, trees etc. Oh, and look after your weapons because if you don’t they will fail, and they will even explode in your face if you’re not careful… that’s one of the nastier surpriese in store for you, but there are many many more. Trust me on this.

Fighting Form

The bad guys in the early stages of the game are pretty easy to take out, and just as you are about to get bored you realise that something has changed. Gradually your reputation increases, as do your skills… but guess what? So do theirs! The games increases in difficulty in a wonderfully subtle way until one minute you find yourself out of ammo, out of ideas and shitting yourself behind a tree holding on to your last molotov cocktail and wondering if the wind will be kind to you as you try to escape the five armed gunmen who have outflanked you and ambushed you from three sides. Hell they even try to run you down in the vehicles. It’s pretty fantastic.

Options – You’ve Got ‘Em

You can do it all in this game. Fly, drive, walk, run, crawl, sail or swim your way around a 50km square map that just seems to go on forever. Hell you can even walk between the various districts and areas if you want to, but watch out for that maleria, it’s a killer! Vehicles need to be kept in good condition though, so you will find yourself having to repair them quite regularly. Your weapons will also need to be kept in good condition as I mentioned previously, but you can also upgrade them at various gunsmiths throughout the game, so choose wisely. The currency in this land is diamonds. You get ‘em for carrying out missions buy you can also steal them from caches hidden around the map (one good reason to go off the beaten track!). There are many different ways to approach every single mission or area in the game and you make strategic choices as well which determine how easy or difficult the objective will be. It’s pretty flexible and where as some decisions will force you down one route, most just offer you different ways of achieving the same thing.

The Wishlist

Ok – enough good stuff. There’s actually a huge list of other things I could talk about, but I don’t want to spoil the experience for you. Let’s deal with the not-so-hot things then. Let’s call it my wishlist, and luckilly it’s a small list:

Predators – There aren’t any! There are deer, buffalo, zebras and lots of other animals wandering all over the place but no lions, tigers, snakes, elephants etc. Hopefully someone will either come out with a mod or the developers will include it in a future patch because it would add a lovely edge to an already incredible game (imaging swimming through croc territory!)

Road Warriors – Everyone you meet on the road is a bad guy; it would have been better to force you (as the player) to suss out whether or not the guys you are coming upon are friendly or not the old fashioned way.

Zoom Crazy – The zoom on the monocular is set too high by default, so when you scout out an area you practically have to be miles away in order to make any sense of the image because everything is so close in the scope.

Factions - Don’t exist outside of the main city; It would have been so much cooler to have the factions (AI) struggle for territory outside the main city (similar to Stalker games) which would then change the landscape of the map as you play it.

It has to be said though that the items above are really really niggly and small when compared to the monumental achievement that Far Cry 2 is. I mean right now it’s 1am in the morning, I’ve been playing this game for 2 days and it just escalated up a notch or two on the thrill-o-meter as I’ve had to escape a full scale civil war in a small town and I can tell you I was hyped when I did it. I might just go back and do something different this time and see what happens because it all happens so dynamically, so fast and so perfectly that you get caught up in the action and the pace.

Ok. Enough writing. Time to get back to the jungle and the plot, which is getting darker by the minute. Do yourself a favour and go out and buy this game. It’s legend.