Far Cry 2
PlayStation 3
Nostalgia Factor:
I've been interested in the Far Cry series for years and years now. The only one I have played is the first game in the series, and that was over seven years ago. My initial plan had been to marathon my way through the entire series. Well, here we are in 2022, and I am only just now finally moving onto Far Cry 2.
Hey, maybe I can actually make it through every game in the series by the time I'm 95!
Story:
You're almost better off just reading a Wikipedia summary. I had a hard time paying attention to this game's storyline. It's a bit fast moving. There's a lot of characters. A lot of action. Things aren't set up very well right from the start. Shortly after I began playing this game I found myself confused as to who I was supposed to be and what exactly I was doing here in Africa.
I was eventually able to figure out that I'd been sent in to Africa to bring peace to an unnamed war-torn country by defeating an evil arms dealer who was fueling both sides of the conflict. Unfortunately you find yourself stripped of resources, with a bad case of malaria, and at the mercy of the warring factions. Both of these factions give you missions to complete for them - like go blow this thing up or go kill this guy. Sometimes you're given the option to defect to the other side in the middle of a mission. It seems like you have freedom of choice, but mainly these decisions don't affect too much in the long run.
One thing I'll say I didn't like about this game is the fact that so much of it is told to you as you are playing. Oftentimes I'd find myself walking around or checking things out and then I'd realize I had missed half of what was being said to me. This is a common complaint I have among games like this where you listen to audio logs or talk to characters over a communicator. I don't have the attention span to both play and listen at the same time. As a result, I'd often miss giant chunks of the game's plot, and important ones too.
And that's why I really can't tell you much about this game's story aside from the bare essentials. Honestly, I'm not sure it is that important anyway.
Gameplay:
Right off the bat, I could see that this game was going to be vastly different from its predecessor. Far Cry 2 was not going to be based around making your way through levels or stages. No, no. This game was open world. Or, as I used to say before the term open world became mainstream: "like Grand Theft Auto."
And that's really what this game is. Grand Theft Auto as a first person shooter, set in the jungles of Africa. Okay, maybe that is oversimplifying things a bit, but the similarities are there. You have a map with a list of destinations where you can complete missions. You steal cars. You shoot bad guys. The main storyline, at least from my viewpoint, is secondary. Half the journey is getting from one destination marker to the next.
The map is littered with collectibles such as hidden diamond caches. If you want a comparison, think about the Riddler trophies from the Arkham games. There are hundreds of these things, and they are freaking everywhere. Most of them are easy to find, while others had me absolutely stumped. These diamonds work as in-game currency. You can trade them in to upgrade your weapons or buy brand new ones altogether.
When I first started playing this game, my initial impression was "wow." The open world made the game much more intriguing than Far Cry Classic. There was so much to see and do and explore. Immediately I started comparing this game in my mind to Half-Life 2, which I had recently finished playing. Based on first impressions alone, this game was A material.
It wasn't until I started sinking a few hours into the game that my opinion on it started to fall apart. There are a lot of flaws that might seem minor at first in Far Cry 2's gameplay that really begin to add up and make the game very frustrating, very fast.
I'll start with the obvious: the save system. You have to manually save in this game, but you have to do it from designated save locations. No auto save. No pausing the game and saving whenever you want. This might seem like a minor gripe at first. This is pretty much how every video game used to be, right? But you'll soon discover how much of a bad thing this is. Let's say you are headed out to a mission. You notice there's a hidden diamond cache in your area. You stop, you fight some enemies that pull up in a Jeep and try to blast you into oblivion, you look around for a bit, and you collect the diamond. Let's say five in-game minutes have passed.
You get back in your vehicle and you head towards your destination again. There's a guard outpost! You stop, you clear them out, you collect everything they leave behind, and you get in your car again. Another five or ten minutes has passed. You get to your destination. You get out of the car. Some enemies start attacking you. A Jeep hits you from behind. Getting hit with a vehicle is pretty much auto-death in this game. You die. You get sent back to the last time you saved. Everything you've accomplished in the last 20 minutes is now undone. The diamonds? Got to collect them again. The outpost? Got to clear it again. All that driving and traveling? Yup, got to do it again..
The first time this happens to you, you might be mildly annoyed. The fifteenth time this happens to you, you'll want to chuck your controller through the wall.
I'm just getting started with this game's frustrations. Let's talk about the weapons constantly jamming up and breaking. Now, this is a normal thing in games, but Far Cry 2 takes this mechanic too dang far. If you're using the same weapon for hours on end and you haven't upgraded it or done any maintenance on it, and it breaks, that's okay. Not here. You'll be in the heat of battle firing at an enemy with a gun you just picked up. It jams. You have to waste ten second sitting through a stupid animation while your character unjams the gun. The whole time you are doing this, you are susceptible to enemy fire.
You resume shooting at the enemy. The gun jams again. Aaahhhh! So annoying! But not as annoying as when you unjam the gun and it happens AGAIN. Seriously. This happens constantly throughout the game. The dang guns just would not stop jamming, over and over again. I can't count how many times I died because of this stupid mechanic. And remember what I said about save points? You can see where I am going with this.
But I am STILL not done. You can't drive anywhere on the map without having to stop and take part in multiple monotonous shootouts that take up way too much of your time. Enemies relentlessly chase you in cars of their own. They hit your vehicle with two bullets and it starts smoking and you have to stop and get out. You can repair the vehicle, and you will repair your fair share of vehicles playing this game. It gets to the point of absurdity though with these dang vehicles and how fragile they are. If you happen to get stuck in the middle of nowhere and your vehicle gets destroyed? Guess what? You've got to hoof it on foot. And this game has a pretty big map. I'd say nothing is worse than having to walk for 15 minutes until you can return to actually playing the game again, but this game really tested my limits in many, many ways.
The outposts. In normal games when you clear an enemy outpost, you "conquer" that outpost and can use it as a safe haven. Not this game. You can clear an outpost, leave, and come back to it literally one minute later, and the enemies will have respawned. It's like you didn't even do anything at all. What's the point?
The game forces you constantly into pointless and unwanted combat scenarios. You can't just drive past enemy outposts if you don't feel like fighting. Often the paths through are blocked off, forcing you out of your vehicle. When you are able to squeeze through, enemies pursue you in vehicles of their own. Before you know it, your car is smoking and you are forced to get out and fight.
What else didn't I like about this game? Well, there's the fact that your character has malaria and is forced to stop every once in a while to take pills because of malaria sickness, but I didn't find this as annoying as most reviewers. It only happens about once every half hour, which is a heck of a lot less annoying than your weapons constantly jamming up.
The game is split into two halves, consisting of two separate maps. In open world games like this I like to explore and collect everything there is to collect. But that's impossible here. Once you complete a certain mission, you are transported to the second map with NO option to return to the first one. So if you are trying to collect all diamonds and you accidentally trigger the event that takes you to the second map - you are screwed.
You know what else is annoying? The overly long healing animations, particularly when you're low on health and the animations are EVEN LONGER. Why oh why did they think this was a good idea?
If you put aside all the gripes I have with it, the game is perfectly fine and enjoyable.
The funny thing is, I am not joking. When I look back on my time with this game, I look back on it favorably - despite all the things the game has going against it. There's something inherently fun about the formula of the game with all the driving and exploration. The setting makes you feel like you're on some kind of movie adventure. I probably poured more hours into this game than anything else I've played in recent memory.
Graphics:
For a relatively early era PS3 game, this looks really good. I like the setting. All the trees and rivers and jungle locale seem very organic and natural. I had to stop to just check out the sights from time to time. Wind blows through the grass. There's a day/night schedule. I love the way fire spreads quickly through the underbrush. I can't believe this game came out 14 years ago!
The characters look nice. The vehicles look nice. As much as I've nitpicked this game to death, I really can't criticize the graphics too much. Maybe I could say the colors are a little drab and everything is kind of a dull brown or green color?
Sound:
Nothing about this game's music stands out to me whatsoever. Was there even music in this game?
The voice acting is pretty good. The sound of explosions and your guns firing is perfect, as are all the environmental sound effects. I'd put Far Cry 2's sound in the solid but not spectacular category.
Overall:
Despite all its flaws, I still kept coming back to Far Cry 2. There's just something about this game, that even though it does so many things to piss its players off, it is still what I would consider an overall good game. I liked this more than Far Cry Classic to be honest with you. I might have overrated that game when I first played it, however. I gave that game a B+, but when I think back on my time with it, it is very forgettable in the long run. For better or worse, I'll remember this one for a much longer time. It's not going to get a B+ or higher, however. Heck no. This game does way too many things incorrectly.
So while it may look like I enjoyed Far Cry Classic more with its sparkling B+ final grade, I'd have to say that this game beats it out in nearly every category. And what's exciting to me is that I can see the groundwork for what the Far Cry series is soon to be. I haven't played Far Cry 3 or any of the newer titles in the series, but everyone speaks so highly of them while shitting all over this game. If this is considered the worst game in the series, I think I am going to be in for a real treat.
THE GRADE:
B-
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Far Cry 2 (the review you're reading)
Up next we move onto 2009 with:
Braid!
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