I will start by saying I had extremely low expectations for Farcry 2.
Strike 1. It's Ubisoft- once known for making some pretty butt kicking games Ubi I feel has typically gone downhill over the years.. It's hard for me to not anticipate a crapfest from these people.
Strike 2. It's a cash-in, Crytech the makers of Farcry left a long time ago and made the phenominal Crysis (true successor of Farcry), in their leave Ubi has pooped out several horrible console Farcry games almost killing the franchise name.
Strike 3. This Game took the name of a run into the ground franchise, yet is not related to it in any way shape or form.
So with that out of the way, I'm going to publicly eat crow and say I was wrong, so wrong about this game. What we got was a unique progression on the First Person Shooter Genre. It takes many of the best elements from action shooters, free roaming sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto and mixed them into one damned superb game. Don't let me imply that it's perfect, in fact the biggest hold up is a broken mission I encountered that I wasted far too much time trying to complete that it put my review back a few days. In fact this game has quite a few bugs I have encountered, but let me assure you now, the experience of this game is so good that you will overlook all flaws.
The basic plot here is that you are a mercenary that was sent to Africa to kill "The Jackal", an arms dealer that is getting rich on the conflict in the area by arming both sides. Your plans are altered when you come down with a case of Malaria and are bed ridden for some time, in your sickened state the Jackal pays you a visit but does not kill you as he figures there is no way you can touch him, and once you fail your mission others will be after your head. This is where you begin, sick and with only basic weapons. You find missions on your map as exclamation points and you visit the right NPC to get them, they typically consist of either killing someone or destroying something. Your payment is in rough diamonds that you can use in the weapons shops to buy new weapons, upgrade them and also to allow you to hold more ammo and such. If you visit the shop when you have no active missions you can often find the arms dealer will be there to give you missions that will unlock new weapon choices. Once purchased weapons will be available with ammo in an unlimited fashion in the store houses next to all weapons shops.
One thing that really impresses me the most is that there are no loads once in game,you can travel to all corners of the map and never once have to load. The only time you will is when you use a bus station to fast travel from one part of the map to another. The graphics are sharp, crisp and the lighting is the most natural and realistic I've ever seen in a game outside of Crysis (and in many ways more so). You will spend your time driving various jeeps, crappy cars and dune buggies down dusty african roads, this is pretty fun as it's like offroad rally racing without the actual race. To keep things from getting too boring they have made every citizen of this great land completely bat shit insane so every one you pass on the road will attack you on sight. Even simply driving by the lumber mill will make all workers drop what they are doing to chase you down and kill you!!.
While doing missions you will undoubtedly get a few rescue cases where you help some other Mercs out of a tough spot, once you do this they are your buddies and they will be a huge help to you. You typically get two main buddies, one will stay on rescue(if you die, they come in drag you out of danger and help patch you up), the other will typically help you out on missions by offering alternative ways to get them done (which tend to bring in some extra rewards). This is basically Farcry 2 in a nutshell, fighting your way through insane Africans to complete missions for bad people on two conflicting sides and eventually you work up to finding the Jackal. It is a lot of fun finding unique ways of taking out the enemy, buying all types of new weapons and getting some spiffy new vehicle and watching how bad they look after a few hours of driving them in this place (it broke my heart when I got a new Jeep SUV with gold rims from a prince, only to have it look like a big ball of mud an hour later).
Another Highly impressive thing is the fire, Alone in the Dark(2008) tried to really raise the bar with in game fire, and Farcry 2 takes it to roughly the same level but this time, it's in a game worth playing!! It's really impressive the things you do that will start fires and you just watch them spread, all of the leaves burn off trees leaving black burnt limbs, a few Molotov cocktails always make for some fun gunfights against entrenched enemies. Anytime you see a propane tank of any sort you know shooting them is only going to end in big fun.
The Pros
Great Graphics that run well on medium level hardware. Game play that always keeps you on your toes, interesting story, weapon and upgrade selection give a good incentive to work on side missions.
Cons
Not the most polished game on the planet, AI a bit flakey, sometimes you can walk right up to them and they don't see you, next time they see you through walls and nearly blast your head off without being in your range of sight. one or two missions that can break under certain circumstances, would love to be able to take more than one mission at a time.
All in all I loved Farcry 2, I could complain for hours about what is wrong with it, but I won't because I'll be too busy PLAYING it.
I give this game an 8/10, amazing game brought down by some minor flaws.
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