Far Cry® 2: Fortune's Edition

I bought this game on Steam about a year after it was released and I've since tried playing it about 5 times. I get about 1/4th of the way through the game then give up. Not because it's hard. No. It's because it's repetitive and boring. The levels are basically re-spawned enemies in the same location you visited 3 missions ago. Not only that, but enemies constantly spawn at every check point through-out the game, which is simply annoying as hell and unforgivable. The graphics (at the time) were next gen stuff and the game has pretty good FPS combat, but.. it's just too repetitive and tedious. The first game had many new areas to explore. It sometimes got repetitive, but there was always new places. Not the same place over and over. Plus you're sick in this game. Seems like a good idea, but no. You have to do missions to get medicine so your guy doesn't pass out during another mission. And travel in this game takes forever because the map is just too damn big. If you don't have a vehicle, you'll be hoof'n it for a while.

I just couldn't get enough fun out of it. In paper it's a great shooter actually, good graphics, decent performance, nice weapons, and yet something is missing. I think it was the environment. As you probably know, it's an open world, only this time is not on an island, but in Africa, and well.... going from here to there to acomplish you next objective becomes quite painful quite quickly. I guess I just don't do well on open world shooters... for the record, I didn't really enjoy Crysis... guess that says it all.

This game could have been great. Really and truly some awesome ideas in here. Then everything fell apart. The allies system is actually interesting. The weapon jams? Love it, I ran out of ammo for my AK clone in a firefight, grabbed a shoddy shotgun off the ground, three rounds out and a shell stovepipes, requiring a wonderfully animated clearing process trigger with the reload key. Cool stuff we really don't see in games. Getting around is far more than a chore, to get from spot to spot you will have to travel through many checkpoints on the roads, at each of these checkpoints you will have a confrontation where the enemy will chase you down. You cannot get out of your vehicle and simply walk around these checkpoints. The enemies at these checkpoints, like all enemies everywhere in the game respawn fast enough that in a drawn out firefight more will show up before you can leave. On top of that, you have the malaria gameplay mechanic, making you guesstimate how long you have until you have to return to the major hub town for more medicine, and interrupts your travels and firefights for wavy vision and stumbling and puking. Could have been a more interesting element instead of a royal pain if it didn't happen so often.

very repetitive and a lot of driving

It's definitely an improvement on Far Cry 1. I gave up on FC1 after only a few hours, whereas I'm at about 15 hours on FC2, which Galaxy tells me is twice the average playtime, which I find odd because I'm still only halfway through (having played it before way back when, I happen to know I'm right at the halfway point). I do plan to continue playing it. Whilst far less aggravating than its predecessor, it does still have its flaws. For one, stealth remains difficult to impossible. There's two weapons you can use to try to remain hidden, the machete and the silenced pistol. If you sneak up on an enemy with the machete, you can get a stealth kill, but this is not silent (somehow) and worse still, they sometimes still get a shot off at you mid-kill. If you don't manage to sneak up on them, it takes several slashes to kill them. The pistol, meanwhile, is also not silent, and can take multiple shots to kill, even at point blank and aimed at their head. And once again, the enemies will spot you very easily, even if you're sniping from amidst some flora atop a cliff a mile away from them, and once one enemy spots you, they all do, instantly. The sequel also retains the problem of crashing about every hour or so. One step backward the game has is its repetition. I feel like by only a few hours in I'd seen all there was to see. I know a lot of folk dislike its gun degradation system, but I like it. It makes it feel a lot more like you're actually fighting in the deepest, darkest depths of Africa, and created some really tense moments when my guns jammed at the worst possible moments, and I had to switch to my machete to hack them to bits or whatever. I do agree with the malaria complaints, but I didn't find it hugely problematic. However, all that said, it is still a fun + fairly priced game. Unlike its forerunner, I would actually recommend it, but I'd avoid bothering with stealth. Go gung ho, go guns blazing, and it's a fun romp through some beautiful environments.