Far Cry® 2: Fortune's Edition

The title is pretty much all I can say about this game. When I first started playing it, I was going off of "official" reviews from metacritic. It sounded awesome. So I loaded it up, and drove from place to place, killing people intent on killing me. Then I did it again. And again. And again. And it got old. REALLY old. And I've only been playing for about 4 hours total. With only 1-3 missions at a time, the much-vaunted "freedom" is as shallow as the gameplay. There's no freedom. Just because I can go a different direction to get to a point on a map doesn't mean that I have any freedom. It just means I can go a different direction on the map. Guess what -- I could do that in Super Mario Brothers, too. "Ooh, I jumped on TOP of the blocks this time instead of going underneath them. FREEDOM!!!" Add in the annoying spawning, traveling that's a chore to go through, and the repetative repetative repetative missions, and we have a horrible game. What we ended up with was a game that so desperately wanted to be like Fallout 3 that they forgot what made that title great -- the fun. Well, that and actually having something to DO when travelling from place to place.

...you spend literally the entire game dying. Your character has malaria, and unless you do quests to get medicine you die. This forces you to stick to the main quests and pretty much kills the whole open world exploration thing. Stupid. Also enemies respawn almost constantly. You can clear out an outpost and then after spending 2 minutes scrounging for ammo GUYS RESPAWN ON YOU AND KILL YOU. This game had massive potential, but the devs couldn't leave it alone, so it's way too hard to be much fun.

but didn't use it. If you like to fight enemies that can only be killed by headshots (neither a double-barreled shotgun blast at point blank range nor a full magazine from an assault rifle to the chest will do it), can see you through thick foliage as well as darkness, can hear silenced weapons and re-spawn endlessly behind your back, then this game is for you. If you like it even mildly realistic, give this game a wide berth. Don't get me wrong, the game has its points; it lets you explore the world freely, has an interesting setting, and lots of weaponry to try out. But in the end, you will spend (or should I say, waste) most of your time driving around and eliminating the same guard posts over and over again, which quickly becomes boring. The game also has a bunch of logical errors. Some of them could be overlooked, like the question how diamonds are "transferred" to an "account". Others like the fact that everyone is shooting at you, even the people you work for, kind of ruin the game - as soon as something moves, it's an enemy. That is a rather poor design for an "open world" game and turns it into no more than a simple shooting gallery. Too bad since this game could have been much more. At the GOG price and DRM-free, it may be worth a try, but I'm very glad now that I did not spend the money for the retail version back when it came out.

A game that had a lot of potential and decent game play was totally ruined by scripting bugs that prevent the player from proceeding with the storyline. There are many forums on the web where this problem was reported, and Ubisoft failed to acknowledge this epic showstopper. The scripting error is random, but often occurs at points that require backing up and replaying hours worth of quests to take a new shot at triggering the arrival of required npc's. Save your money, as even a couple of bucks is not worth the risk of frustration and wasted time. Games such as Just Cause 2, or Mercenaries 2 can provide a better sandbox environment with a less tedious adventure without the risk of being stopped cold.

First of all, I hated the game. I didn't get 30 minutes in and hated it. So.... I decided to mod it. Voila, I was enjoying it. As I progressed, enemies started spawning out of nowhere. They were everywhere!!! I've read about this happening. Yeah, it does... often. It's a shame that a programmer has to resort to such tactics to make the game challenging. The sad part is all the things this game has/had going for it. I'm done with it, It's that bad.