Far Cry® 2: Fortune's Edition

The game has some cool weapons and a few good ideas. You can choose how you take out a target. You can use stealth and sniper rifles or go in guns blazing. You get a flame thrower. I love flame throwers. But there is very little to do and very little content. There is a huge empty world and you have to drive from one end of this world to the other. Sometimes some enemies pop up and you have to kill them. But the AI is terrible and they are just a nuisance. They are easily dispatched. Then you go back to driving. Sometimes the game makes you drive 10 minutes to get a mission. Then the mission sends you on another 10 minute drive. So you can spend 20 minutes between missions just driving back and forth, back and forth. The missions are boring. To unlock weapons you have to do a mission for the weapon dealers. That mission is always to drive somewhere and shoot a truck with a rocket launcher. So you drive for 10 minutes or so. Get out of your car. Shoot truck. Drive back for 10 minutes. There are also a ton of annoying animations that you can't skip. Just about anything you do leads to an unskippable animation. Take a pill? Heal yourself? Die? Gun jam? All lead to animations that bring game play to a halt. That's my biggest complaint about this game. Every time you start to play and start having fun, something comes up and makes you stop having fun to do a chore. Like drive on a dirt road for 15 minutes to get some pills because you're sick. Or kill a bunch of easy enemies that won't stop respawning.

This game is incredible. It ranks as number 4 on my top 5 games of all time. Why? Why do I think this game is so great even though others will tell you otherwise? Its because this game is one of the most satisfying experiences I've ever encountered in gaming. However, this game does require a number of things from the player, the first requirement being patience. Yes, you will spend a majority of the game driving and enemy camps will respawn quite frequently, but if you can get past these major problems you will be treated to one of the most immersive video games ever created. This is because almost everything in the game feels appropriate when the situation arrives, and almost everything is an obstacle. Being able to only use a physical map in the game makes planning your journey and approach feel so real. The way the environment, enemies, and fire reacts to you makes you feel foreign and weak. You feel as if everything and everyone is against you and this is where the game shines. Far Cry 2 is not a game that will give you what you want, and it'll punish you for asking. Its not a game that will allow you to go guns blazing and become a super soldier, however, if you can overcome the odds it will leave you feeling exetremely satisfied and accomplished. This is not a game that will make you feel like you're right at home. Because you're not at home, you're in war torn Africa, and if you're lucky, you'll survive your visit.

With plenty of side missions, vehicles and enemies to fight I've yet to grow bored of Far Cry 2. The thing it nails so well is the atmosphere. Unlike most open world games and certainly most Far Cry games, FC2's war torn Central African plains carry a cynical, cold indifference, devoid of traditional "good vs. evil" and deistic heroes. I think it is this quality that draws me back into the game time and time again. I feel as if the game world doesn't give a hoot about me, and I am just another pawn in a whirlpool of violence and confusion. Both the main missions and the side missions have you attacking convoys, clearing out enemy bases and sometimes protecting VIP characters (these are the worst missions) and afterward you are paid in blood diamonds to spend on new guns and upgrades. Much of the game is spent driving and walking on or off the beaten path through dense brush and muddy swamps. Unlike the other FC games you can choose your own character. Some (myself included) might find the ability to play a black character is a refreshing alternative to the 1000s of "white savior" games out there (I'm looking at you Far Cry 3), others won't even notice the feature. Either way the voiceless nature of your choice only serves the cold indifference of the world. I like it. You never feel like a god in this game, your guns will rust and jam, your cars will break down, and you'll be stricken with malaria time and time again, some find this really annoying. The biggest problems in the game, mainly the quickly respawing enemies, are easily fixed by heading over to Mod-Db and downloading "Dylands Mod, which makes the game more stealth friendly. I love driving across the desert, listening to BBC's "Africa Today" podcast on iTunes and pondering the best route to attack a weapons convoy, sometimes just driving over a sand dune for the hell of it. Does this sound appealing to you? if so then this is the game for you.

Far Cry 2 is an interesting game. The "redheaded stepchild" of the franchise goes for a realistic and gritty feel, not just 'down to earth' but 'down into the dirt and mud'. And it ends up achieving that feel respectably well. The gameplay is formulaic, but oddly compelling. You're a mercenary, betrayed, sick with malaria and half-lost in an African country in the middle of a "civil" war. Most missions you get given will have the same formula, depending on whether you're working for one of the warring parties, delivering passports in exchange for medication, obeying the mysterious man who calls you on the cell phone, or doing something else. Passport runs will always feel the same, faction missions will switch things up a bit every so often... it's undeniably repetitive. And yet, in a way, that helps further reinforce the atmosphere and feel of the game. You're not a hero saving the world from killer aliens, you're a merc doing gruntwork for money and to try and live through this mess. The story's not amazing, with the ending being particularly weak, but it keeps with the vibe of the game very well and that works in its favor. Half of the story is your own journey, what you do outside the main story and how you interact with the world, and that's yet another thing that adds onto the overall feeling of immersion of the game. The gameplay is good by itself, but I think a mod like Far Cry 2 Redux is essential. It solves the sponginess of the enemies and the main character (don't worry, the game's not too hard anyways), it rebalances the guns, adds to the immersion a great bit, and overall makes the experience better, if a bit more niche. With a respectable arsenal of weapons to unlock and run around with, plenty of stuff to do, and two quite large maps to traverse, the open world aspect is good and enjoyable, but again, prone to being repetitive. I recommend playing this game at an easy pace, throughout a couple of weeks; you'll enjoy it a lot more that way.

Took me over 10 years since first trying it to finally have a complete playthrough. Always got extremely bored of it a dozen hours in, and it takes about 30 for full playthrough. The narrative is terrible, all you do is errands for local warmongers with 0 personal stake in the matter because your protagonist is a mute yesman to everyone, including supposed main villain of the game. On top of that it's presented with voice acting as if actors are on call-collect, having only a few seconds to rattle off their lines. No sense for pacing. Over 200 collectible around the world suitcases with 1-3 diamonds each don't help it's case either. So what's it's saving grace? The details of core gameplay mechanics: -Weapons degrade, jam, and explode -Healing from critical health state has you pull bullets from wounds and non-critical is also animated syringe injection (in it's time this was innovative) -To fix a car you pop the hood and tighten the bolts -Map is not a menu, but an in-game item: a folder with collection of maps of varied scale -To buy pristine weapons you interact with an old af PC at weapon dealer and then go to adjacent warehouse and pick it off the wall -In combat explosions throw around the wooden shacks, set off ammo and fuel piles, shockwaves affect flora, fire ignites it and spreads... -If you're downed, you "buddy" can come save your ass All of this combined creates an increadibly immerisve sandbox experience, but it doesn't really ramp up as time goes on. By 10th hour you've seen everything and all that's left is twice as much repetition of the same stuff till the end. It's worth experiencing, but may not be worth completing.