Far Cry® 2: Fortune's Edition

I loved this game. There were many great reasons too: 1. The open endedness of it. You could ignore the missions and just wander about killing rebels and finding gems. Approcah fights how you wanted. 2. the Engine. The dunia engine is amazing as it just keeps rolling forest after forest and desert at you with nary a pause. It's really immersive. Most of you are used to it by now in Farcry3, but it stood above all others in its own time. 3. The companions. Companions would give you missions and most of all (if you choose one) would help you out in a fight, dragging your sorry ass out and giving you a spare weapon. 4. You can choose your look. I get annoyed with the `white man` saves or ruins Johnny foreigner in his own tribal land and teaches him a lesson routine (sadly farcry 3 and 4 are going that way). It's great playing a Black guy actually trying to bring some kind of justice in AFRICA for a change! 5. A great variety of well-realised weapons with specialists ones to be found. Bad points: 1. I agree that rebel posts re-spawn way too fast. After a while I would circumnavaigate them to avoid another fight (go cross country). The rest of the random battles were not a problem for me. 2.Enemies (especially on higher levels) did soak up too many bullets unless you shot them in the head. I played the game to the end and loved it. I got really immersed into the plight of MY fellow Africans and trying to bring some kind of justice to the land. Perhaps being black and able to play a black guy in Africa is what made the difference? Far Cry 3 fixes the issues of instant-spawning rebel posts and too strong enemies, but they took all the other great stuff out! That's why Farcry 2 remains a favourite even today! Excellent game.

Glad to be able to continue my diamond capturing adventures on PC. As a long time user of the PS3 version I am amazed by how nice the graphics are on PC. People still play online too which was a welcome surprise. Obviously don't expect 2008-2010 era numbers, but there are usually enough people to fill a couple of matches -- especially during the day on weekends. The game itself is a fun single-player open-world shooter, though to be honest 99% of my time spent on it has been in the online mini-game Capture The Diamond. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a solid FPS that is easy on the wallet. To the Linux users out there thinking about picking this up, it works flawlessly with WINE when using PlayOnLinux to set it up.

Well, Blood Dragons is an extremely close second. Without all the silly crafting and the over the top storytelling, FC2 is the best of the open world, action adventure mayhem simulators out there. There's a lot of subtltey too. The story is meted out as mission briefings that never overstay their welcome. The people you talk to even have reactions for your impatience. You can make friends and millions of enemies. The game moves at your pace and never requires you to do anything beyone the story missions to complete the game. This game is brutal, however. It does not hold your hand, pack you a lunch or wipe your runny nose for you. You will die, a lot, to unseen enemies. You need to use your ears as well as your eyes. Wespons are notoriously unreliable, as is the cheif complaint of many a gamer who "hates" this game. C can't possibly say enough good things about this game.

I've played Far Cry 2 through 5, and this is the only one I come back to. It's harder, it's a more consistent experience, and it's much less "gamey". All the subsequent Far Cry games have an inverted difficulty curve. They start out pretty normal, then by the end when you've "skilled up" and got all the best weapons, you can't be stopped. FC2 gets harder no matter what gear you get. If you don't actually enjoy the gunplay, run and gun, fight your way across the map experience, this is not for you. The map never becomes safe. All patrols and checkpoints constantly respawn and are constantly hostile. Traversing the map is part of the game and it only gets harder. You need a car to cross areas, and you have to fight, stealth or try to race through - but the AI is hard and aggressive, they will pursue you, flank you, shoot mortars at you, snipe you, set fire to the building you are in... Weapons degrade, especially if you take them swimming. Then they jam at inconvenient times. This applies to all weapons taken from enemies. This mechanic completely disappears in later games, but it changes the game a lot. You can do missions and pay to get access to decent weapons, but you can grab a launcher or sniper rifle early on and it's pretty good. The plot is OK and the setting is great. So in theory you're dropped in to do an assassination of an arms dealer, but you get drawn into the conflict. You don't join a side, you're an interloper, everyone shoots at you. You have to do some good things, but only because you need malaria medication. Every other thing you do just makes things worse. There's other mercenaries who you can work with, and who can save you from death - every character you don't play, you will instead see in game - and they can die in missions or when saving you. Basically it comes down to this - Do you actually enjoy the combat and exploration of a Far Cry game? If so, this has the most of it. If instead you like the RPG elements, not for you.

Just got back into playing this gem after a long break (since 2012 - that was my last save date, got married, had kids since lol) and just got the urgw to try again with redux+realism mod. The result is a hardcore bush war simulator where you actually have to think and reccy an area before attacking. Run in all guns blazing.....and you die. Hight recommend.