Far Cry® 2: Fortune's Edition

Far Cry 2 might be the only firstperson-shooter out there that actually let you freeroam around an African landscape. Just the atmosphere of this game makes it worth playing, but on top of this it's also a very entertaining shooter. The game has been critizised for it's somewhat repetitive gameplay and lack of storyline, but I must admit this is only a subjective opinion. Yes the missions remind of eachother, but the landscape make up a lot of variation and ways to complete them. Also the storyline is pretty smart, just not at scripted and planned as in most other games, and this is merely a good thing! The ending is also unexpected and intriguing. A great game from beginning to end!

Contains an inavsive DRM software called Punkbuster. The whole reason I purchase games on GOG is to avoid this practice. The store page advertises games as DRM free very clearly. This is shameful.

I really liked the gunplay in this game, but the game itself falls short of being a great experience. Too many things not to my taste. They are: 1. Respawning enemies in checkpoints - easily the biggest headache in the game that gets in the way of enjoyment, particularly the driving cars/boats. You cannot relax, have to be constantly alert. 2. Malaria medicine - You need to follow through with repetitive missions to get malaria medicine, I found it very boring. Every 2-3 main mission, you have to go on an errand to get the medicine. 3. Side missions - Due to point 1, no motivation to go on an side mission. Too repetitive and fun dies out. Effectively, I skipped quite a few missions since it involves doing too many things already done. 4. Dead open world - The open world is completely dead. Only enemies, no friendly npcs (except rare underground missions). No variety in the open world, the second half of the game is in a different location compared to first, but it feels like the same in most areas. These are pretty big issues, they really spoilt something that was otherwise a gem.

... but quickly became a chore. The game is pretty, I love the lighting. Lighting the plains on fire and watching the wind take it is a wonderful sight. It's cool to see animals wandering around in the grasslands, there's item collection and side missions if you want to explore, and initially the firefights can get pretty intense. But then you develop a system and the challenge is gone. You get tired of driving forever to get to a far away objective, clearing out the same checkpoints time and time again. You stop bothering with Safe Houses as they serve no real purpose other than supplying a cot to change the time of day, since as PC we can save whenever we want. You stop caring about getting briefcases as there's no point in buying anything after you upgrade your favorite weapons (MP5SD and silenced pistol for me). The AI will chase you for quite a distance for no reason instead of guarding their outpost. Every single person will shoot at you, regardless of who you're working for, and the plot reasoning for your actions is dubious at times. If you're unlucky, there's game-halting bugs that were discovered a week after launch **4 years ago** that were never fixed, so I'll never be able to play the last 25% of the game. I started out liking this game, until it became a chore and I was looking forward to getting to the credits. Now I can shelve this and never pick it up again.

In this day and age, with all the scripted shooters that funnel you down pre-determined paths while shooting enemies that pop up in predetermined places, it is refreshing that we got to have at least one big-budget FPS that did the complete opposite. Far Cry 2 is an open world game, but not in the sense of Grand Theft Auto - this game is purely about the combat situations and how you approach them, giving you complete freedom to navigate a huge map and plan your approach before commencing to attack. But what makes it great is when things don't go according to plan. The combat becomes unpredictable and you have to improvise, and as long as you don't try to talk your way out of it (bullets speak louder than words on the sunlit African steppes, apparently), there's a good chance you can get out of any situation making smart moment-to-moment decisions. The only real downside to the combat is the poor AI of the enemy soldiers, but I can't say it ever got boring laying waste to them - not when you've got such a huge arsenal of machine guns, rifles, grenades, and what have you. You can even set fire to the surrounding grass and trees using molotovs or a flamethrower, which makes for a fun strategic way to cut off your pursuers. Speaking of pursuing enemies, it can be a bit annoying that you constantly bump into hostile vehicles when you're on the road in your jeep or whatever else you might be driving around in when traveling across the map, as it always results in a fairly samey situation where you get out of your vehicle, mount its turret and blast away before you can carry on again, repeated ad nauseum. Thus getting from one end of the map to the other can be a bit of a low point, but at least there are busses to catch as a fast-traveling option. The driving is thus the most tedious part of the game. Far Cry 2 is at its best when you reach your objective (usually an enemy camp of some sort), scope it out and plan your attack - only for everything to go haywire and you having to act on the fly, like a proper 80's action hero would. The difference being that any potential movie director aspirations on the game designers' part are put aside, as you are in complete control of how you go about completing your objective, as long as it involves lots of guns, bullets and things that explode. And I assure you, it can be a hell of a lot of fun.