Far Cry® 2: Fortune's Edition

And that is why you might have a little difficulty adjusting to the pace of the game. This game is more of a FPS-stealth hybrid and if you keep that in mind the game immediately becomes more fun. A lot of people mention re-spawning guard posts and that will be a problem if you try to destroy each one. Until you realize, like I did, that you can breeze through them on a vehicle 8 times out of 10. The other two times some reinforcements will block your way and test your skills :). Also if you are having a hard time on the road you have the option to either fast travel or use a boat and this game has some very well developed waterways. This game is open enough that you can change from stealth to commando just as soon as you switch your weapon. And you can try different tactics in multiple replays. The AI is maybe a bit too smart: If you use an un-silenced weapon, enemies will converge on you. If you kill someone with a silenced weapon and an enemy sees the body, they will raise the alarm. And if you stand near a light source, well the bullets will fly :) The story is done well enough that it remains enjoyable throughout and the unique buddy system allows you to increase your history with friendly NPCs. All in all this is a great game if you are willing to give it little time to work its magic.

First look is great, but after few missions you will notice one thing: Every missions are the same on the same map. Go from A to B, kill enemies, sometimes steal papers, get new pills or rescue somebody, kill enemies, come back from B to A. Repeat.

Played this a few years ago and liked it at first but just became bored of it being the same old same old. Traveling is anywhere is a pain in the A*** as you clear a hostile checkpoint of enemies to find they have respawned 2 minutes later and the same battle ensues over and over. The claim of being open world is a little overblown as it feels more like a series of connected tunnels with some open areas. The combat is fun at first but it just becomes something that gets in the way going between missions and can have a negative effect as your weapon health will suffer greatly. There are good ideas here but they just don't work for me.

Thing to note, I played this game on the PS3 and have not played the PC version. Hence, I am not going to talk about the control system of the game, rather the game world and what I liked and disliked. To start with the game looks great, the fire animation is well done and I alway enjoyed setting things on fire. You can get allies that can rescue if you die and revieve you somewhere near. The weapons degrade over time. The story is decent and the game is open world. However, the game suffer from problems. The main problem is that most of the time is, well, it is dull. Much of the time is spent of getting from point A to point B, kill whatever enemies are in the way and on the way back, well, kill those same enemies again as enemies respawn when you get far away enough. This coupled with the weapon-breakdown mechanic is just annoying. I have spent so much time on just replacing weapons from weapon shops or hideouts as the weapons the enemies drop are in so bad condition that they break after a few shots. Another problem is how the enemy vehicles work, most of the time they stay on the roads, so you can avoid them by sneaking in the fields, however, sometimes... sometimes you will be all alone in a field far away from a road and "vrom" half secund later get run over, dead on the spot, which means that you have to go back to a savehouse to talk with an allied to save you again. Later on, the enemy vehicles have mortars and, well, if you drive a vehicle and run into one of those, back to the savehouse with you as they kill you with a single shell. The malaria just feel like it is there because of "oh not a lot of shooters have done that" and don´t really do anything for the story or gameplay. If you want to have specific weapons I hope you enjoy treasure hunting or rather walk around and fall over the diamons you need, but then again, most of the time is spent attacking places and not defending so weapons like IEDs and such are more or less useless.

To me, this is the best Far Cry game out there. Of course it has its flaws but what it offers much better things than other games in the series. It's kind of a sandbox and not being able to capture outposts is a letdown, especially because of how fast the enemies respawn, but it's much more fun. Because of the sandbox-like setup, it doesn't offer cinematic episodes like the later games, but that also means you can do everything with your preferred way. Even though there isn't much of story, at least it feels more realistic. Also, Far Cry 2 still has the best physics in the series.