Far Cry® 2: Fortune's Edition

Farcry 2 is a pinnacle of immersive entertainment. Amazing graphics and gameplay for 2008, and still very playable in 2015. Farcry 2 takes you into the wilds of Africa where as a gun for hire you will discover a world torn by weapons and deception. Farcry 2 is not a kids game. You will be hunted relentlessly and do horrid things. If you ever thought of hitchhiking in Africa, play this game first.

Well, if it is on sale and if you need something to waste your time, prepare to get frustrated and bored. To even complete the main story you will be required to have lot of patience. In case you decided to give it a chance watch out for your back, the lonly african drivers know where you are and need your blood to oil their engines.

I'm sorry, but I must ask: Why is this here? This game is not old (Well, a few years but not old enough to "qualify") and to be honest not very good. I've played this game enough, on both Xbox 360 and Steam, to say that I have a very love / hate relationship with Far Cry 2. I love the concept: A mercenary stuck in Africa during a civil war, looking for the warlord that supplies both sides? A huge open world, with jungles, swamps, deserts, towns, everything you'd find in an African continent? Great! I also love the map editor: it allows the user to create high quality maps, arguably better maps than the prepackaged ones, with ease. My complaints are really the same ones that you'd hear from everyone else: Travelling between missions is tedious, with nothing else to do other than find diamonds or get harassed by random patrols and respawning enemy checkpoints. It all feels a little sluggish and slow, with the movement speed ranging from walking, jogging to a full on sprint (a very short sprint thanks to your MC's case of Malaria). The healing system is interesting, it works but... the animations themselves don't work. I know this doesn't sound like a real complaint, but when you get shot or accidentally spend too much time underwater, and you see your character's hand pull a metal rod out of his stomach, the illusion is lost. I can't say much about the multiplayer, because I've yet to play it online on PC, but I have put more than enough hours into it on Xbox 360, so all I can say is: It's the same general gameplay, features the typical game modes (Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Fla - er, Diamonds, and more), and uses a level system for unlocking weapons. Overall, I'd say the gameplay and mechanics bring down Far Cry 2 from being a good game, to simply being a "Meh" game. It only fits one of the 3 requirements fro being on GOG. I'd give it 2.5 Stars, but I'll have to settle with 3.

For the first hour you'll be required to speedrun before an invisible timer counts down and you die of malaria... or your game crashes. Far Cry 2 makes an awful first impression. Something tells me Ubisoft spent all their time on the destructible environment. The game has some cool aspects: blood diamonds as currency, the buddy system, different ways to resolve a assigned task, and a weapon degradation system. The atmosphere is admittedly incredible. But it's let down by boring missions, bad mission scripting, and an obnoxiously large map that you need to criss cross constantly, each checkpoint filled with respawning guards. Something as simple as running is unpleasant, as the sprinting animation makes the screen blur and shake like you are suffering a seizure. For the last hour I played I had a screen prompt alerting me that I had left a hostile area. That prompt would not disappear even after I reinstalled the game, my save files evidently corrupted. The jank and inane busywork reminds me of STALKER. However, the gunfighting actually works in FC 2, so maybe a better comparison would be to call this game a shabbier version of Rage.

What I like the most about Far Cry 2 is its setting. It really manages to create an amazing atmosphere of a war-torn African country and allows you to become a gun for hire working for various factions of the conflict. You will be setting up ambushes, destroying various targets, assassinating people, and getting paid in diamonds. Furthermore, you will have access to a quite a nice selection of various weapons from pistols to rocket launchers, which will help you to achieve your mission objectives. The story is not the greatest, but the graphics and the action make up for it. On the other hand, the game suffers from quite a few flaws. The missions might feel a bit repetitive after a while, you’ll find getting through the various guard camps a bit tedious, as they respawn almost instantly after you clear them, the quick traveling is not implemented all that well, and the driving around might get boring, as the difference between different cars is minimal. Overall, it is a good game and if you get it on sale, you will not regret it. It has a solid gunplay and the enemy AI is quite alright.