Far Cry® 2: Fortune's Edition

Far Cry 2 has a major issue that will be a deal-breaker for many players: its open-world formula quickly gets tiresome – boring, even. The game map is huge but empty, every single mission consists in going somewhere to kill some guys, and way too much time is spent inside vehicles. You often need to take the same roads and the enemy camps along them get repopulated constantly, forcing you to relive the same fights over and over again. It takes about twenty hours to beat this game, but only one or two to see most of what it has to offer! Yet, despite its faults, I kept coming back to FC2. Gameplay-wise, there frankly isn’t much that it doesn’t get right: the vehicles are fun to drive and the gunplay is more than serviceable. The enemies are bullet-spongy, but the weapons are many and varied, allowing you to assault settlements in multiple ways depending on your loadout. You can snipe from afar, sneak in with a suppressed pistol, rush in with a machine gun… Or throw explosives in and let fire do the job. I experimented with new guns all throughout the campaign and enjoyed almost all of them. What’s more, FC2 does a remarkable job when it comes to immersion, thanks to its wide open spaces, top-notch visuals (although as was the fashion in 2008, they overuse gray/brown colors), minimalist user interface, and good implementation of unbroken first-person perspective. And if you can accept the slow pacing of the game, it actually ends up making it all the more real and credible. The plot is basic and lacks memorable characters... but it’s suitably bleak, has its moments, and is overall good enough for a game with such a focus on combat and exploration. In the end, FC2 is a product of its time, and I would probably not recommend it over its more modern counterparts... but there is definitely something in it that sets it apart from other shooters. It’s worth a shot if you want to feel like a hired gun rampaging his way through lush and gorgeous African environments.

Game still offers some fine features like great looking African landscape (especially with mods) than can be also burned down in spectacular way, freedom in approaching tasks (use silenced weapons, sniper rifles, automatic weapons of various types, mines, flamethrower or even goddamit mortar), companion system that add (some) depth into gameplay and story, that will question your point of view over your actions. Now lets talk about problems this game has and if they are really that problematic: - Outposts - yes, outposts fully repopulate themself when you move like 50 meters away. Even modders cant fix this. Also, you get so much resources, that raiding them is pointless apart from personal satisfaction of another 100%. But since its open world game you can simply evade them. - Lifeless scenery - yea, you'll see some wildlife, but you would expect much more after this setting. Lack of roaming civilians seems to be devs decitions to avoid unnecessary controverses. - Malaria - it is annoying, but also shows you, that even most feared mercenary is mortal human, prone to some commom disease - Boring side activities - perhaps only attacing weapon conwoys is worth doing but it mostly depends on you - its quite a sandbox game and some initiative is welcome. - Simplistic mission design - most of time you'll tasked to destroy another piece of already scarce infrastructure, furher pushing country into oblivion and optionally, to silence anyone who oppose. Those missions arent the most creative, but again, it up to your apporach. - Poorly made fights - enemies can be spoongy, especially in second part of game and weapons sometimes seems underpowered but I dont find this as issue. To sums up - if you're looking for more sandbox-like game, where you're creating some immersive background for yourself, then you find the right spot. If you want closely narrated story with interesting characters, you might look something else (like FC4), as this one might be disappointing

The story really isn't much to go off of, but the gameplay is genuinely a blast! Arguably one of the best Farcry ever. I say it's more fun than Farcry 3

As mentioned in other reviews, by the time you get an hour or two in, the sheer boring repetitiveness makes the next 38 hours nearly pure torture. I even went ahead and just enabled god mode to try and zip through the plot, and mark the game as "complete", but the tedious driving across shitty roads with blind spots the size of montana made it take forever even though I could just ignore damage or ammunition limits. It's beautiful, no doubt, but the game could've ended after the first gunfight, and been more satisfying.

Pros: - Large and varied open world. - Satisfying guns. - Unusual setting with good atmosphere. - Unlock equipment of your choice (mostly) with diamonds you get from the world and from missions. Scavenge more advanced weapons you haven't unlocked yet, but at increasing risk of jamming. - Fire can be used as a tool to box in enemies or make a getaway. Cons: - Very little enemy variety. For what it's worth, they do try to flank and can catch you off guard at times. - The malaria system is kind of annoying, at least the mandatory missions that give you pills and nothing else certainly feel like something that could have been done via cutscene. - Missed opportunity with the factions. While they do have interesting characters, you never see them fighting each other outside story missions, you can't interact with them outside of towns except via bullet to the face, and in general I feel more could have been done to help add variety. - The weapon upgrades are mundane - one recoil reduction and one durability enhancement. - The buddy system is not as well fleshed-out as it might have been, serving mostly as a second life if you go down. Kudos though for having so many lines of voice acting, though every line is spoken so fast and dry that it can be hard to appreciate. - Most importantly, there's just not enough to do. Unlike something like GTA which gives you a plethora of activities, however frivolous, here you're always slogging through jungles or deserts, usually trying to avoid enemy checkpoints that would just deplete your resources. The collectibles and varied environments help a little, but it's still undoubtedly a repetitive game that feels like a chore if played for too long.