Far Cry® 2: Fortune's Edition

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.

Far Cry 2 is a very good game and a challenging FPS with "hardcore"

good game good grafics for shooter and history envolved