Far Cry® 2: Fortune's Edition

Love this game, getting old now, gives me lots of nostalgia

Played on Infamous Difficulty, super tough. A couple of bullets on you and you are dead! I played probably more than 100 hours. It has a place in my heart!

To make the game more enjoyable do the following: - Play it on hard, - Do not use quick saves, - Scout an area before rushing in, - Shoot explosive barrels and gas canisters, - Unlock guns, safe houses and search for gems. Basic game cycle is cleaning small guerilla camp. You will repeat this time and again. If you do this part call-of-duty-run-and-gun style then you will probably die, get quickly frustrated and quit. Do not rely on stealth approach. Sometimes dudes will see you from mile away. Killing a dude with silencer will give out your position even when no one've seen you. They do not care if there is foliage between you and them. They have an advantage and sometimes it feels unfare. Just learn to avoid these situations, use grenades and rely on getting shot indicator which shows orientation you need to face to see the dude shooting you. Dialog with buddies is amusing and funny. Overall story is believable and serious. There is a contrast between fun and business. It's been designed to show struggle and fun in struggle even when it seems pointless. World design is good. A lot of specific places which you will remember when driving through. Searching for gems will make you go in unusual places. Dynamic weather is amazing. Sunset is beautiful. It's rare when something goes right in this game. Cars will run over you, guys with shotguns will shoot you in the back, guns will jam in crucial moments. That's why you feel joy when something goes your way.

Yes, I know about the many flaws, and I will keep them out because many reviewers have done already for good. Yet, it is my favorite ego shooter and I tell you how I managed to just love the game despite the repetitive flaws: Do ALL the missions and find ALL the diamond cases. Yes, you will spend a lot of hours to do the same things again and again but just continue to do so until the end of the campaign. When you are asked to meet the Jackal at the prison in the southern district just do what I do: Don’t go there but at this point make yourself a save file and keep this one forever. After you have done all the missions in the game and found all the 221 diamond cases you’ve earned all the 1000 diamonds which allow you to buy all the guns and all the other upgrades. After that you can just travel around the country, shooting and killing everything that moves by YOUR liking. Burn them down with the flamethrower, blow them up with grenade launchers or snipe them from a mile with a silenced dart rifle in the middle of the night. Imagine yourself crouching at a river sniping one guy, the others get in their cars to chase you down while you just swim to the other side of the river and wait until they have arrived on your old position and surprise them. Cheating on your enemies and shooting ammo cases that explode and kill your enemies is awesome fun, especially at the end of the game where your reputation is on the highest level and the enemies start to fear you. I was standing in a cease fire zone straight looking at one guy. He was afraid and said: "Dude, do you train this in front of a mirror?" Awesome! Yes, the enemies respawn and everybody shoots you on sight but so what? In this way the action never stops and if your guns jam just go the next gunshop. The game is not ultra realistic but it contains enormous fun, at least for me. I even play it more than my other favorite Doom and that truly sais something. Far Cry 2: You love it or you hate it. I love it!

Playing the game for first time in hardest difficulty in 2022. The atmosphere, the feeling of open-world, the hostility of the place, and the music. It is not role-playing, there is no inventory like in STALKER series, but you have buddies and a insane atmosphere to dive in. On hardest difficulty combat is pretty realistic, if you go Ramboid you will die, if you go with a tactic, relying on stealth, you may live a bit more. In my case, i enjoy this kind of challenge, a shooter where you are not a walking panzer. Ammunition is pretty low, despite is spread across the map in several spots, hostiles will respawn in them and you will have to tactic again for reach the resources. Atmospheric and fun game, from the decent UbiSoft era.