I’ve played Undying first in 2009 and it's still a bit scary to me, especially in the first part of the game, where you hunt down the first sibling Lizbeth. To me this is also the most interesting part. Not just because that undead gal is a beauty, as long as she does not open her mouth to scream like a wild animal, but because the story is also offering some great stuff and places. My favorite level is where you are trying to get the Scythe Of The Celt by travelling back in time, fighting the monks whose skeletons you were just battling a few minutes earlier. Unfortunately there are also a few flaws I was not able to overlook. And no, it is not the graphics which I still like very much and it is also not the combat system which I had no problem with and which felt very ego-shooter like to me (the Tibetan War Cannon receives from me the award of one of the coolest guns in games I’ve ever used). When you first get out of the mansion to hunt down hottie…. uhm sorry I meant Lizbeth, many levels take part in huge outside areas which destroy all the claustrophobic horror feelings you’ve had in the first levels. This continues after you’ve finally killed Lizbeth, now battling Ambrose and his pirate-type human enemies. The worst part is when you have to battle Bethany and you suddenly find yourself in a huge green stone-age type land with big waterfalls and Neanderthal type enemies which leave you wondering if you still play a so called horror game. There are many different and interesting spells which you can even boost up with pink stones you find along the campaign. Unfortunately there are so many of them that at the end of the game you’ve boosted them all to the max, so the game loses any kind of replayability by trying to upgrade a different spell on a second run through the game. Same goes for the extreme amount of health packs. Undying is still good as well as still one of a kind today. Give it a try and you'll have some fun but don't expect too much.
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!
