One Hour In Review: Far Cry 2
Why is this a one hour in review? Honestly, it was slightly more than one hour, but nowhere near completion. After 16% of the game (the save game tells you how far you’re through the game), I couldn’t stomach the game and uninstalled it.
Far Cry 2 is a sequel to Far Cry in name only despite Ubisoft’s marketing – it features all new characters, vastly different gameplay style, a ‘realistic’ storyline compared to the originals sci-fi, a new engine created from scratch (CryEngine for Far Cry, Dunia Engine for Far Cry 2) and it is even developed by a different company (Crytek created the first, Ubisoft Montreal the ‘sequel’).
Despite how little of the game I played, it does get a few things right. The graphics and physics systems combined are fantastic – the day/night cycle gives you a feeling of ‘being in reality’ compared to many games that are a constant day or night depending on the level, despite how many hours you may wait. Fire looks better than in any other game I’ve seen, and given the dry terrain often setting things on fire results in a hasty retreat before the flames consume you!
After you get over the initial ooo-ing and ahh-ing associated with the graphics, you’ll be in for a big disappointment.
While the story in the first Far Cry wasn’t brilliant, at least it was present. Oh, sure, in Far Cry 2 there is some Jackal guy you’re sent to kill, but you manage to mess that up by contracting malaria in your taxi ride from the airport to your hotel. From there on in, it becomes less of an assassination game and more of a mission based, Grand Theft Auto style game, just without the random fun, people, or general filling to the game. Each mission is basically the same, you’re sent to kill some bad guys, well, badder than the guys you’re currently working for, since you eventually switch sides. In each quest I accepted, I was always warned “nobody knows you’re out there, even our guys will shoot you”, although apparently they stop giving you the warning in later missions.
Gameplay suffers too, the mechanics have taken a big dive from Far Cry. I remember the fun of being able to crawl under decking and shooting threw the wooden planks, or being able to drive a car that didn’t conk out the moment it went on a gravel road.
The overall world layout was very poorly designed, checkpoints of respawning bad guys (of evidently no affiliation other than “lets kill that guy”) are dotted all over the map which makes driving around a real pain in the backside, breaking the flow of the game.
I tried to finish this, and I couldn’t, so even Call of Duty 5 and Spore rank better from me. They took a fun, crazy game and ruined its name by making a boring game, couldn’t come up with a title for it, so stuck Far Cry 2 on it in hopes it would sell.
½ / 5
(Yes, that’s right, half a star out of five, stark contrast to the perfect score some reviews have given it)
Agreed! I loaded it up, and played around for the first mission or so.. how freakin’ tedious! I thought I was doing something wrong from the reviews, or just not “getting it”.
By far, the best game of the year for me has been Fieldrunners on my iPhone!
-GPP