Far Cry 2 an ambitious, immersive experience

By Joe Dwyer     10/30/08 7:00pm

Most first-person shooters funnel players through level after level of monsters or Nazis, holding their hands telling them what to do next and waiting until the end of the game to give them all the badass weapons.Far Cry 2 is not most first-person shooters.

Sequel in name only to the 2004 bestseller Far Cry, it ditches the overused jungle island setting (ahem, Crysis) and sci-fi storyline of the original in favor of the modern-day African wilderness. The story is simple: A mysterious arms dealer named the Jackal has been supplying arms to both sides of a fictional civil war in some unnamed African country, and the player's job is to find and kill him.

The original Far Cry offered players a large degree of freedom in how they played the game but was compartmentalized into a series of levels. Far Cry 2 begins with an introductory training mission to explain the controls, and then opens up the entire 50 square kilometer world for exploration. Players can make money working for one - or both - of the war's factions, deliver passports to refugee houses in exchange for pills to control your malaria symptoms, hijack convoys to gain access to their weapons or even hack into cell phone towers to intercept assassination missions, and that's only scratching the surface.

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Ubisoft Montreal went to great lengths to make the game as realistic and believable as possible; the development team even spent two weeks camping on the Kenyan savannah to capture the game's look and feel. Similar to the Half-Life series, there are no cut scenes, and the game never leaves the first-person perspective. The HUD is minimal, only appearing when health and ammo run low, and the map is displayed on a handheld GPS unit that can be brought up at any time, eliminating the need to continually pause the game to check your location.

Players will also need to perform first aid on themselves from time to time, resulting in some particularly gruesome animations that vary depending on the context of the injury. The tasks can include using matches to cauterize a cut, resetting a broken elbow or finger, yanking bullets out of a leg with pliers or patting down flames on the body. Thankfully this is only necessary when on the verge of death; in all other situations "syrettes" can be quickly injected into the character's wrists to keep health in the green.

Weapons degrade over time and can jam or even explode as a result. I spent a good five minutes scouting an enemy camp, only to have my rusted sniper rifle explode in my hands as I squeezed off the first shot, alerting everyone to my presence. The same things happen to the game's AI, resulting in some tense moments when a player's gun jams at the same time as an enemy's and both work frantically to clear the jam and get the next shot off.

The AI is intelligent for the most part, working together in a flank or using grenades to smoke the player out of hiding. There were a few occasions when they would stand still while their buddies were getting shot or a building blew up behind them, but overall, the AI is solid.

Graphically, Far Cry 2 is a visual treat. Ubisoft's custom-designed Dunia engine allows for destructible environments, weather patterns, day/night cycles and realistic fire effects. The sunlight filters through the trees more convincingly than through the Brochstein Pavilion's roof, constellations rotate across the sky at night and players can set fires to cut off or surround enemies. There are some minor pop-in problems with trees and textures appearing out of nowhere, but they are negligible in terms of the massive draw distance, and the number of objects being rendered onscreen at any given time. Blur effects when sprinting or aiming down the iron sights also add a nice touch.

In addition to the more than 50-hour (Ubisoft claims over 100) single-player experience, the game offers a multiplayer mode and a map editor that allows players to create their own multiplayer maps and upload them to be rated and played by others. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game support Trophies and Achievements respectively, and players on PC will enjoy higher resolutions and the ability to quicksave, a feature mysteriously left out of the console versions.

Far Cry 2's story may sound like a Heart of Darkness rip-off, but that shouldn't keep anyone from buying this game. Grab your machete and flamethrower and get to work.

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