Leveling Down

You only have one mission in Far Cry 2: Eliminate the arms dealer known as The Jackal

As I’ve stated before, Far Cry 2 was a title that not too many people heard about last year. Generally, a title that has sold 1 million copies doesn’t qualify to be under the radar, but I think this is a game that a lot of people skipped in favor of a lot of the other big titles that dropped last fall. The game was developed by Ubisoft Montreal, known for Assassin’s Creed and the Prince of Persia series, and published by Ubisoft. Due to…technical issues…I haven’t finished the game, but I finished Act II and have been playing for over 25 hours. I figured I’d write a review while the game was still fresh in my head, and also since I have a lot more free time on my hands. Some people have heralded Far Cry 2 as the next step in first person shooters, while others have been bored by its repetitive gameplay. For what it’s worth, I think it’s a little of both, and I am actually pretty bummed that I didn’t get to finish the game this week as I had planned to, because the story was getting pretty interesting. The best laid plans of mice and men… Hit the jump for the full review.

The Good
- Open world, sandbox nature of the game lets you choose your own adventure
- Gunplay feels realistic and planning/executing attacks is a lot of fun
- Beautiful graphics make you believe you are in Africa

The Bad
- Gameplay can get repetitive, especially since everyone shoots at you
- AI companions can act incredibly stupidly
- Presence of glitches can detract from the fun and immersion

1. Intro
2. Storyline and Premise
3. Gameplay Mechanics
4. Achievement System
5. Final Thoughts

Intro
The original Far Cry, released in 2004, was incredibly well received. It was released on Windows originally but was re-released on the last generation of consoles as Far Cry Instincts. Crytek, the original developer, is no longer involved with Far Cry but Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the “true sequel” to Far Cry. The funny thing is, there are very few similarities between the games except for the fact that they are both first person shooters taking place in far away lands. In many ways, Far Cry 2 is a re-imagining of the first person shooting genre. Generally, first person shooters just have you progress through various “levels” and move through them in a certain order. Far Cry 2, on the other hand, literally dumps you in the middle of a huge civil war in Africa and leaves you to your own devices.

A few towns in Far Cry 2 have shaky cease fire truces. This is not one of those towns

Storyline and Premise
Far Cry 2 is set in a fictional African country where two rival factions, the UFLL and the APR, are in an intense civil war. It is a world where there are no rules of engagement, civilians (the few that are left) are not safe and gunfire is commonplace. There are only a few safe zones in the entire game, three towns where the rival factions have declared a shaky truce. For the most part, the world of Far Cry 2 is a dangerous place; don’t leave your safehouse unarmed.

Facilitating the conflict is a man known only as The Jackal. He is an amoral mystery with questionable motives. Only two things are for sure. First, The Jackal is the supplier of all of the weapons that are perpetuating the conflict, thus his profits are directly tied to the country’s body count. Secondly, you have only one mission: to eliminate The Jackal.

“You” are Far Cry Dude, any one of 12 mercenaries whom you choose from at the beginning of the game. It doesn’t really matter who you choose – all it determines is whose voice you won’t hear (your own). You will meet the other 11 mercenaries throughout the course of the game and become mercenary buddies.

The game starts much like Call of Duty 4: you are riding in a car and taking in your surroundings, making for a breathtaking introduction to the world you are entering. After that, it’s pretty different. You contract malaria within minutes, all hell breaks lose, and before you know it you are face to face with The Jackal himself! For some reason he lets you live, and then the game sets you free in the world to do as you like.

The freedom Far Cry 2 gives you is what sets it apart from other first person shooters. You are given a map, which shows you the available missions, and a pistol. That’s it. You can do whatever missions you want in whatever order you want. To advance the story, you need to do some work for either the UFLL or the APR (or both, if you’d like), but that is the only thing you have to do. It really is a lot like Grand Theft Auto IV, your character is morally ambiguous at best (Far Cry Dude is a mercenary, so he’ll kill for whoever pays), and you have the freedom to undertake side missions or to just plow through the main plot. The game doesn’t offer the same variety as GTAIV, but you still have options. There is definitely a lot of gameplay to be had for those who are interested.

Blowing up stuff looks amazing, and enemies recognize fire as a secondary threat which can distract them

Gameplay Mechanics
So Far Cry 2 is an open world first person shooter. What does that mean for gameplay? There are 5 different types of missions. There are main story missions which are offered by the two fighting factions. There are missions where you hit weapons convoys to unlock new weapons for you to use in the rest of the game. Then there are assassination missions that you receive from cell phone towers, and you can also take optional side missions that your mercenary buddies offer you. Finally, there are some good will missions you can do. In order to get medicine for your malaria, you deliver travel documents to refugees trying to escape the country who give you medicine in return.

Really, that is the only good you do in the country. The game doesn’t seem as outwardly dark or gruesome as titles such as GTA or Gears of War 2, but if you start thinking about it, Far Cry 2 can be disturbing. You are a mercenary who will kill whoever and blow up whatever for diamonds, the only currency that matters. In fact, almost all of the missions boil down to that, making the gameplay a little repetitive. For every main story mission, one of your mercenary buddies gives you the option to “subvert” the mission, which involves you killing someone extra or finding a parcel before you complete the main mission. This doesn’t really do much to offer variety, which is unfortunate because it could have been so much more. Another problem with the game is that it’s tough to tell what effect your “subverting” the mission has aside from furthering your mercenary buddies selfish needs.

You meet your mercenary buddies throughout the game, and they can be pretty useful. If you ever get knocked down in a fight, one of your buddies comes to save you and stays by your side to fight with you until that particular battle is over. After you are saved once you have to wait awhile for your buddy to become “rescue ready” again. I found myself actually getting a little attached to my buddies (selfish money grubbing people that they are). One achievement requires you to ease your buddies passing (basically, watch them die). It’s pretty heavy stuff. Considering the minimalist dialogue in the game, that’s pretty impressive.

If only your buddies were a little smarter. Sometimes they will just stand around in one place and get themselves killed. Other times after I meet up with a buddy, I lose them in the African savannah! I wish the AI had been designed a little bit better. All in all though, your buddies are quite helpful and make Africa a little less…lonely?

The actual first person shooting aspect of the game is pretty solid. The guns feel good, although eventually they rust and begin to jam. This gives the game a very realistic feel and make the guns feel realistic as well. The recoil on the different guns is very unique. There is definitely a set of weapons I enjoy using, and you can only carry three weapons at a time (plus a machete). The fun part of the game is planning out your attacks. I mentioned that the game’s missions are pretty repetitive, but what makes them fun is planning how you are going to go about them.

You can always just run in guns blazing, but sometimes I like to stay on the outskirts and snipe, or blow up something important, or throw a molotov to distract them, etc. It keeps the gameplay fresh if you are willing to try and I found it pretty worthwhile to experiment. The nice thing is, if you’re in trouble you can just try to grab a car and get away. There are cars strewn across the landscape, and they all come equipped with GPS to get you where you need to go. The map you carry is more reliable though, because it shows the big picture, and it can be fun to drive with your map out because you have to keep looking down at your map and then up at the road. I find it amusing because it’s how I drive in real life with a map. Don’t try that at home, kids.

Hang gliders give you a bird’s eye view of the action, and can help you get to some unreachable diamond cases

Achievement System
The achievements in the game are pretty balanced, but it’s tough to get the full 1000. This is because 360 of the gamerpoints are distributed amongst multiplayer achievements, and one of the achievements requires you to rank up to level 20, which can take a long time. I never even got a chance to check out the multiplayer. I was going to give it a whirl before writing this review, but RRoD prevented that and I decided that the single player was enough for me for this game. For those looking for thoughts on the multiplayer suite, I apologize.

The single player achievements are pretty fair for the most part. There are your standard story based achievements, achievements associated with trying all the different mission types, and achievements for completing all of a certain type of mission. And then of course, there are the collect-a-thons. One actually is very enjoyable. Over the course of your travels you keep running into a journalist named Reuben, who conducted a long interview with The Jackal, your target. You need to find the 18 “Jackal Tapes” scattered around the country which contains all the audio from the interview. It’s a pretty interesting listen and fleshes out the character a bit more.

The other collect-a-thon involves 221 cases full of diamonds literally strewn across the map. They wouldn’t be hard, except some are in places that are impossible to reach without a hang glider. So first you need to find the diamond case, then you need to determine if it is impossible to reach, then you need to find the hang glider, and then you need to hope you aim the glider correctly. Compounding the frustration is the fact that there is no quicksave, you always need to save in a safehouse. Ubisoft seems to love these, as there were the flags in Assassin’s Creed as well. Why!? It certainly does not make the game more fun. But I digress…

For all of its faults, the beautiful Far Cry 2 deserves a shot

Final Thoughts
Overall, Far Cry 2 offers a lengthy and enjoyable single player campaign. I really enjoyed just driving around, looking at the wildlife and the amazingly rendered grass and trees, and blowing up things to soak in the well done fire effects. It definitely is held back by glitches though, graphical and otherwise. The one I ran into the most was the fact that safehouses wouldn’t always unlock after I killed the people protecting them. I’ve also read that people’s saves have been corrupted, and there are other weird glitches too. At one point I was talking to a character who was inside a building, but for some reason the door to that building wouldn’t open. The character, however, was talking to me as if I was standing right in front of him.

I give the game a solid B. I would give it a higher grade, but I don’t think Far Cry 2 is for everyone. You really need to be patient to enjoy this game, it’s not a non-stop rollercoaster ride like other first person shooters. Still, I recommend that people check it out, at least as a rental. The story was good enough to leave a big impression on me. The lasting thought Far Cry 2 leaves me with is just the feeling that civil war in Africa is horrible, and evil people benefit from it. I wish in some respects that Far Cry Dude had been a little more moral, but I guess I can’t expect too much of a mercenary. At least he doesn’t fist bump his buddies every time he kills someone.

I hope other developers take notice of what Ubisoft Montreal did with Far Cry 2. Though their product isn’t perfect by any means, the open world first person shooter really has a lot of potential. They also could have done a lot more exploring the moral aspects of the civil war and mercenaries in general, I thought the narrative could have been a lot more interesting. I hope to see more games like this in the future. It probably would be good for the industry, and it definitely would be good for serious gamers.

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