Far Cry 2 Review

GAMEPLAY

The whole point of a game is how well it plays and how enjoyable it is for the player. Good graphics and audio are extremely important parts nowadays and therefore deserve their own mention. We’ll get to that later.

Single Player

The single player campaign starts off with you choosing one of nine avatars with which to play. Whichever one you choose will be removed from the game world and the other eight will be slotted in randomly.

The game starts off with the protagonist being driven from the airport to Pala. Along the way, there are many things to see, several of which are unique to the African continent. The presence of militia spread across the area is enough to make you tense and itching to just bust a cap off.

On your way to Pala from the Airport

The militia on the move

Upon reaching Pala, you realize you’re infected with malaria. You end up sick on a bed and once you’re awake you come face to face with the Jackal. Kill him and end of story, right? Wrong! You’re too sick to do anything; and he chatters away and then leaves you to the mercy of the broken ceasefire. Luckily you are able to find a machete and a pistol that he left behind.

Face to face with "The Jackal"

Broken cease-fire in Pala

You barely escape with your life...then you collapse

The ceasefire in Pala has been disrupted and you literally have to fight your way out of town. You only make it that far to collapse in the hot African dirt. When you wake up again you are able get some medicine and you get your tutorial missions and then you’re off.  There is much to do in Far Cry 2 – ranging from high-risk missions and fast-paced, heated shootouts – to simple, subtle, serene surroundings just waiting to be explored.

Your trusty map and locator

The game world is loaded in the background and on the fly to create a seamless open world. From experience, with all the exploration that has been done, I have seen a ‘load screen’ during open gameplay only once. In the top left corner of the screen, there was the circular load icon along with the word “Loading…”. I was unable to get a screenshot of this because it was only visible for half a second!!

Muzzle flash at night during combat

There are many aspects to combat in Far Cry 2. Sometimes an enemy just will not go down and stay down. They sometimes scamper or crawl away, prop themselves up against something and try to shoot you with their pistol. Sometimes they hide themselves so well too.

Dying Enemy - Still trying to kill you

In other cases, their cronies will come to their rescue and patch them up just as your buddies in the game would do for you. Watch out for some sneaky enemies also. They love to flank you!

Your enemies help each other