Far Cry 2 Review (360)

Far Cry 2 – Cochrane612’s Review

Ubisoft Montreal were much appreciated for their award winning game Far Cry on PC, they later ported the game over to the Xbox, Xbox 360 and eventually the Wii. The game was a huge success for Ubisoft Montreal and nothing less than brilliant.

Far Cry 2 scraps everything from the first Far Cry, you will have no awesome “feral” abilities, no mutilated humans to fight and no mentioning of the character from the previous Far Cry, Jack Carver. It’s a completely new game, but this is by no means a bad thing. Instead in Far Cry 2 you will be helping different factions fight against one another in Africa. You play as a mercenary who has been hired and sent to kill a man called The Jackal. He is continuously dealing weapons to the people of Africa and encouraging war. Only problem is that things go wrong.

At the start of the game you are asked to choose one out of nine avatars to use for the game’s campaign. The other avatars that are left will be opportune friend characters in the games storyline. All of these avatars have different backgrounds, for instance one person may be a troublesome person and the other maybe someone who likes to deliver justice, they all vary. Once you have chosen your avatar you will be forced to watch a first person cinematic in which you are free to look about. During this time you are travelling with a tour guide around the plains of the Africa who is taking you to your main objective of the whole game, The Jackal.

The tour guide explains some of the unwelcome scenes you see that were caused by the rebels, this helps to realise what Africa has really become in the game. It actually sets the game very well. Towards the end of the cinematic your avatar begins to show signs of sickness; your vision goes blurry, you start breathing heavily, and eventually you collapse. When you come to, you’re told you have caught malaria by the very person you have been sent to kill, The Jackal. He mocks you a bit and tells you to stay away from him or die.

You have a job to do and that is to kill him, unfortunately you are too sick to do so at that very point in time so The Jackal escapes freely. Once your character can get up, the action begins!

The gunfights in Far Cry 2 are very good, they have a sort of Call of Duty feel to them as you can aim down the gun’s sight accurately which gamers will like. The weapons have a really good punchy feel to them, Far Cry 2with the good feeling of the guns and the need to use them all the time you really do realise that this game is all about the shooting. There is no inventory, just 4 slots on the d-pad for the weapons, one being already taken from the start of the game with a machete. With all that in mind it’s fairly obvious that the shooting is the game’s main purpose.

For Far Cry 2, Ubisoft Montreal has made a fantastic new game engine called the Dunia Engine. This engine is capable of producing beautifully realistic environments. The wind in the game makes the grass move very realistically; I could have stared at it for hours. The trees will also sway with the wind, and if you shoot a tree’s branch off, it will regenerate over time. It’s amazingly realistic. The new engine also allows you to use fire in a life-like manor. You can basically set

you really do realise that this game is all about the shooting

fire to anything that would set on fire in real life, grass, trees, cars etc. If something is wet due to rain it will not catch fire. The visuals of the fire in Far Cry 2 are the prettiest fire visuals I have ever seen in a game, almost photorealistic.

There is a new immersion system in Far Cry 2. The immersion system is specially designed to make you feel immersed into the game. Guns will wear down and jam after continuous use until they eventually explode in your hands. When your avatar takes any critical damage you will be forced to remove a bullet out of your arm or leg, or maybe some shrapnel. These scenes are savage and gruesome but they really do look realistic and good. You may also need to repair an arm that has come out of its socket – that’s my favourite animation out of all of them, the sound of the crunching bone is teeth grinding. To prevent all of these nasty animations from taking place simply use a syringe, they heal you fully but they are limited.

The new engine also comes in use for a new dynamic audio system. If you get close to the enemy a weary offbeat soundtrack will begin to play. As soon as you have made yourself known to the enemy a fast upbeat soundtrack will follow making the whole experience intense and electrifying whilst in battle.

Last thing I will mention about the new engine is the new dynamic weather system. The weather system is insanely life like. The sun beams when the sky is clear, when the day turns to night the moon glares to make a fair and realistic light whilst playing. Stormy weather is present in the game too, though I have only come across it three or four times throughout the whole length of the campaign.

Ubisoft Montreal promised us a huge open world map to explore that will let us do what we want, when we want. Well, they have delivered. The map in Far Cry 2 is massive. It takes a lot of time to get around the whole place and visit new landmarks. With the ability to do what you want at any given time, exploration is fun. It’s just a shame that it isn’t very rewarding. You can find briefcases that are lying around the entire map but that’s about it. Inside the briefcases are diamonds, which replace money in Far Cry 2. You can buy upgrades for your weapons with these diamonds.

I found that you actually do more travelling than anything else in the whole game; this does wear you down considerably as it just gets way too repetitive after time. It is literally go to your objective, travel, fight; you do the same over and over. There is an option to fast travel by bus but you have to travel there just to do that plus there are only 4 of them on the entire map, one on each square side of the map. The scale of the map is still an immense achievement but Ubisoft Montreal should have definitely made the game easier to get around.

Graphically the game is beautiful for a FPS. The whole game is highly detailed and pretty realistic too. Lighting effects are nice, the water effects and reflections are top notch.

Far Cry 2 includes a fantastic in-depth map editor mode to play around with. I have spent a lot of time messing around and seeing what kind of random maps I can make using the many different options the editor gives you. After you have made you map you can load it up to the community map centre for people to download and try out. It’s a great addition which I think will be popular. The only problem with the map editor is that it can be difficult to understand how the different options work.

Far Cry 2 also has an online multi-player mode to play on too. It feels a lot like a failed attempt to copy Far Cry 2Call of duty in many ways. The classes you can use online are limited and have very bland upgrades to play for. The standard game modes are found in Far Cry 2’s online feature along with a new mode that acts as a territorial mode; you will just fight for territory. This mode can be fun but wears thin after a short amount of time. The maps used to fight on are nothing special either. Ub
isoft Montreal could have done a better job with making the online content more enjoyable for more replayability.

At the end of the day Far Cry 2 is a great game. The campaign will take you a good 25-30 hours to beat if you include the repetitive side quests. The Dunia Engine is a very hi-definition engine which does a lot of interesting things for Far Cry 2. There is a very good map editor. It’s just a shame the online multi-player mode isn’t very fun.

If you are looking for a game with immense action and a huge open world map Far Cry 2 will fulfil what you are looking for.

Nathan Cochrane

The Good: Intense gunfights, Immersion effects are excellent, Huge map to play on, Long campaign, Awesome map editor.
The Bad: Can get repetitive especially when traveling, Multi-player option could be much better.


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Silver Y AwardSilver Y Award
4 4 / 5

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