Far Cry 2 (PS3) Review

Posted by Armando Rodriguez on 12.19.2008

A great open world single-player experience that everyone should enjoy!



I remember getting the original Far Cry when it first came out. You see, I had purchased a new top of the line PC back then (which is the same I have now, but it’s not so top of the line anymore) and wanted a big graphical showcase so I could bring in friends and see their jaw drop. As a graphical showcase it worked wonders. The tropical jungle environments and the amazing water effects put other games to shame. However, the gameplay didn’t break any barriers: it was standard FPS fare. That sounds ok, right? But the game was so plagued by game-breaking glitches that I never managed to beat it. Even with all the patches some levels would just lock up near the end and you had to replay them over and over until the game decided that it wouldn’t lock up anymore and would allow you to finish. Eventually I just grew tired of the situation and tossed it aside. Then came the announcement of Far Cry 2. This time I decided not to risk buying it for the PC and went for the usually more stable console versions and that’s how I picked up Far Cry 2 for the Playstation 3. Once more the idea was that this game would be a showcase to another new piece of hardware in my house: A Sylvania HD LCD Television that I picked up on Black Friday. On to the review!!

Story:

The story of the game is pretty straightforward. You pick from one of several mercenary characters and are tossed in the middle of a Civil War in Africa between the United Front for Liberation and Labor (UFLL) and the Alliance for Popular Resistance (APR). Your mission is to find The Jackal, a mysterious and elusive arms dealer who armed both sides and made a pretty penny doing it. Of course, all hell breaks loose and you end up as a freelance mercenary, working for whoever offers diamonds (the game’s form of currency) and hoping for leads on The Jackal.

The thing is that after the initial introductory missions, there is very little story. The game fails to exploit its controversial and volatile setting. The missions you do for the UFLL and the APR (you can choose sides at will) have the same premise: “You are doing this because we are paying you to mess with our rivals”. So there is no real narrative besides what you do for long stretches of time. As you get closer to The Jackal and the ending nears the game will toss a plot twist or two your way, but like I said, in the middle of the beginning and ending portions of the story there is practically no narrative at all.



Gameplay:

This game is basically a combination of the mechanics from the original Far Cry and an open world game like Grand Theft Auto. The gunplay shows how little the series has evolved: You don’t have the sci-fi powers of the original (the game is strictly centered on realism this time) and it plays like any standard FPS. The setting and open-world nature is what sets the game apart.

The game offers an amazing representation of what you expect Africa to be. The map is HUGE! You will see more jungle-like environments in the center of the map, with green vegetation and muddy terrain, but as you go to the sides you see more Savannahs, with dry trees and plants and even some desert, full of sand mounds and very little vegetation. The environment plays a huge part on the gameplay experience: You can use high mountains and rock formations to scout and snipe or light the dry pastures of the Savannah on fire with a flamethrower to force your enemies out of cover.

In addition to carrying out missions for the UFLL and APR you will do missions for your own interests. Doing missions for the arms dealers (which usually involves blowing up a rival’s convoy) unlocks more weapons for purchase. You can also do missions that you steal from satellite towers, which are usually assassination missions. In order to unlock safe houses (where you can save your game and pass time) you need to find these houses and evict its current inhabitants (enemy troops) with a few, well placed rounds. Diamonds and Jackal Tapes (a reporter lost them and you need to find them back) are hidden everywhere around you and you can track them down by following the green light in your GPS. This is a big world and there are a ton of things to do.

Like I said, diamonds are the game’s currency. Very early on someone tells you that paper money is useless and that you should only accept rough diamonds as payment, although no one ever actually tries to pay you with paper money anyway. The missions you get from the factions always have an alternate path provided by one of your buddies (your buddies are all the other mercenary characters that you chose not to play as) which can dramatically alter the course of events for said missions, such as making them easier or harder, although the ramifications long term are minimal. The benefit from carrying out the alternate paths is that being nice to your buddies unlocks goodies in your safe houses (such as weapons, med kits or better equipped vehicles) at the expense of the reputation you would have earned if you accomplished the original path.

Did I mentioned you are sick? That’s right, you have malaria, which you got soon after arriving in Africa and adds another layer of complexity to the game. Malaria will pop on from time to time and requires medicine to be treated, but the only way to acquire medicine is to do missions for a group of rebels known as The Underground. If your malaria levels get too high, you die. So you will need to take breaks between missions (when your pills run low) to carry out these delivery missions for The Underground in order to get your fix.

This is where problems start. There is just so much to do! First of all, enemy guard posts are everywhere and even if you clean them out, when you return through the same section the enemies would have respawned. This means that it is practically impossible to prepare for a mission and get there intact. More than likely you will be involved in three or four heavy firefights between the place where you got the mission and the place where the actual objective is. Since you can carry only four weapons at a time (one rifle, one gun, one special and the machete) you will always find yourself in one of two dilemmas: Equip a “general” set of weapons that can help on every situation or “specialize” your set to what you need for a given mission and hope that you don’t die in the in-between firefights. An example of this: Let’s say are told to assault an enemy camp. You know that this camp is surrounded by a big rock formation that provides a good sniper spot and you want to be stealthy. Furthermore, there is plenty of dry grass that can be set on fire to send your enemies running into the open. So you select a sniper rifle (rifle) and the flamethrower (special) and any handgun. But more than likely you will be involved in three firefights at guard posts between your current location and the enemy camp without any other armory (where you can change weapons) around. So you either, choose this special set for the mission ahead and hope that somehow you can deal with the enemy posts with these, or change to a more general set (like say, an AK-47 instead of the sniper rifle)so you can effectively survive the road to the mission, even if that means forgetting about your initial mission strategy. This limits your creativity.



I know what you are thinking….why not pick up the enemy weapons to deal with the guard posts and when that is clear you re-take the sniper rifle from the ground and proceed as intended? Well, because the game’s weapons rust and damage over time, which leads to them jamming and even blowing up in your face. This is very realistic and could be a nice feature….BUT when you pick up enemy weapons they are already rusty and likely will jam after three shots. EACH AND EVERY SINGLE DISCARDED WEAPON! I wonder…why these guns that where working PERFECTLY for the enemy just seconds ago are suddenly crappy and unusable? Couple this with the fact that enemies NEVER suffer from jammed weapons and it’s even more puzzling.

Another thing that pisses me off is that enemies seem to have perfect aim in medium difficulty and above. They can be shooting at you from 100 feet with an inaccurate machine gun while you are sitting behind cover and still find a way to hit you. On easy, they are too dumb and the game experience is shattered. So you have to suffer through cheap deaths until you get used to how the game works. Also, you can survive a dozen sniper shots to the chest, but if one enemy vehicle merely brushes you, it’s game over. Stealth play is also impossible in the early part of the game until you can save up 40 diamonds to buy the camo suit and several dozen more to be able to purchase sniper rifles and silenced guns. Even with these tools stealth is pretty hard, because even if you silently gun down someone or finish him with the machete ninja-style, enemies seem to have super human audition and can hear even the slightest grunt. It’s like “Hey everyone, George grunted….shoot to kill!!”.

Even with these problems, the game manages to be fun and engaging. When plans are executed to perfection you feel a sense of pride and awe. Like when you silently light the grass on fire behind an enemy camp and watch it spread until it hits a gas tank or a box full of shotgun shells and the fireworks begin. The gas tank might overheat and blow up, leaving a trail of flames across the camp, or the box of ammo might start sending sprays of lethal popcorn on every direction. Enemies will run scared out of the fire and straight into the open, where you can pick them off with the sniper rifle. The A.I. is also very smart. If there is a pool of muddy water near by, the enemies will run to it in order to escape the fire unscathed. If you hurt, but not kill an enemy, chances are he will drag himself behind cover or yell for help. I have seen enemies carrying their injured buddies behind cover before they come out to gun me. They will also flank you, distract you and even argue about who should leave cover and go seek you out. I have heard such amazing banter as this:

Soldier #1: “You! Go seek him out”
Soldier 2: “What? You’re crazy! Why don’t you seek him out?”
Soldier 1: “Come on, go seek him out! Don’t be a coward! It’s just one guy. ONE GUY!”
Soldier 2: “Fuck, I hate this”

Or my favorite of them all right after I sniped a bunch of people down and they have no idea where I am:

Soldier 1: “Who is this guy? C.I.A.?”
Soldier 2: “I don’t know man, but I think he is working alone”
Soldier 1: “Well, keep your eyes open, I don’t want to be ambushed”

The multiplayer portion is a bit of a disappointment. It features the standard deathmatch and capture the flag options and the maps are pretty big and offer good ambush spots. But lag is a problem most of the time and also cheap hosts. I have been in games where I have been booted and banned simply because I outsmarted the host and killed him. Many games also turn into boring sniper camp fests where everyone is camped on a spot and no one is actually moving around. Maps are also too big to be enjoyed with few players, so large groups are a requirement.



Graphics:

The graphics are one of Far Cry 2’s stronger points. Character models are detailed; there is very little pop-up or any other graphical miscues. The rusting of weapons look great and the game is full of excellent animations. For example, when you are hurt you will see your character taking bullets out of his arms or legs with pincers or giving himself a shot with a syringe. Enemies also animate well and respond differently depending on where they are shot. Towns are dirty and full of small, broken down houses, sort of like what you expect to see in Africa. The water is mostly muddy and dirty, so it lacks the awesome look and reflections found in the original. However the game manages to serve up some impressive vistas when you are high up.

The game also has the best fire effects on any game. The way it burns and spreads is just fascinating to watch and will appeal to pyromaniacs. I have found myself just lightning pastures on fire for the sake of watching it burn. It looks so awesome! However, the areas are not fully destructible. Bushes can be cut down or run over, pieces of the houses (usually made of wood) will splinter and blow apart, but most trees and structures will remain intact, even from a well placed rocket.


The best fire effects I have ever seen!

Sound:

The soundtrack is also fairly good. The music fits the atmosphere of the game. The sound effects are really well done, especially the different weapons. The only thing I found odd is that every vehicle engine sounds almost the same. There is a slightly notable difference between car, jeep and truck, but all vehicles of the same type sound alike. The character voices fit their respective characters, but some of the key characters seem a bit rushed in their delivery. The protagonist also remains silent.
Lasting Appeal:

I already said that the multiplayer is pretty barebones and won’t last you as long as, say, Call of Duty 4. But the single-player is a long, deep, rewarding experience that lasts around 30-35 hours. There is much to do and fun to be had. But be aware that you are buying this game for the single-player experience, if multiplayer is your cup of tea, look elsewhere.

The game has trophy support and most of them are pretty difficult to do, or require lots of time. For example, there is a trophy awarded for collecting all 200+ briefcases filled with diamonds and another for unlocking every safe house in the game (I have about 25 and that’s only in the first half of the map!). So if you are a trophy hunter, the game will last you even longer.

Fun Factor:


Even with the problems I pointed out in the gameplay section, Far Cry 2 is lots of fun. The many different weapons are all fun to use and the game is full of amazing moments, most of them made by the player. That’s part of what I like about it: The great moments are not part of a story or a cut-scene, they are made by you when you play, when you execute an amazing plan to eliminate the enemy or when you barely escape a town shock full of enemies.

The 411:

It’s easy to be a bit disappointed at first, even overwhelmed. I was. At first, for the fist few hours of play, I debated whether I would have been better off with Call of Duty: World at War. But I stuck with this game and discovered how amazing it is. The open world setting makes you the real protagonist, because you can practically do what you want, when you want. Multiplayer was a total disappointment, but the single-player experience is a true shining star.

Graphics	9.2	Beutiful vistas, great animations and the best fire effects ever for a game make for an excellent presentation. Pop-up and graphical hiccups are minor.
Gameplay	8.5	Multiplayer is barebones, but the single player mode is a rich experience and the world is huge. Enemies tend to be annoyingly difficult sometimes and with so much to do, players can feel overwhelmed at first.
Sound	8.2	The voices are well done, but some dialogue is a bit rushed. The music fits the atmosphere of the game and the sound effects are standard fare.
Lasting Appeal	9.5	There is a lot to do in the single player mode and it will last you about 30-35 hours. Game has trophy support as an added incentive to play the game. Multiplayer gets boring after a few hours, but the single player experience makes up for it.
Fun Factor	8.5	If you overcome the initial frustration with enemy encounters and the overwhelming feeling of the huge world, you will discover an experience unlike any other FPS currently on consoles.
Overall	8.8   [ Very Good ]

Screenshots
All 10 Far Cry 2 Screenshots