Do you like to drive? Far Cry 2, a semi-review.

FarCry 2 is a strange game, Im playing it on my PC so I can see that with my machine runs it pretty good (core2duo e6550, 2gb ram, nvidia gforce 8800GTX 320mb on winXP), actually is impressive, the game loads at the start and thats it, no more loading screens, and this game looks amazing. The better is going to get with a more powerfull computer, the more horsepower under the hood the better since you will be able to put to the test even the best graphic card.
You can go and see the screenshots at any place, I will talk about other things here... you can see videos in the internet... yes, the internet is such a great thing.... You will love the internet too....

Probably you allready know about the story in FarCry 2, you are a mercenary, you can choose who you want to be at the begining of the game, but it doesnt matter, it only changes the charcter photo and you wont be looking yourself at any mirror. It doesnt seem to change the story at all. Yes, there is a "buddy" system, others mercenaries there that they can help you anytime you are almost dead, give you some info about a mission so you can do it different, give you a mission or two, thats it. It doesnt seem that you will be fighting among them, with them, actually I can understand why they would not want you to do that since the AI is terrible. (Still I dont have Leonardo DiCaprio as a "buddy".) Enemies behave in such a stupid way that you start getting into uninteresting fights, once you fight one of them you fought everyone.
The intro sequence will remind you of Call Of duty 4, but like someone else allready said: boring and uninteresting, not even close to a safari.
But whats wrong with this gracious, colorless game. Well, it doesnt have any colour, I get it, Africa can get dry, but still, my eyes are burning or what? It lacks color. Also big african animals like elephants or such. Here is a good idea about a game in Africa, if I venture beyond the road a lion can attack me... that would be good, but no... you get maybe a zebra, alone, ONE ZEBRA, ONLY ONE. I mean, zebras are cool, I see them on the Discovery, they should be all together.

Now, back to serious business:
My complaints? The freaking map is too damn big. That could have been good, but it makes the game frustrating at times in so many things:

- Big maps, lots of rebel bases: this should be good but moving from one place to the other some points with rebels on them, you are on your jeep, use your turret to kill them, carry on... on the way back... the same rebels again... this game uses a 24 hours cycle, they should at least wait 24 hours for a respawn.
- Objectives: I can only have one objective at a time. They couldnt spare any memory for a list of objectives in my journal. If I want to take a new one, so I have something like... two objectives, so lets say I can kill some people on my way to the second objective (long drives are long) and kill two birds. But no. And again: this is not me whinning, the map is freaking huge. If I want to take a new objective I will loose the one I collected three kilometers north. And the new objective is on the other side of the map. So I will just have to go back and get the damn objective again, which is on the other side of the map. With the annoying rebel bases that respawn every five minutes.
- Weapon system: oh I have so much complaint here I dont know were to start... is fine for weapons to get wasted, is ok for enemy weapons to be crapier than my weapons and if my weapon gets jammed is all good. But to use my own arsenal, to replace my screwed up assault file I have to go to my special deposit and change it (if I allready unlocked it and bought it then I have infinite replacements on a magic wall), and guess what, remember I told you the map is too fu**** big? Well driving to one place to the other gets pretty boring (ten minutes of drving people, and I havent seen any elephants yet), add that to the amount of driving and you are a taxi with a turret on top. And you will end up using the turret a lot because of the infinite amount of ammo, convinience and firepower.
Also the limit on the amount of different weapons I can carry limits my strategy... lets say I want to snipe a camp, then raid it with an assault rifle. I have to think about it before going into a camp, and you dont know how the camp is going to be, you dont know if its going to be better for a sniper rifle than a assault rifle... so I can only carry one main rifle, lets say my sniper rifle, any rebel check point in the middle and I will have to rely on the machine gun on top of my jeep, and I will be using that a lot anyway. Then for the rest of the rebel camp I have to take out (or the person I have to kill, who cares? I have to wipe out the entire rebel camp before reaching that person anyway most of the times), I will have to use my sniper rifle and then exchange it for some wasted rebel weapon so I can have an assault rifle.

The map is just too big to have this gameplays issues, they go against the game itself in such a way that you can only start to understand if you watch you clock and see how many hours you spend going to one place to the other. They could have done better if you could carry more weapons (that would make the game more dinamic), if you could have a list of objectives, etc. I mean, the kind of things that makes you drive less, be greener and all of that.

Esentially the games becomes pretty boring pretty fast.

Story, I dont see nothing very interesting, the character development is like "nah", why I had to pick a character at the begining? I dont see that changing anything more than the way I like my mercenary. I feel nothing for my little mercenary. I dont care a lot about my buddies. If I help them they start giving my reputation, and also some missions and help on my missions, but they will help my anyway if I dont take their missions.

Also so much irony: Im here to stop an arms dealer name "Jackal", but in the meantime I will buy weapons and all combat gear because you know, since we are here.... lets take the blood diamonds and use it as a currency.
Oh yeah, I have malaria, I have to keep randomly chewing pills every time I get the symptons, I will run out of pills, so I have to go to the underground resistance or something that they will give me some mission to complete and then they will give me my medicine... again, I cant have an underground mission and other objective at the same time. I would thought that with all those diamonds I could afford my own medicine. Who knows, I only study medicine in real life, I dont trade with drugs.
Repetitive: do you ever get the feeling: I have allready been here before, this has allready happened... well, get ready. Basic mission: "go to xxx kill xxx", great: lets drive! "BRUMMM", "hey a rebel spot at the road cross", they attack me, I attack them, I kill them, maybe my GPS tells me theres a diamond around there somewhere (lets find the diamond, ready), "diamond, only 220 more to go", more driving "BRUMMM", ok, another rebel camp, lets kill them... ok, I arrived at the main objective. Now I can do a lot of different things if only I could have three main weapong at the same time, no matter, lets go and kill them like rambo.... finished, another client, another day at the job. Now lets drive back, the rebels are there again to be killed... no diamond this time of course...
Thats it. Find another objective, repeat. Its going to be essentially the same thing.

Ubisoft: I feel like in Assassins Creed but here I can kill more people.

Overall: a 7.
They could have make things better with this game. Is such a great technical achivement (the fire and everything), but some things hold the game to be a great one: weak story development and mechanics too simplified like in objectives system, sometimes trying to be so realistic (weapons system), and falling short because you simply cant put all those great things they give you into work. Its very, very frustrating.