Riding Africa on FarCry 2, the final review and thoughts

(I know that this review doesn’t have any nice pics of the game, you can get those anywhere else, also I’m not talking about multiplayer since I didn’t play the MP).

I was very harsh in my last pre-review of the game, I’m playing it on the PC.
So what is this FarCry 2 thing anyway? Is a game, duh… and its set on Africa, for more info please read my last post about it since I’m going to explain some things that remain the same after playing the game a little bit more and another things that have changed. Mixing everything was a lot of work and right now Im on holidays.

Ok, the mission system could be better, but we will ride along with it, you can tell that it seems that they thought about a dumb console system, but maybe it’s what it is because they wanted you to go one thing at the time. It’s not the best solution in such a big environment, but maybe it was the only solution.

Weapons. Dude I feel so bad about this, it could be so much fun that I’m going to complain all over again… I would love to have a rocket launcher, some explosives, a silenced handgun, a Uzi machinegun, a sniper rifle and then an assault rifle at the same time… but no, I can only have three weapons at the time, and the places to switch between weapons are not only far apart (and it’s a big map, have I told you that?), but you have to purchase “crates” to switch weapons… not good Ubisoft, not good enough because is not fun.
At least now I have a jeep that carries grenades launchers and .50 caliber weapons and not only the standard machine gun, is a blast to take out enemies with those yelling: HERE COMES THE MILK MAN!!!

The A.I. remains as stupid as ever. And that is not cool in a game with so much openness. I lost one of my “buddies” (a girl with big bewbs), thanks to that because the AI failed to recognize that we had completed the mission, I saved her from nothing once and then walk away in frustration, she gave me a call and say that she was surrounded and dead. Once your buddies are dead that’s it, you loose insight on some missions that they can give you a better deal, of course if you accept the deal you will increase your story about those buddies... but in this game I would be suprised if you care about the story so is the same.

So story… Sorry but I don’t get it, I’m trying to but is sort like: I don’t care / bad storytelling. A good story or a solid story telling is a big part of any game, and this game has the story, but not the storytelling, so it fails. Maybe it’s because is Africa and everything is supposed to be twisted, but if that’s the case then is bad storytelling. Maybe its because it just doesn’t make sense to be looking for an arms dealer while making deals with arms dealers yourself and killing half of the population of Africa while working on assassination missions… is ironic and stupid, they present you like the good guy but still you have to kill everything in sight and the main goal is hardly even there.

As I have said the game is a superior graphic engine, it looks great, the better your graphic card the better the experience gets, that has to count because fire looks amazing. But gameplay overall is repetitive and you will be on a jeep with a mounted weapon and a map with a GPS driving more and using navigation than enjoying the view. There is not such thing as “different approaches to the same situation”, you won’t find that you can play this game like the silent guy and get more rewarded than playing it Rambo style. Just blow everything, is the same and without all the waste of time. Maybe you want to try to approach from a hill and attack from the back: the map is big but you can’t climb on small hills, is just a stupid gameplay decision that amounts to the limitations in gameplay.

If you ask me one thing that could make the gameplay of this game look less mutilated, then they should have let you carry more guns so you could experiment more in the same situation.
Fixing the story would be more difficult since everything is a mess.
Still is a rather large game with lots to do in it, I have been playing a lot and not even close to finish it, so I cant say nothing about how it ends.

So should you but this? Depends on your hardware if you have a PC and a solid one... for console and pc owners maybe if you are bored this is a good rental to try it out. For 25 bucks on STEAM I think is a good deal, but right now and until January 2 is on a discount that leaves it on 37 USD, and for this game is sort of expensive.

So this is my take on the game, is not bad, but it could be so much better that it gets irritating even to talk about it. Is an 8 out of 10 if you want a number, if you get frustrated then it’s between 7.5 and 8. I want to be fair, at least I’m playing it, that why I gave it the 8 in the first place.