Far Cry 2

"I just started playing this game recently, and so far it's a pretty sweet experience. The graphics really are gorgeous and really shine with the dynamic day/night system. I had an experience where I had to ambush some bad-guys, they started driving away and so I chased them traveling towards the sun just as it was rising. It looked friggin amazing with the light streaming through the trees and dust, very cool indeed.

There are some consistently annoying aspects to the game though. Enemies do pop-up too much when you're just traveling around which exacerbates a few issues with the game: Traveling/saving at safe houses is tedious, you don't GAIN anything by fighting random enemies, and you have to travel A LOT due to the layout of the map and how the missions are structured. So because you want to be stocked up on a fresh weapon, and good medical supplies before your REAL mission you'll be traveling to your safe house a lot while trying to GET to the mission because of the stupid random battles. This wouldn't be SO bad if you were actually rewarded for fighting them, but there's literally nothing to gain from them.

For now though, the game is compelling enough that I can overlook these issues and haven't brought it down for me. We'll see if this continues for another 10 hours though. The fact that I know about these issues though means I'm going to take on side missions sparingly, so I don't burn myself out on the tedious stuff before finishing the main story."

"Update: I've given up on this game. There, I said it.

I overlooked the repetitive missions, the respawning checkpoints, the fast-talking voice acting, the drudgery of traveling, the slow sprinting, the broken weapons, the lack of vehicles, being unable to experiment with weapons, the breaking down of cars, the annoying save system.

I was able to overlook ALL of that.

But what finally got me to stop playing was when I realized that the fundamental plot and motivations of the game were completely arbitrary and made no logical sense. The game starts off as you going to STOP the Jackal, but you end up becoming the worst mass-murdering monster the world has ever seen.

You can argue that stories in games don't matter, but they do to me, and they at least need to make SENSE in their own world and logic. This game is just a complete disaster in that regard, and unfortunately fantastic technology can't save it.

It's a damn shame too, it really could have been something incredible. If the design team had the same talent and skill as the technical side, it would have been a landmark.

As it stands now, it's simply a technical showpiece to what could have been. Hopefully other games will take some of the innovative concepts and ideas introduced and make a FUN and compelling experience out of it."

"Far Cry 2 is a decent game overall. Certainly compared to other shooters such as Fallout and Bioshock it doesn't completely hold its own, but it does provide a unique experience. The multi-player is solid, always has been (Far Cry multi-player was nothing to sneeze at) and the game comes bundled with easy to use map and mission creation software. The single player does get old after a while as trekking across the African safari takes a long time to get from one place to another; there are quick travel locations but they are limited and take a while to reach as well. Enemy vehicles frequent the land, and while this is a cool concept it does happen a little too often as it seems you spend most of your traveling time fighting off random enemies who pull up in a jeep. On the positive side the game offers lots of weapons, upgrade possibilities and beautiful visuals. However if you are not into the online multi-player this game will get old after some time. I still enjoy it, and I'm still running around the safari setting the land ablaze with molotovs and plowing into zebras with autos (a little sadistic I know but how often does one get to)."