GAMETIME: Far Cry 2

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GAMETIME: Far Cry 2

Post by CoFree »

GAMETIME: Far Cry 2
By Cody Webb
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You have to give Far Cry 2 credit; it takes standard FPS ideas and expands on them in ambitious new ways. This game is huge, and on top of that, the world is open to you to do as you see fit. Far Cry 2 was one of the games that came out in the big flood of games at the end of last year, and it’s available for the PS3 and the Xbox 360. It’s rated M, for violence, blood and some very foul language.

FC2’s greatest feat would be how astonishing it looks. From the dense jungle to the white sand of the desert, it’s easily apparent that Ubisoft Montreal put a lot of work into the visuals. The sun’s rays filter through the trees as you make your way through the lush underbrush, resulting in the most amazing lighting effects I’ve ever seen in a video game. The first-person mechanics work well, with cutscenes and all actions occuring in first person. It’s no Mirror’s Edge, but it will suffice.

It’s a shame that more effort wasn’t put into balancing the game’s world or trying anything innovative with the combat. As I said before, the game’s world is big, and you need one of the game’s vehicles to effectively travel to and from destinations. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem (especially since driving the vehicles can be a blast), but every few minutes you’re forced to fight a group of enemies. There are enemy checkpoints at almost every intersection and this makes it incredibly hard to conserve ammo. This gets annoying and repetitive, since all you want to do is get to your objective and you don’t want to run out of ammo in the middle of a mission!

The gunplay is by no means bad, it’s very tight and the wealth of weapons you can find and buy means you can tackle a fight in just about any way you can think of. Unfortunately, if you prefer stealth to all-out fighting, you’re out of luck until a little before halfway through the game. The upgrades that make stealth an available option are expensive and before that you must unlock them. That’s about it for the gunplay, take cover, shoot, rinse, repeat. FC2 does try to stand out by introducing flammable environments; fires blossom and spread along the grass, trees and wooden objects. The flames are even effected by the wind’s speed and direction, but they tend to die out just a little bit quick.

The biggest problems I have with Far Cry 2 are the enemy AI and the aggrivating glitches. There are times where the enemies seem brilliant, flanking around you and running you over whenever they get the chance. Then, all of a sudden they’re stricken with short-term memory loss, suddenly forgetting what they were doing. Other times you can run right up on them and they’ll look at you without firing, giving you ample time to take them down. Furthermore, they often sport the eyes of an eagle after they’ve spotted you, able to hit you from far away with whatever they’re using. It can be really unfair.

On the topic of glitches, there are several unexcusable ones. I, myself, came upon one that made me lose three partners all because one of them died in the middle of a fight. Every once in awhile you’ll come across an NPC that won’t give you the next part of a mission you’re working on, so you have to reload a save file to retry the whole thing. Luckily the game auto-saves after each objective gets complete.... but even that won’t save you from the game’s worse glitch: the corrupted save file glitch. It renders your save file completely unusable, resulting in you having to start the whole game over. It’s a good idea to keep several extra save files on hand, especially towards the end of the game.

If single-player gets too boring or aggrivating, definitely try out the multiplayer. It’s pretty straight-forward, so anybody can jump straight in. The biggest aspect of multiplayer is the incredibly deep map editor. It allows you to create just about any map you can dream of, from small towns surrounded by jungles, to large open fields for vehicular mayhem. People are creating and releasing maps all of the time, and you can spend hours just exploring new ones.

So to sum it up: Far Cry 2 is visually appealing and the gunplay is solid, but you can succumb to the boredom brought about from the many unnecessary firefights. You could also become victim to one of the aggrivating glitches that plague this game. Far Cry 2 could’ve been great, but now it must settle for above-average. If you’re interested in it, you should rent it before you buy it. If they release patches that fix the glitches, then this could get a B, but for now it gets a C+.
"FIGHTING TYRANNY in a TECHNOLOGICAL NOTTINGHAM"
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