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My opinion on Far Cry 2
Either you think of it as an amazing game or as a terrible game. Today I will be talking about Far Cry 2 and its core elements.
People frequently call Far Cry 2 the best game in the series, mostly due to its immersion and physics. Today I will be talking about my overall opinion on the game.
In Far Cry 2 you play as an unlucky mercenary that travelled to an African country ravaged by civil war to assassinate an individual named Jackal, an arms dealer that supplies weaponry to both sides. However, you contract malaria, get caught up in a firefight, die from being shot at, then you are magically resurrected by one of the two major factions in the area and then you begin "hunting down Jackal", which involves you doing things that have literally nothing to do with the guy.
Now, about the gameplay. Far Cry 2 plays like GTA, except it takes place in a country ruined by war. What I do not like about Far Cry 2 is that a lot of the missions are the same: either you blow something up, you kill someone, or you are supposed to guard something as the enemies try to destroy it. That is literally it, I have yet to see a Far Cry 2 mission which involves you doing something that isn't mentioned on this list.
In Far Cry 2 you play as an unlucky mercenary that travelled to an African country ravaged by civil war to assassinate an individual named Jackal, an arms dealer that supplies weaponry to both sides. However, you contract malaria, get caught up in a firefight, die from being shot at, then you are magically resurrected by one of the two major factions in the area and then you begin "hunting down Jackal", which involves you doing things that have literally nothing to do with the guy.
Now, about the gameplay. Far Cry 2 plays like GTA, except it takes place in a country ruined by war. What I do not like about Far Cry 2 is that a lot of the missions are the same: either you blow something up, you kill someone, or you are supposed to guard something as the enemies try to destroy it. That is literally it, I have yet to see a Far Cry 2 mission which involves you doing something that isn't mentioned on this list.
One interesting thing about Far Cry 2 is that you do not look at the map from a menu, your character pulls it out and you have to look at it from there.
The currency in this country consists of raw diamonds. Not regular money, diamonds. Those diamonds can be earned by either finding them on the map or obtaining them by doing missions. You can use the diamonds, to, well, buy things, mostly guns. Speaking of guns, there aren't that much, at least when compared to later installments in the series. Unlike the later Far Cry games, you are unable of putting attachments on your weapons. You can just increase their accuracy and reliability (if you buy a reliability upgrade, your gun will last longer. More on reliability down below). That's about it. If you are a gun nut then please beware: the guns in this game are incredibly unrealistic. You will be frequently asking yourself questions, such as: how in the hell does a SPAS-12 hold 12 rounds in an 8 round magazine tube? How can a .45 ACP handgun pick up ammunition from a 9x18 Makarov PM or a .50 Action Express Desert Eagle? If you do not understand anything that I just said then continue on playing the game, you shouldn't worry about the unrealistic weapons.
In Far Cry 2, the diamonds are found in briefcases scattered around the map. If you are holding a GPS tracker in your hand (GPS trackers are installed on all vehicles. You always hold one if you pull out a map), then it begins blinking if you are close to a diamond briefcase.
One of the reasons why everyone praises the game is its "realism" (even though the game isn't even that realistic). Basically, your guns jam and even explode if you shoot them a lot, you have to occasionally take malaria medication and the fire physics. Seriously, the fire physics in this game are the best I have ever seen. The physics are so cool that PCGamer even made an entire page dedicated to it.
If your gun is jammed, then your character will begin angrily trying to fix the issue by whacking the gun and doing things such as trying to pull the charging handle. You can un-jam the weapon by pressing R.
Oh, wait, I forgot to mention the buddies? Sorry, going to talk about them now. In Far Cry 2, you were able of making friends with other mercenaries: the game refers to them as buddies. They can either give you missions, arrive to help in the rare case that you get severely wounded or offer you an alternative way to complete a mission. I feel like you shouldn't really trust the buddies with the alternative way thing, since it usually just makes the mission a whole lot longer and more complicated. For example, early on in the game you may get an order to assault a convoy to assassinate someone from the enemy faction. Then your buddy calls you and offers you an alternate way to do it. Either you can simply blow the convoy up and escape (which is actually very easy to do), or you can trust your buddy with this and do the alternate mission which involves you assaulting a village occupied by enemies and then assaulting a police station, which is also full of enemies. You can tell which one is easier and which one is harder.
The reason why so many people hate this game is because you have to do a lot of driving. Far Cry 2 is not like the usual open world game where you can pull up your map, click on any location and instantly teleport there. Instead, you have to drive. Yes, there is fast travel, but there are only 5 places that you can travel to (you have to first drive to one of the fast travel points, and from there on you can fast travel to any of the other 4 points). Oh, and the outposts. There are enemy outposts scattered around the map, both small and big. If you walk into an outpost then everyone begins shooting at you as soon as they get the chance to. The thing is, if you clear out an outpost then everyone there will just respawn a couple minutes after you leave it. I actually think that this is a good design choice, although a little annoying. It shows that you can't truly win this war, no matter what you do. Or it was just added so that you do not freely drive around an area after clearing all of the nearby outposts out a couple days prior. Regardless, I think that it is a smart addition and I do not hate it, as annoying as it can be.
Overall, Far Cry 2 is a game with plenty of controversial game design choices. But keep in mind that at the time of its creation open world games were pretty uncommon, and Far Cry 2 was just an experiment made by Ubisoft. It is flawed but there are plenty of good things about Far Cry 2 that aren't seen in the later installments of the series, which is why I frequently play it. I suggest that you play it since it can be a fun game if you actually try to enjoy it.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
The reason why so many people hate this game is because you have to do a lot of driving. Far Cry 2 is not like the usual open world game where you can pull up your map, click on any location and instantly teleport there. Instead, you have to drive. Yes, there is fast travel, but there are only 5 places that you can travel to (you have to first drive to one of the fast travel points, and from there on you can fast travel to any of the other 4 points). Oh, and the outposts. There are enemy outposts scattered around the map, both small and big. If you walk into an outpost then everyone begins shooting at you as soon as they get the chance to. The thing is, if you clear out an outpost then everyone there will just respawn a couple minutes after you leave it. I actually think that this is a good design choice, although a little annoying. It shows that you can't truly win this war, no matter what you do. Or it was just added so that you do not freely drive around an area after clearing all of the nearby outposts out a couple days prior. Regardless, I think that it is a smart addition and I do not hate it, as annoying as it can be.
Overall, Far Cry 2 is a game with plenty of controversial game design choices. But keep in mind that at the time of its creation open world games were pretty uncommon, and Far Cry 2 was just an experiment made by Ubisoft. It is flawed but there are plenty of good things about Far Cry 2 that aren't seen in the later installments of the series, which is why I frequently play it. I suggest that you play it since it can be a fun game if you actually try to enjoy it.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
