By finding any location you use an electronic map with GPS sensor. The player actually will carry in his hands all these gadgets, and everytime he needs to locate an objective he has to holster the weapon and activate this map. Arriving at the designated location, the player can scan the area with the help of a small telescope and locate on the map all the strategical objectives (vehicles, security posts, sniper lookouts, etc). To increase the realistic touch, every first aid made on yourself consists in an animation showing different situations in which your character tries to cauterize his wounds, pull out bullets from his knees, feet or palms, or straighten his broken arms.

Although the story which stands at the core of this game is not very substantial, the dynamic gameplay and virtually unlimited world adds up to 100 hours of gameplay. And when you think that this is not enough you can carry on and try out the multiplayer which features many of the dynamic elements from the sigleplayer such as fire propagation and volumetric wind. A maximum of 16 players can join an online match in four modes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Diamond (similar to Capture the Flag), and Uprising. The last mode tries to bring something new in the multiplayer by including a captain for each team. These captains have to capture designated points across the map. In the end any of the teams have to assassinate the enemy captain after capturing all the points on the map in order to win the match. Either you play online or offline in LAN matches, the mulitplayer is a class based one. It features six classes: Commando (normal soldier), Sharpshooter (specialized in long range shooting), Guerilla (specialized in close combat and ambush), Rebel (specialized in explosives and fire), Gunner (specialized in heavy power weapons), and Saboteur (specialized in stealth and silenced weapons). Like in singleplayer, in multi you can choose the appropriate weapon for every primary, secondary, and special slot. Every killed opponent or completed objective brings you diamonds which can be spent in acquiring new weapons or upgrades. But the most exquisite thing is that you can play matches on your own created maps.

The map editor features most of the objects present in the singleplayer, so every self created map will occupy a small amount of space on your harddrive and will be much faster loaded by the game. Using a very simple interface with high-end tools, the player can easily create maps for every multiplayer mode.

Conclusion

Far Cry 2 abandons many of the elements that made famous the first part and its add-ons. With the departure from the German developer Crytek Studios, Ubisoft decided to continue the franchise using an in-house studio and recreating the Far Cry universe. They definitely succeeded combining many successful elements from the best action and fps games, and with the help of a new graphical engine they were able to recreate a humongous African landscape. Many have compared this game with Crytek Studios last creation Crysis and its expansion. In terms of graphics the last one probably wins the battle, but in terms of gameplay Far Cry 2 is definitely the king. In my opinion this is the first open-world game that brings the most balanced gameplay represented by a very optimized A.I. suited for large scale landscapes. Delta Force series, goodbye!