Back in 2007 at Games Convention in Leipzig, I made the first contact with Ubisoft's new project Far Cry 2 known as the true sequel to Far Cry. They have presented us an alpha version which had blown my mind from the first look and the first thing that I can remember thinking at those moments was that vegetation so lively. Not to mention the fire propagation system, in direct connection with the simulated wind. Everything was so real that I didn't pay any attention to the story or the gameplay behind this game. But my pleasure was on my side when after more than a year the full product was on my desk, ready to be tested by my greedy hands.
Nowadays many products suffer from aggressive marketing plans and unlimited commercials which in general tend to have a spoiler effect on most of the fans. That's why I simply refused to go on and search new things about Far Cry 2 after that official demonstration at GC 07. I became even a bit skeptic about this new product and decided to let it be and to see at the right moment how it will look like. Time has come and I started the journey as one of the nine mercenaries who have to bring peace in a desolated African state destroyed by anarchy and civil war.
The game starts as you arrive in Pala with a cab, and as you enter the city you will be affected by malaria. You pass out and will be awaken in a hotel by the infamous arms dealer Jackal who will threaten you but he will decide to spare your life. Outside in the street a war takes place between two factions: United Front for Liberation and Labour and Alliance for Popular Resistance. You will fall in the middle of this battle while still weak and ill and you will be rescued by one of the faction lieutenants in the area. In return for his service you have to complete different basic tasks (similar to a tutorial). As you take contact with your Buddies (companions), and decide to complete the first major mission for one of the factions, those 50 square kilometers are at the player's disposal without any loadings or intermediate areas.
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Every character has a unique story and specialty and all of them will be present in the game after you choose which one to be your companion. The ones on your side will be called Buddies and will help you on your final quest, or at least until a point (no further explanation or I will spoil your pleasure). I had two buddies on my side, one that brought me additional informations for every major mission, and another one that was helping me while I was down during a mission. The idea with this 'rescue boy' is quite interesting. If you can free a nearby safehouse, he will be able to rescue you from the fire of the enemy. Otherwise the quicksave button is your only chance to retry the mission (the quickload and quicsave options are available only in the PC version of the game). In many co-op missions, your Buddy can hurt as well, and you decide if you should help him or not. In case you don't have first aid packages, you have to euthanize him.
The story based missions are as linear as possible: go from point A to point B and kill the enemy, or destroy the convoy, locations, etc, but the way you decide to complete them is as free as possible. Working for both factions will increase the difficulty of every new mission taken outside the city limits, as every faction owns different tactical locations and villages. Most of these small security posts are scattered on the main roads. So either you try to destroy them, or choose to cross them in stealthy manner. Sometimes running is not enough, so you have to fight and gain control of some of these posts which will give access to ammunition, or health packs. If you decide for a while to do something else, besides the main missions, then you can complete assassination missions taken from a private phone line near any antenna scattered throughout the map. Also you can take control of safe-houses which can provide you with weapons, health and saving points. These safe-houses will become your home each one giving you the ability to sleep and to change day/night cycle in every way you want. Malaria will force you from time to time to complete secondary missions in order to acquire the right medication in exchange of false documentation for several members of the Underground faction (known also as the civilians).
Weapons
A large arsenal stands at your disposal, every weapon being available at the weapons stores, or at the enemy's posts. You can carry four weapons classified in melee, primary, secondary and special weapons. For every category you are able to choose a single model: assault rifle, sniper rifle, light machine guns, RPG's, etc. All the models are realistic recreated featuring recoil effect and suffering damage after a long use. The player will observe the degradation of the weapon by its rusty color and by several blocking times. An over-use of every weapon will cause it to explode in your hands, forcing you to find another substitute.
More weapons and ammo needs more tasks to be completed. Every weapon merchandiser gives you missions (in general consisting in destroying weapons convoys) to obtain new weapon models, ammo, upgrades, and vehicles. These toys have a price, and like all the other missions, they imply the use of a more unusual trading object: diamonds. Either you complete missions, or just searching for hidden stacks of diamonds, your total amount of goods will be increased.
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Cars are not the only option to travel around the map. You can use also fishing-boats, swamp-boats, a hang glider, or a more secure meaning of transport: the African bus-lines (in a fictional meaning). While using the bus, you can travel long distances by just loading the final destination.
The environment looks absolutely spectacular thanks to the Dunia engine, but also thanks to the research work made on the field back in 2007 in Africa. A team of the game's developers were sent to Africa for two weeks to travel around Kenya and research the savannah look-alike. The little holiday paid its money and many of the environmental concepts have been changed. A lot of work has been put in the dynamic weather system that features a day/night cycle but also different weather conditions such as storms and strong winds. The weather has a direct connection with fire propagation which direct influences the direction of the fire.
Almost every building or hut, and even vehicles can be destroyed partially or complete, while exploded objects will scatter debris. And all these realistic effects thanks to this extremely high-tech graphical engine which takes advantage of multi-core processors or multiple processors. As a result the graphics of the game are extremely scalable and the game can run even on low-end computers. The engine is also the heart of the A.I. and its state of mind. The day/night cycle influences their activities, making them more aggressive or more relaxed. But not necessarily smarter. Having such a huge area at their disposal the A.I. looks much smarter than in general because of the lack of artificial obstacles. Still Far Cry 2 present a balanced A.I. which is destined like all the other models to make mistakes, but those mistakes (stand still position while you melee - attack them, the repetition of hunting you with the assault vehicles) are acceptable compared to what they can do to you. They can fight in groups, take cover, and even runaway if they are outnumbered. Although the A.I. was set to be as aggressive as possible, this is far away the problem. The hugeness of the environment makes the player quite difficult to locate every NPC on the location, so most of the times you die, by being shot from behind by a very well hidden enemy. Besides realistic weather simulation and non-scripted A.I., Dunia brings also procedural breakage of vegetation, allowing players to shoot branches and leaves off of trees and volumetric wind effects that can break vegetation. Besides vegetation, the virtual world in the game is also populated by herbivores: zebras, gazelles, bufallos, impalas, etc. Far away from what S.T.A.L.K.E.R. had to offer in terms of animals A.I., here those herbivores are just a part of the African landscape and nothing more.
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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!
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Gameplay: 87
Dynamism and Freedom are the key words to characterize the gameplay of Far Cry 2. An opened sand-box world is ready from the start of the game in which no loading times are necessary to cross from one point to the other. Very well balanced A.I. that has a different behavior influenced by the day/night cycle and changeable weather.
Graphics: 95
Not very fancy but with a realistic touch and very scalable. Based on Dunia engine, the game comes with a unique graphics style and with many physics features. Changeable weather, day/night cycle, volumetric wind and fire propagation, procedural breakage of vegetation are elements that make this game so unique and more lively than most of the games out there.
Multiplayer: 81
The multiplayer comes with no special features, but actually continues the singleplayer experience. Vehicles and singleplayer physics are present on every multiplayer mode and the six classes available to choose from make every battle tactical. The maps editor gives you the ability to create your own battle maps which can be used later in multiplayer matches. The Uprising mode brings diversity and long lasting matches in 16 players.
Sounds: 86
Dunia not only simulates the graphics and physics but also controls the ambient sounds. And in such a huge environment you need lots of them. The remarkable jungle sound is present here not based on scriptable wav's, but on ambient sounds controlled by the engine in direct connection with the character's position and location.
Hardware: 83
Far Cry 2 comes with an extremely scalable engine ready to run also on low-end systems. It runs even on single-core processors systems with a GeForce 6 video card. The widescreen problem has been fixed by adding field of view on top and bottom of the 'original' (widescreen) version for 4:3 and 5:4 aspect ratio monitors. So no one will have any advantage using the widescreen monitors in multiplayer matches. Good news especially for the NVIDIA users who have now access to the last driver version which includes a special fix for the game.