Great open world setting but for every thing this title does right, it has a flaw that almost completely over-shadows it
The Good:
-Number of choices in how to approach combat
-The closest you can get to being Rambo
-Wide selection of weapons
-Huge game world
-Healing your wounds via primitive methods looks great
-Effort exerted into your characters hand animations that always amuse
-The closest you can get to being Rambo in a video game
-Lengthy
-Nice map editor
-Morale choices when nursing a dying buddy
The Bad:
-Underdeveloped story
-Highly repetitive
-If you answer a phone call for a mission offer while in combat it is impossible to put it down and fight back
-Character selection remains largely pointless
-The enemy AI is little to be desired
-Limited selection of side missions
-The online multiplayer isn't anywhere near as good as others on the market
-Extra content still refuses to work
-Commit's the cardinal sin of having hidden world drops and a ridiculous number at that (221 is farcical)
Africa is a continent of civil war fuelled by political strife, power struggles and filled with genocide and other mass atrocities against humans yet despite this it still remains a fascinatingly gorgeous landscape that still belongs to nature and one of the last remaining pieces of nature that goes largely untouched by man and his desire to consume and make profit.
Basing a game in this setting and remaining loyal to the current turmoil that faces the nation sounds like a sure fire start to a remarkably gripping experience.
Before starting the game you have to choose between twelve separate characters. They have no individual strengths or perks, your choice doesn't influence the story in any way at all, story characters don't refer to you by name, you never see your face and they remain muted (one of pet hates) the entirety of the game. The only thing that your choice does have an effect on is the fore-arm models on screen.
It may of just as well been one of those games in which you create how your character looks and name him in a limp wristed attempt in order to make you feel as though it's you in the game world. It's is completely pointless.
The game opens up to your character sat in the back of a taxi heading through the open planes of Africa in a very similar fashion to the Call of Duty 4 opening. You are here to assassinate a notorious arms dealer known only as 'The Jackal'.
Your driver keeps talking to you over the radio and keeps becoming a nervous wreck when being stopped at checkpoints. It's not terribly exciting to be honest but it does give you a great view of the nation.
You arrive at your destination only to becoming violently ill and pass out moments after.
You are suffering Malaria, a highly dangerous infection and it does create some interesting moments in the game play. You keep falling ill during the course of the game and have to take tablets to heal yourself. Sounds incredibly simple and it is, but when you fall ill whilst driving or in the middle of an intense fire fight it does create some interesting situations.
You re-awaken feeling a little the worse for a wear with a mysterious character shrouded in shadow in the same room as you. This man is The Jackal.
He's rummaging through your possessions and is well aware that you are there to knock him off yet he allows you to live, why?
Upon the Jackal leaving the tranquil safe zone descends into chaos. You try to flee from the madness while still feeling the affects of your now diagnosed illness and have to fight your way out of the city between all the gun fire and close-by explosions. Escaping is impossible.
When your health drops you fall unconscious again and emerge at a new location to be sent straight to work as a sort of slave soldier and that is that, you don't have a say on the outcome.
This game follows Ubisoft's seemingly new addiction for open world games (for whatever reason that may be), and should be commended for not conforming to playing it safe and only doing city urban areas.
As you have surely guessed by now we are in Africa, what country in particular we never learn.
It is absolutely astonishing. A landscape cluttered with fully 3D modelled tree's and grass that sway gently in the breeze, small rocks to huge cliff sides, deserts on the countries border and the cloudy rivers and lakes that carry into a respectable view distance along with the man made temporary make shift buildings constructed out of scrap metal and tyres along with dilapidated fences that adds man kinds natural imperfections to the game world.
Ambient noises litter the air for the entirety of the game. Where there are some animals can be found in the game world you can never find things such as monkeys and lions which is frustrating considering you can constantly hear them.
Despite having very little points of interest and the bulk of the world being plantation, the development team have done a wonderful job of making every last inch of the map have its own unique feel.
The textures aren't great (I wouldn't call them terrible that would be absurd) they rely on the complex light and shadow programming to really bring them to life and it does with spectacular effect. It has incredible graphics (especially when driving around in the moonlight sky with your headlights on) for a sand box game despite looking slightly grainy at times.
Driving across the wilderness in a old Jeep/ Land Rover kicking up a cloud of dust in your wake is a joy that recreates past films and documentaries you will of seen in the past but the experience is completed vandalised. There is checkpoints on road intersections filled with hostiles (clearing them will just make them re-spawn endlessly) and your car acts like a huge bullet magnet so if you get out to fight the enemy troops suddenly shoot like Gordon Brown with his false eye.
If you opt to gun it they can get in a car and catch you within seconds despite it being the exact same vehicle as yours which still forces you to pull up and fight. However you have to fight you have to repair your car by tightening a bolt on the extractor fan which wastes HOURS of game play.
The fact is that not many studios in these times would attempt to portray such an empty landscape that is largely desolate which warrants respect for them sticking to their original concept and the accuracy of the world in that part of the planet today.
FarCry 2always keeps you looked to the First Person Perspective and the primary feature of this game is the approach to combat or the choice that it gives you to approach combat even.
You have a wide variety of weapons that can be upgraded (but not visually) assigned to the D-Pad. Up selects a huge machete for when you're in the mood to butcher up people, Left for a two handed gun like assault rifles and shotguns, Right selects a pistol and Down is assigned as special (flame-throwers, rocket launchers etc.). To purchase a weapon you spend your conflict diamonds acquired through exploration or mission success at the arms dealer and you have a huge shop with all your purchases on the wall in a sort of gun gallery you enter to arm yourself to the teeth how you want (watch for the individual hand animations that accompany each weapon).
All the weapons accumulate dust which after a while causes your weapon to jam in the middle of combat which forces you to take a bit of downtime under fire to unblock it. It's not that simple though, after long enough your weapon will simply fall to pieces in your hand while shooting.
You can choose if you want to gun in all guns blazing, loud and explosive or be more of a Solid Snake style stealth infiltrator using silent weapons and by optimising on the games stealth elements. As I said at the top, this is the closest I have came to playing a game feeling like Rambo.
You can intrude the camp you are about to hit from anywhere 360 degrees of the target and use your Monocular to scout the area for health kits and ammunition piles.
What I really love here is the explosions and the creative yet accurate use of fire.
Explosions cause the plants nearby to ripple and blow leafs from the shockwaves and grenades (rather than cause an explosions as on 99.9999999999% of every other games) emit's a cloud of dust and my absolute favourite of all is destroying ammo piles and watching the bullets fire from the heat and hit nearby troops is exhilarating to look at as it is refreshing.
A lot of effort (and probably too much) has gone into the fire physics. Small fires propagate and grow into huge ones across the plant life and emits satisfying heat waves that distorts the scenery behind it.
My only problems with the combat is the AI which is useless, constantly making suicide runs at you and strafes around the map as you would expect somebody to do only. Too many of the infuriating little men running around with seemingly full auto shotguns all the time quickly gets tiring.
Possibly the only original thing this game tries is what I would call, Bush Healing. If your health drops to the lowest bar you will eventually bleed out and die and have to perform surgery on yourself in an unhygienic landscape whilst under fire. Pulling out bullets with pliers, putting dislocated bones back into their joints and using fire to cauterise open wounds are among my favourite.
Back to the story.
Oh dear, what a tragedy. They had a politically charged setting that they could of easily carried over and had a enthralling affect on the audience and despite it actually being an accurate portrayal of Africa
they have completely squandered it.
The main story is the assassination of The Jackal yet it completely vanishes into the background and obscurity with you jumping ship to ship in the war between the two rival factions (The APR and UFLL). The reasons and objectives for your mission is nonsensical and the poor dialogue does little to clear it up, it literally feels a case of 'DRIVE HERE, SHOOT THIS' as you often forget what the point of this was to begin with for the entirety of the game.
The buddies you meet in the game do little to help the situation. On each main quest line they call you up and offer a sub mission to assist with the completion of the objective you were just getting. The amount of time this consumes just does not warrant the effect it has in making the main quest easier.
The only interesting feature the buddies add to the game is (it's not rescuing you from combat when you are near death believe me) it's when they are critically wounded when helping you in combat.
You can run off and leave them to die, heal them or let them bleed out or execute them to ease their suffering quicker. It does add a great sense of morality to the whole thing as each time they will have a request ('SAVE ME', 'kill me') and it gets stronger when if you want to save them you have no items remaining to heal them with or using one after the other trying to bring them round and it has no effect.
After a long game the two multiple endings that are terribly abrupt for a game that beats around the bush for so many prolonged periods of time.
One actually is very good and new but the other one is cheap, empty, un-inspired and makes you feel cheated out of all the hours of your valuable time you have put into this game.
This game does feel like Assassin's Creed.
They've gone to the trouble and expense of creating a huge open world and then started work on the story and how to fill the time when doing missions. It should be the other way around.
The game infuriates you so much by employing desperate attempts to give the game a big lifespan and it completely ruins the experience.
The travelling between objectives gets larger and larger between objectives as the game progresses to an obscene tipping point, so much so that you have to travel across the entire map just to hand a quest in and then have to go back to where you originally just moments later.
It was never intentional but every choice that has went into this game hinders almost every positive aspect that can be found.