The first Far Cry scored 9.0 on GameSpot. Having developed a habit of getting every game that scored 9.0 and above on GameSpot and expecting it to be awesome, I was in for a severe, frustrating letdown upon playing Far Cry.
Far Cry 2 was no different. The African civil war setting, along with one of the moral quandary of wars in resource-rich Africa, the conflict diamond trade, are very interesting, but the enthusiasm died down after an hour into the game.
Far Cry 2 is clearly a sandbox game, something that Far Cry (and its spiritual successors, the Crysis games) is not. The range of unlockables confirmed this, as any sandbox game is wont to have. Sure, there is a somewhat linear storyline typical of the -Cry series, but with some rather disappointing and limited permutations depending on players' choices which seemed out of place.
It is also rather disappointing that few of the upgrades actually directly improve the player's survivability. In fact, enemies have access to exactly all the weapons that the player would be able to unlock, even having them earlier than the player (before he gets enough diamonds to purchase them). It's very harrowing, really, to have gone to the trouble to gather enough shiny rocks to purchase a weapon that you know the enemy already has. The game's weapon-degrading mechanics sees to it that the player does so, instead of depending on looting the corpses of enemies to gain new weaponry.
The vehicles are terrible. They handle well, but the rough African terrain and terrible roads can only reward good driving so much. Sure, the game makes a point in saying all vehicles practically suck on African land, but that's not conducive to fun gameplay. Even the AI enemies on vehicles sometimes have issues with their terrain negotiating subroutines and often disembark to chase down the player on foot.
The hang glider remains as useless as it was in the first Far Cry.
The story is also very weak, with rather disappointing (& even infuriating) twists, especially at the later portions. Furthermore, the story appears to be recycled for each and every possible player character, who happens to remain a mute throughout the game. Ironically, the personality of these characters is only seen when they are acting as NPCs.
There are some interesting elements in the game, such as a myriad of excruciating healing animations for severe wounds, but these are overshadowed by the myriad of deficiencies in other portions of the game.
In conclusion, those hoping for a vast improvement over the first game would likely be sorely disappointed. It is apparent that Ubisoft Montreal has a different set of talent and experience than Crytek, and that is not for the better.