It takes an idiot to play Far Cry 2 after Far Cry 3. It takes a special type of idiot to play Far Cry 2 after Far Cry 4, and then to write a review of the former! But here I am – sitting and writing on a (thankfully) cloudy June afternoon while installing Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. But let’s not deviate – the point is that I’m writing a review of Far Cry 2 after having finished it after a good day’s worth of play. Yep, a WHOLE DAY’s worth of play aka 24 hours! So what did I learn from the African jungles and the jamming guns ? Here’s the lowdown –
Graphics
Playing Far Cry 2 after a highly polished and totally awesome title like Far Cry 4 can bring back that “
oh no not again” sort of feeling. But blaming Far Cry 2 for not having graphics as good as the successor of its successor is like asking Einstein why he didn’t build the Hadron Collider. This so especially since Far Cry 2 was considered a visual masterpiece of its time, a time which in gaming terms is already in the distant past.
But at the end of the day it all boils down to how the gamer feels, and this gamer aka arrian91 aka Aritra the Gamer (woo hoo!) feels the graphics are quite good. Unlike Far Cry 4, which is set in a somewhat familiar environment, I have really no idea what Africa looks like. Or more specifically, what war-torn failed African countries look like. But from what I’ve read and what I’ve seen on TV, Far Cry 2 does a pretty good job.
So what does the good job constitute ? To begin with, the game contains oodles and oodles of tropical rainforest, topped off with decent amounts of savanna grasslands and at the very edges of the maps, deserts. While this may seem somewhat monotonous if you’re stuck in one part of the map, most missions require you to travel great distances (Coming to that) and for this reason, you’ll actually enjoy the scenery. In fact, some of the most beautiful parts of the game are ones where there are no human habitations. This, in my humble opinion, is at the core of the Far Cry experience, and again in my opinion, makes FC2 a true predecessor to the later games.
Of course, it isn’t entirely a FC3 or 4 experience. For one thing, there is no hunting involved. Animals are there – wild buffaloes, deer, zebras and so on – but all are herbivores and none actually attack you. The only AI they have forces them to constantly run away and that too, not very effectively. You could shoot them down or run them down with your car, but there are no rewards for that. In the end, I ended up avoiding most of the animals altogether.
Lack of hunting directly translates into lack of suspense when travelling in the wild. While a kilometre in FC3 or 4 would involve at least one predator attack, here you can walk for miles and miles and face none at all. This makes travelling on foot quite monotonous for those who have played the later games. Yet it’s perhaps not right to blame FC2 for this – games like Fallout 3 and New Vegas have similarly barren stretches with little to interest the gamer, and they too are considered cult classics.
Despite such monotony however, the game has its moments of sheer beauty, even when you have become accustomed to the scenery and no longer admire the trees, cliffs and of course, the dirt roads. Once I was driving to one end of the map to kill some folks at some place called Segolo (I think). The game was about 75-80% complete and I was thoroughly accustomed to the southern part of the map. Yet when I broke through the foliage and moved into the grasslands – I was treated to a breathtaking site of the sun rising above the barren lands and few treetops. Again, when I was boating along the rivers, the rugged cliffs around me gave a sense of adventure that had nothing to do with my mission or the overall logic of the game.
In contrast, the human settlements are downright drab and sad. Okay, so there is a war going on. Okay so it is Africa and a very impoverished country at that. And fine, the war and the poverty do come out starkly through the quality of the settlements. But all said, endless broken rusty cars, rusting tin sheds, tires for roadblocks and buildings bemoaning their former glory do not make for an experience that is visually breathtaking. Whether it is Pala or a Leboa-Seko or Segolo or any other settlement, ceasefire or no ceasefire, the place feels like it desperately needs a makeover.
At first, the entire setting brings home the sense of collapse and despondence associated with entering a country that is tearing itself apart for no good reason. It even makes you feel a little angry at the person called Jackal – “the bastard that armed both sides”, as the protagonist puts it. But after a while, the sheer monotony of the buildings –some clearly colonial, others poor post-colonial ones, make one feel that there is little joy to be had in exploring the inhabited areas.
Not that there’s much to explore. Apart from a few diamonds here and there, the cluster of buildings can be broken down into –
- UFLL/APR headquarters
- closed off buildings
- Church
- some random shanty like areas
- an occasional ruined hotel or graveyard
You could probably explore the entire town – be it any town – in less than five minutes. And I’m talking about the ceasefire ones – the others (like Shantytown or one of the villages) are even smaller and make you feel like you’re wading through a pile of wood, tin and miscellaneous metal.
Talking of villages, these at least have some novelty. The houses are made of brick and their insides are honestly rendered. You have interesting hay ladders and low top floors – all of which add to the safari experience that is so central to any game that deals with sub-Saharan Africa.
All in all, the ambience is enjoyable at first but gradually loses steam. While you’re genuinely interested in exploring the various nooks and crannies of the map early on, the later stages really make you feel like going through the main missions as fast as possible. Matters are not helped by the fact that some areas – like the waterfalls and the fishing village – have been rendered with essentially the same strokes as the rest of the greenery – something outstanding here would have made some of the missions (like the mission to kill the UFLL chief of the north) much more interesting. Still, the game holds well, and if you manage to mix up things, you can at least get through the main missions without dreading the monotony of the FC2 world.
Navigation
A good part of what makes matters monotonous is the relentless need to travel. The initial missions take you literally to the edges of the map, and while the later ones are much more spread out in terms of the destinations, they still require substantial travel. There are no fast travel options aside from the bus stops. These bus stops are at the very edges of the maps and oftentimes require a good deal of driving from virtually any point (except the central one) to reach. Matters are not helped by the lack of anything – literally anything – near the bus stops, which makes travelling to bus stops a micro-mission in itself.
Now to begin with the basics, travelling can be done in three ways – car, boat and animal power. Animal power ? Yes, the power of your two legs. Sadly, you’ll have to use the latter more than the other two combined. Why ?
- Some areas are located so far from roads that you’ll be bumping through sand dunes and over cliffs if you’re in a car. Better to walk.
- Enemies will destroy your car even if they can’t put a bullet in you. Cars being the weakest of the movable objects in the game, you’ll often find your jeep or car or boat destroyed. You can jump onto the enemy’s boat but sometimes that blows up as well. Result – walk/swim.
- Cars are far fewer than in the later games and unless you’re lucky enough to find an enemy driving at you (and not running you over), you’ll have to set off on foot from the towns quite often.
- The maps are so convoluted that often a seemingly motorable road turns out to be so narrow or ridden with obstacles that you have to disembark and walk.
- A good number of checkpoints and outposts will have at least one drum and tyre construct to stop you from driving through. Stop there and your car is trash. Often you’ll have to walk from there if there is no vehicle in the area.
- Boats will get stuck on reefs and in marshes and no amount of pushing will help. Swim on, friend!
Now you’d think that at least the roads would be simple to navigate. They aren’t. Most of them are twisting snakes of gravel that will throw you off cliffs, take you to dead ends and to random areas with no utility whatsoever before you get to your destination. You do figure out the most important ones eventually, but you have to do a good amount of planning if you don’t want to end up at the other end of the country.
Road signs are there – but the only ones useful are the ones denoting a fork. In some junctions you can discover a long list of places and arrows directing you towards them. Sadly, the names in the game are so convoluted that you might be headed for Senkharanese and you might end up in Segolo.
The only thing that happens during a typical journey is endless encounter with enemies. They either come at you at guard posts or more often, in cars. Moments after they start shooting, your engine will start belching white smoke. You disembark, shoot them down, take their car, reverse and change direction and drive. And drive. And repeat. And drive. And repeat. And repeat.
I drove about 100km in the game and walked 130. Need I say more ?
Combat
Far Cry relies primarily on combat, and thankfully, FC2 doesn’t disappoint – almost. The guns are fine, the mechanics are cool and the enemies aren’t hard to kill (at least on the lower difficulties). Reload times are tolerable and indeed realistic. The guns look great and for once, they got the rust and dirt right so an old gun looks quite old and rusty, and not in a bad way.
Another thing is their attention to the build of the guns. Each gun is meticulously designed and you can make out the exact design when reloading. Coupled with the realistic reloading and dirt/rust graphics, these make the guns true beauties that befit the environs.
But that’s about all that clicks. What doesn’t click – well there’ s quite a lot of that. Firstly, the realism is taken too far. The two most realistic mechanics are also the most annoying.
First, there is the recoil. Guns like ASR and PKM recoil so much that you’re essentially starting from the enemy’s feet and firing up to the heat, hoping that you get in enough bullets before you’re aiming at the heavens. The second and the most pathetic, yes THE most pathetic mechanic is jamming. This is the only game in which jamming has been given so much primacy that virtually every gun jams. And when it jams, you’re left to either switch weapons, which is surprisingly slow in such a situation, or to hit the reload key till the gun works again.
Some people find the jamming mechanic amusing eg. the top shield of the PKM flies open and has to be stuffed back. In the midst of combat though, it is plain irritating and can cause you to lose significant amounts of health.
Initially I thought it was the problem with some specific guns – better ones would have less problems. So I went and bought more guns from the irritatingly distant gun shops. Since there are no bell towers or outposts, you have to do special missions to unlock the guns (coming up). Now I did get better guns, but they STILL JAMMED. Hell yes, they jammed and jammed and then….then they heated up and had to be thrown away! Yes, this is the only game where you actually have to throw away guns, leaving you without your primary weapon in the middle of a fight.
Now the reason I say primary weapons is because there are 4 classes of weapons – knife (constant), primary, secondary and special. The division is rather arbitrary since sniper rifles fall into both primary and special categories. Most of the time though, the primary gun would be an assault rifle, the secondary an Uzi or Makarov and the special an LMG, sniper rifle or RPG.
Now the funny thing is that you get these guns from your enemies before you buy them – they drop the guns. However, guns from enemies are rusted and burn out faster, not to say jam like they are….arrrgghhhhhhh…..
Sorry my gun jammed again. Anyway, once you buy them you can buy accuracy upgrades to deal with recoil and reliability upgrades to handle jamming. Sadly, while this works for guns like AK47 and PKM and MP5, the ASR and the Uzi seem to have no pristine editions. They would jam no matter how many diamonds you’ve spilled on them.
Speaking of diamonds, the game rewards you with diamonds from briefcases located in every nook and cranny possible and of course, from missions. Unlike most games, payment is made before you actually begin the mission so you can pick up guns you want before actually undertaking the mission – theoretically. Practically, the gun shops are so far away that you’re simply left with whatever you have.
Despite all this, combat is simple and quite easy. Stealth sucks, and sucks big time because the moment you fire anything (except the single-shot dart rifle), everybody becomes alert and you’re left in a messy gunfight. Since you come across an outpost every few miles while travelling, you become so used to gunfights that the actual mission ones often seem quite easy.
The health system too is quite generous. You have five health bars from the start, and get 5 health syrettes to begin with. You can upgrade your health pack to raise the number to 7 eventually. Except early on, you will hardly ever run out of syrettes because health packs and stations are located in almost every habitation. You can’t draw syrettes from the same location in quick succession (Even when the station is still glowing) but that doesn’t really matter because barring mortars and the occasional sniper shot or RPG, you’ll never be seriously injured. Not even by LMGS.
Storyline
If you thought combat had hiccups, wait till I tell you about the storyline. You start off as a mercenary sent to kill the mysterious Jackal, an arms dealer that armed both sides and caused the civil war between APR (Alliance for Popular Resistance) and UFLL (United Federation for Liberty and Labour) to escalate. You are sent to kill the Jackal and the game’s load screen notes (similar to the ones by Artyom in the Metro series, but only these are static and change erratically between missions) do a lot to make you dislike the guy,
As it turns out, the Jackal is hard to dislike, because he’s not there. He’s not there in the towns, in the villages, in the missions, in the side missions, he’s nowhere. You will meet him at the start and then you will meet him next when you’re halfway through the game, lying injured. In fact, the Jackal comes out of nowhere and saves your ass when you’ve been thrown in the middle of the desert by your friend turned foes the APR (or UFLL perhaps if you play differently).
Next he will appear when you’ve to go get some stones from the APR chief. This time he’s a true villain, finishing the cut scene by stomping on your face and setting you up for the APR chief’s death. Next when you meet him, he’s again the good guy trying to get the refugees across by bribing the border guards and stopping the factions following them. So is the Jackal good or bad ? Doesn’t matter, because he comes so few times and for such short durations that it is meaningless.
Worse, the notes suggest that the protagonist is looking for the Jackal. Yet not one of the NPCs mention the Jackal directly to him. How does he find out ? He doesn’t. The Jackal comes when he wants to, and leaves when he wants to. The protagonist is left to become just another mercenary without purpose.
That’s what 90% of the game’s missions are – unrelated to the Jackal. You can hook up with either faction and influence the war. But there’s no solution because you end up killing everybody. In the end, once everybody is dead, you work with the Jackal and save the refugees. The end.
Does this make you feel sad ? Hell no, because the NPCs are so soulless that you are left wondering whether the APR chief is the UFLL chief is the doctor is whatever…..
The side missions are no better. The gun dealer missions require you to take down a convoy which conveniently goes around in circles! You position yourself on a gun in the middle of the road and start firing when they turn up. Then take down the big truck that is supposed to have the guns but is actually empty and you’re done. You unlock some guns in the process though, so for the first few times the missions are worth the trouble and ennui.
The other missions are the bell tower ones. Kill this guy in this location. Done ? Done.
Then there are the underground missions. These are basically courier missions involving a small gunfight at the end as you take down the loafers roaming around the underground locations. Then you deliver the passports (travel papers) and take the medicine. Done ? Done.
Then there are…oh wait, there aren’t any other missions. Ah well.
Characters
The worst though, are the characters. The protagonist (I took Quarbani Singh, it doesn’t matter who you take) is a person sent into the country to kill the Jackal. The first thing that happens to him ? Attack ? Backstabbing ? Desertion ? Nope, malaria. Yes, you have the only protagonist ever to go on fighting while having malaria. The result is that you are overcome with fever ever so often and have to pop a pill if you don’t want to pass out. Now imagine being in the thick of battle with a mortar guy, five gunmen and a sniper taking shots at you and the screen clouds up, a weird spooky track starts to play and the medicine icon appears. Take the malaria pill! You take it and everybody resume shooting at you. And where do you get the malaria pills ? From refugees of course. I mean why do only refugees have pills ? Ask Ubisoft!
Apart from his meaningless notes about tracing the Jackal and his malaria, the protagonist is soulless. There are no choices to make in the game and most NPCs behave as if you are just another mercenary. No warmth or coldness associated with what you do or don’t do. Out of nowhere they would accuse you of working for the other side but then give you a mission as before. Bleh!
Talking of NPCs, there are too many. There are the leaders and doctors, who have short conversations before giving you missions. There’s the priest in the Church. There are some mercenaries who would keep talking as you pass them by. The only one of these NPCs to have any life is a reporter called Reuben who is recording his own version of events. He seems to have a genuine desire to help people in his country even when his own life is at stake.
Finally, buddies. These are supposed to be your friends. They do two things – rescue you when you’re dying and give you alternative ways to finish missions. The first is awesome. The rescue is highly cinematized and you feel as if you’re in a Call of Duty cutscene where your comrade is dragging you to safety as he clears the path of soldiers.
But the second is meaningless. Most of the time the buddy will ask you to meet him somewhere else. Then ask you to go somewhere and do something. Finally, you go and complete the real mission – solo as originally intended. Then you go somewhere and help out your buddy who is cornered for some reason. What good does this all do ? I have no idea. In fact, if your buddy gets shot and blue smoke starts billowing from the spot, you would be in a spot trying to save your buddy on one hand and shooting the bad guys on the other. I once had to be rescued by my “best buddy” saviour while trying to rescue the mission buddy. Imagine.
Lastly, women don’t have an honourable mention in the game. Why ? Because they don’t get any mention. Period.
Conclusion
One cannot help but be harsh on a predecessor when one has played sequels and the sequels are as great as FC 3 or 4. Yet there are serious flaws in the game, and one realizes how Ubisoft went about fixing them. For one, the game mechanics aren’t 100% okay. People will shoot through tin walls and people will protrude out of rocks (this happens in FC4 too, does Ubisoft enjoy this mechanic ?). The ambience is decent, the combat is realistic but tad irritating, the storyline and characters are nothing to write home about. But at the end of the day, the game did hold me enough to make me spend 24 hours in it, and I won’t say I regret much. While I can’t recommend the game to those who are looking for a truly well made game, this is a must for true Far Cry lovers.