So, I’m playing Far Cry 2. Again. And I’m enjoying it a lot. In fact, I’ve had a choice of either replaying Far Cry 3 or Far Cry 2 and I have picked the second game. Here’s why you should too.
Story and atmosphere
I’ll start with this point, because I feel it’s the strongest one of the game. See, Far Cry 1 was an action movie. You were playing an action hero, called Jack if I recall correctly, and he was a badass who murderized everybody who came in his way. Far Cry 3, pretty much the same, just with a lot more satire thrown into the mix.
Far Cry 2 on the other hand? You are playing a mercenary, whose resources have all been taken away by the very man he’s been hired to assassinate, Jackal, and on top of that, you’re infected with malaria. You’re not in to save your family or the universe, you just want to cash in on your hit, survive, and you don’t care how many people who step into your path will die.
Now all your calming thoughts of ‘the man I’m supposed to kill is selling weapons to these people’ will be very swiftly blown away by the sheer amount of your own bodycount, and via tapes recorded by a reporter talking to Jackal, you soon start to find out that he might actually just be the only sane person around. I’ll leave the rest for your to find out.
Atmosphere is another thing which is extremely important for the game - it’s made clear that you’re in a weakened state and that you’re barely scraping by to survive, state made all to obvious by occassinal diziness caused by malaria. The fact that a lot of people are shooting in your general direction and you really don’t take much to get killed (by the way, I highly recommend playing on higher difficulties and only save at save points - but yes, the game does have save anywhere system for PC) doesn’t really help. The entire game is extremely immersive thanks to a lot of great UI decisions and its down to earth approach, and you feel like you actually are fighting these people and that you do want to survive in spite of all the odds. I would go as far as to call it a very survival and exploration based FPS. Not exactly true for either the original Far Cry or Far Cry 3.
I might also add that I have found the storyline of Far Cry 2 to be extremely good - you just need to go out of your way to find it.
Unique mechanics
Now I have already touched upon the UI, so I feel that should be elaborated upon a bit - UI in this game is extremely minimalistic, and all it can it’s rather trying to present via in-world means. You do have your traditional ammo counter, health bar and … Well that’s it, really. If you press the map button, your character takes an actual map into one hand and GPS into the other. There’s no such thing as fast travel, the closest thing to it are bus stations around the game world. Vehicle damage is indicated by the amount of smoke coming from its engine and when you are wounded, you actually see your character removing a bullet from wound or bandaging up when you try to heal. It’s all extremely immersive and well-implemented.
That’s not all tho. The game contains a so-called ‘buddy’ mechanic. Now, at the start of the game, you get to pick a character - and all the other characters will then be present in the game world, and if you find them, they will move into a certain location on the map and give you quests. That’s not all tho - buddies give you optional … well, options during main mission, which completely change how the mission plays out, and buddies run to your rescue when you happen to be incapacitated (that only happens once in a while tho, and do remember that you go down easily.)
In addition to what I have said about the buddies above, they are present in the game world as well - when one comes to rescue you, he/she can get incapacitated, just like he/she can in a mission. Then they depend on you to go and rescue them - if you don’t, they will die and there’s no way to bring them back into the game.
Personally, I found the buddy mechanic to be bloody brilliant. It’s amazingly immersive and has little hard scripting involved. And that actually brings me to my next point…
Play how you want
The game gives you a world, it gives you options and says “Now go, do whatever.” You can approach any mission in any way you want, with any equipment you see fit. If you just want to explore, you can and the game will reward you for doing so. That’s another thing I absolutely adore about it - you can play it as you want. The game doesn’t restrict you in any way, as long as you end up completing the objective given to you. Relatively clever equipment slot mechanic forces you make some hard choices on the loadout you take. And that’s just amazing.
I have played one particular assassinate mission about 4 times now, and it has always played out completely differently. Once I’ve been lucky and I have just killed the guy standing in the middle of enemy encampment with my sniper rifle, from a pretty big distance. Other time, I have managed to sneak past the enemy and kill him with my machette, upon which all hell broke loose. The other time, I have gotten in on a boat armed with machine gun, which I have used as a stationary location to eliminate most enemies. And (that actually was the first time), I just ran in, guns blazing. And yes, I have replayed the game 4 times now at least (I never actually finish it, because I’m a guy like that, but screw that, I always have a hell of a time with the bloody thing)
And that’s just… I value games which let me do that so much, just as I value games which aren’t about saving everyone, just as I value games which put immersion in front of convenience. And play however you want also saves you from a lot of repetition - unless you absolutely must play in the most efficient way possible for you, you have the possibility of trying out different sets of equipment which change playstyle quite radically.
… but it has a lot of flaws
Enemy respawning. Every time you leave the map or do something to progress like accept a mission, most enemies in the world respawn. Now most spots on the map occupied by enemies can also be completely bypassed so not all’s bad, and I actually find this to be a part of the entire survival experience - encounter with a single guy can be deadly, so every time, you’re faced with the choice of engaging or bypassing an enemy, both bearing its own rewards and risks.
Enemies are kind of bullet spongy. If you’re a good marksman, all’s fine as most opponents go down in like 4 shots from most guns, but inherent inaccuracy of weapons make you feel like the enemies last bloody ages.
Mission repetitiveness. Every time you want to unlock new weapons, you will have to blow up a convoy. Every time you want to just make some money on the side, you’ll have to asassinate somebody. But to be fair, with the amount of ways of doing any of these things, I never really cared about this particular issue.
Everybody is out to get you. Friendly NPCs are mostly just in town, and sometimes in other interiors, but that’s it. Everybody you meed will try to kill you. Again, feeling of desperation kind of comes with that - but some people might find it annoying.
Holy wall of text batman!
And… Yeah, that’s it. Far Cry 2 is a very flawed game, but due to its approach, I will always hold it dear in my heart. In spite of the fact that there’s so much critique I can throw its way, I still love it and I still replay it every now and again, which is extremely rare even for my favourite games. Because Far Cry 2 is unique. There’s really no other game which comes close to the atmosphere FC2 has - and I love it for that. I will just repeat that you’ll get the best experience by cranking up the difficulty and only saving at the save points.
I feel it’s a game that’s going to cater to a very niché audience, but outside of that particular group of people, most are probably going to dislike it.
