Review: Far Cry 2

Far Cry was an interesting game years ago. It was a first person shooter with a difference. It really shook things up in the genre with its tight AI and amazingly far draw distances in a seemingly open world. It also has a significant problem where the game fell apart in the second half with an unfortunate plot and gameplay twist which was seen to many as being three steps back. Its first official sequel is here now: Far Cry 2 and many are watching it to see if it repeats the accomplishments or the problems of its namesake. On top of that, the Canadian developers at Ubisoft Montreal have tried to push the envelope once more and give players an ambitious experience.

To make a point: Far Cry 2 by Clint Hocking has almost nothing to do with the original. It does not continue or have any significant ties to the original narrative and is intentionally divorced from Far Cry. That gesture seems to be an admission of guilt for letting the first game devolve so rapidly in to a horrible mess. Consider Far Cry 2 an apology to fans as they make amends this time to turn Far Cry 2 in to what we all wanted the first Far Cry to be.

Story
When you start off the game you pick a character. Once you do that, the game populates itself with all the other characters as non-playable characters. This simple initial move shows that you are not some super-soldier. You are not a one-man army. You are simply a cog in a greater machine and there are events going on bigger than one man. Susan O’Connor has crafted an interesting and suitable story which immediately immerses players beyond their own motivations and gets increasingly interesting through the course of the game.

Immersion
One of the big buzzwords for this game is immersion. Ubisoft has gone to great lengths to make this game as immersive as possible. For their part they have done an amazing job here. Everything happens from a first person perspective. Even navigating is done via a handheld map and compass. You really feel embodied by your in-game avatar. Healing yourself is done in real-time as you have to manually remove bullets from your wounds. You repair your vehicles with a wrench in first person perspective. You interact with computers in first person perspective.

It may sound like a small thing but all the little touches in this game go a long way towards immersion and make the player feel a part of the drama unfolding on the screen. Even when you are critically wounded in battle, you fall to the ground and see (albeit in a blurry haze) a fellow mercenary come to your aid, and help you survive. There is not simply a cut to a loading screen here, resetting you to a previous time. In Far Cry 2 you have to live with defeat and fight your way out of a sticky situation. It really offers great immersive escapism as you are quite drawn in to the struggles of your character.

Far Cry 2 Multiplayer Producer Gaetan Richard told us that “We tried to keep immersion as much as possible in multiplayer, but we had to do some compromises. Self-healing, gun reloading and unjamming, driving vehicules and teammates reviving are really immersive actions. To help players navigate in user created maps, we have dynamic icons in the HUD, such as team bases, Diamond stations, Uprising control points and ammo piles when ammunition is low for a player.” In practice he’s right as multiplayer demands some compromises and they seemed to have balanced it well, while still keeping things relatively minimal.

Problems
To further the immersion, you have to deal with real problems in the game. There are many little problems you have to keep on top of. Surprisingly this does not end up feeling like a chore or annoyance. It actually gets you deeper into the game as you multitask with fixing your vehicles, dealing with poorly maintained weapons, and managing your severe malaria. On paper having all these little problems should be a nightmare. You don’t want to sweat the small stuff. In Far Cry 2 they amazingly manage to turn all these little problems into something that really makes the game more interesting. Far from being a nuisance, these problems help make the game what it is.

Mechanics
The game takes place in a 50km2 area of non-descript Africa. It is, in a word, beautiful. The landscape changes between savannah and jungle with lots of variety in between with dynamic weather and day-lighting systems. The animals act real (though there are no non-human predators to worry about). The AI engine acts real. The vegetation acts real, allowing you to shoot down trees which may be in your way. Even fire acts real, with realistic fire propagation – a total game changer which is both subtly done and of huge impact. You can really get creative with your problem solving in Far Cry 2 with all the interesting game mechanics offered.

Audio
The audio could be better. It is not horrible but it does not stand out as being particularly great either. There aren’t really problematic aspects to the audio in Far Cry 2 but it seems to have been neglected relative to the other interesting advancements the game boasts. As mentioned in previous game reviews, this is a common oversight in even the most ambitious games so somewhat forgivable in this case. The sound effects aren’t bad though there are only minimal ambient sound-effects. For example you don’t hear too many crickets at night. Music isn’t poorly done by composer Marc Canham and oddly there is a separate promotional soundtrack of African themed hip-hop available for free from Adult Swim via Williams Street Records.

Map Editor
The game comes with an integrated map editor where authors can compose a 640m by 640m plot of land with some powerful yet streamlined tools. Ubisoft has even managed to make this work well for console users – a platform not as suitable for content authoring in general in comparison to a PC. These maps can be published online and shared through the community for multiplayer fun. Maps can be edited in ‘open-source’ style by successive users with credit maintained by the original author. Authors can compose hundreds of static and dynamic objects in to the maps too making a wide variety possible.

“We have talented interface designers and programmers on the team and it made the process fairly simple. We looked at other editors on the market and learned from the experience on Far Cry Instincts and Predator. From there, we searched for comments on forum and we tried to answers as many concerns as possible. Frankly the result is really good!” says Gaetan Richard going on to clarify one significant map editor feature for us, “map creators will have access to dozens of undo” so not to worry.

Conclusions
Far Cry 2 has really redeemed the franchise from the failings of its namesake. This time the game doesn’t devolve but rather gets better as the player progresses through it. Once you progress enough that you can see the wide open landscape and all the possibilities it has to offer, you realize that it’s a shame that it’s just a shooter and not a more open game with more unexpected avenues to take, like perhaps having to hunt for food or defend yourself against predators. The game is beautiful but perhaps not for the casual player. This one is for the FPS lovers out there who want the ability to go anywhere and do anything whenever they like. The game has already sold over a million copies and we humbly predict that it will easily double this figure. The marketing blitz for Far Cry 2 may not be as spectacular as some of these other blockbuster titles but the game is significant enough that it can’t help but draw a large following. Kudos to Ubisoft for being ambitious and pushing the envelope again. All the subtle design choices accumulate in this title to make it quite noteworthy and a significant step for the genre.

[Far Cry 2]
[Ubisoft]
[African Swim]