I never played the original Far Cry, so I didn't know what to expect when Far Cry 2 came rolling into town. I bought the game after reading the excited posts about it on the 1Blog.

The first thing that strikes me about Far Cry 2 is that it isn't Far Cry. From what I've read, it doesn't share the same story, characters, or even genre with the original game, instead setting iteslf in an unnamed African nation where two factions are fighting for control. Far Cry 2 has invented its own genre; open-world shooter.

Most first-person shooters are linear. Navigate through a premade path and kill people along the way. Far Cry 2 does to first-person shooters what Grand Theft Auto III did to third-person shooters. You are in a massive, completely open world. The world isn't nearly as big as, say, Just Cause (which has the largest game world ever) but it seems just as big because the only way to get around is in cars following roads surrounded by cliffs and jungles.

The gameplay of the game is, as far as I've seen, fairly straightforward for an open-world game: side quests and main quests. You get your missions from Pala, the only village where no one will shoot you. That fact annoys me. Everyone in the game is hostile to you, except for your two "buddies". No matter how many missions you do for either of the factions, they always tell you as you leave the room "Oh and by the way, our soldiers will still shoot you"

The missions themselves always use the format "Go here, shoot/blow up/kill this". They are sometimes made more interesting if you accept the nuances offered by your closest buddy, who will come up with a plan that involves "Go here, steal this, bring it to me" and which will sometimes help your main mission. These buddy missions increase your "history" with that character, which in turn unlocks upgrades to your safehouses.

The worst part of Far Cry 2 is the driving. The constant, never-ending driving. You're given a mission which is on the other side of the game world. You can take a bus, which, after a loading screen, takes you to the nearest bus stop. But the nearest bus stop can be very far away. Then you'll have to take the car which is parked outside the bus stop and drive to the place. Then what? If your car gets blown up and there are no cars around that's it, you have to walk for a while, until an enemy car shows up for you to steal or get killed by.

In fact, the driving itself isn't that bad. It's quite fun to drive down an empty road at night, but it's those enemy cars. You're driving, minding your own business, enjoying the (graphically awesome) scenery when you see the headlights. They get closer, and then start shooting. They don't leave you alone until you kill them or get really far away (which is rarely possible barring a crash) And when you do, there's another car waiting to appear in about 30 seconds.

The combat in Far Cry 2 is amazing. They've developed an engine which features fire. Real fire. Throw a molotov cocktail at a patch of grass, and the fire spreads up trees, across fields, and into cars. This can be used to distract, block, or kill enemies.

As for the guns, you can buy them at a gun shop (where you will be required to do "Destroy this shipment of guns for my competitor" missions to unlock more weapons) or steal them from dead bodies. But there's a problem with enemy guns, apparently: take them out of their rightful owner's hands for just a second, and they jam. Gun jams suck. You have to spend a few seconds fixing it, and enemy guns are highly prone to jams because apparently the bad guys don't know how to buy guns from one of the gun shops littered around the map, which work much better.

The game always gives you content, which is another nice feature. There are no loading screens, save for riding buses and the initial loading of the game. Instead of having a minimap in the corner, the game lets you hold up a map to your face. You can do this when walking or when driving vehicles, and it really keeps the immersion there. Although it's somewhat broken since this apparently normal map somehow shows you an arrow indicating your position and all of your objectives.

Overall, Far Cry 2 is a great game, and I think there's a lot of potential in the open-world-first-person-shooter which it has created.

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