Audio:		10.0
Visual:		9.0
Gameplay:		9.0
Story:		8.0
Replay:		8.0
Score:		9.0

Platform:	PC
Developer(s):	Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher(s):	Ubisoft
Genre:	Shooter
Players:	16
Website:	http://farcry.us.ubi.com/index.php
Release Date:	October 21, 2008
Rating:

Story

Enough to get by, the base storyline will interest you but isn't quite... amazing. The story
changes depending on the character you pick, and by the choices you make throughout the game. At the beginning of the game you're thrust straight into the immersive style of FarCry 2. You begin in a taxi, driven by a talkative and wise native African man, a basic exposition of the setting takes place here as he tells you about the conflicting factions in this area of Africa and such. At this point one of the most interesting details of the game shows itself for the first time. The screen blurs and distorts, you hear the character grunt, and you begin to writhe. Sickness, while not central, doesn't take a backseat in this game. Throughout the entire game you'll be reminded of your sickness, and have to care for it. As well as healing yourself from the illnesses damage, you must also perform first aid on yourself and others. Examples of this are pulling a bullet out of your hand, or calming and treating a friend who seems to be in shock by playing micro-games, similar in style to the Trauma Center games on DS and Wii.

Graphics

The graphics are beautiful in this game. Absolutely the most gorgeous graphics I've seen since Crysis. FarCry2's graphics aren't quite to par with Crysis, but they're certainly second best. Even with the gorgeous graphics, those of us who can't quite run it on full will not be disappointed.

The game's graphics aren't nearly as demanding as Crysis to begin with, and almost anyone can run the game on medium settings. My only complaint about the game's graphics are the trees. The trees in FarCry 2 are incredibly low-poly and the show it. This isn't an uncommon problem in recent video games for some reason. It really does lower my opinion of the graphics when I see trees that resemble origami.

Gameplay

As I mentioned above in the Story section, Sickness is ever present in this game. Another constantly present and absolutely original detail of the gameplay is gun degradation. Due to the setting, and the poor conditions you're in, it's very uncommon to find a firearm in good condition. Because of this, the guns that you find will begin to break with use. This causes them to jam, and while you can still use the weapon, it's incredibly irritating and will surely cause you to stop using the weapon. Throughout this game you will come to love the flamethrower.

Due to FarCry2's use of the Dunia engine the fire-propogation in this game is excellent. So excellent it can actually be effectively used against your enemies. One of my major complaints about this game is the repetition, and tedious travels. Many of the missions are of the generic "Kill this, kill that," nature that I've simply had enough of. As if the repetitive missions weren't enough, getting to the missions is also a pain. The vehicles just don't feel quite right, and are easily crashed or stuck upon even the smallest of rocks. This is a massive pain in the butt. In a game applauded for it's open-world style, you'd think more attention would be paid to transportation around the gargantuan game-world! This is sadly not the case. The side-missions are fairly fun, and finished them upgrades your safe-house with things like weapons.

One of the most noticeable achievements for this game is it's AI. It's absolutely fantastic. Enemies react as they should, and have even been programmed to use the fire-propogation system against you. AI is never without it's quirks though. Many times I killed one enemy, to have one directly beside it not budge. This isn't quite right, but excusable. I've also shot quite a few enemies to have them simply stand still! That, isn't excusable. While the AI is truly a success, despite it's few quirks and issues, the enemies themselves are not. There is a very limited amount of enemy-types. In an open-world game most expect to see many many enemy models and varieties. This is not so here. It's not a major issue, but noticeable.

I've only had a very limited amount of time to play around in the Map Editor, but so far I'm very impressed. It's powerful, easy to use, and fun. There's an enormous library of objects to choose from, and the terrain editing is very easy to use and usually ends in near-profession results.

Audio

The sounds are high-quality, and the music is fitting and discrete. I found no problems with the sound, and have nothing but good to say about the excellent sound-design.

Overall

FarCry 2 is a gorgeously rendered and composed open-world shooter. Average enough to please die-hard shooter fans, and just original enough to please fans of action and adventure games. With micro-games tastefully dispersed through the gameplay, the repetitious quests don't have as much of an effect as they did in Assassin's Creed, but still damage the game experience. I suggest this game to any fans of shooters, or fans of the FarCry series. I give FarCry 2 a Nine out of Ten.