A wonderful immersive game. Far cry 2 was really cool.
Far Cry 2 is Ubisoft’s first Far Cry game and frankly, it’s my first Far Cry game as well. There is a world of difference between Far Cry 1 and Far Cry 2, making it difficult to define Far Cry 2 as a game. It shows how Ubisoft can create a masterpiece when trying to experiment with something. The game was developed by Ubisoft Montreal and released in 2008, and its Dunia engine makes the game unique.
Unfortunately, people focused on its shortcomings when the game was released. Since the game was not designed for the casual audience, it remained an obscure production. However, Far Cry 2 is far beyond that and is an incomparable creation. The famous Crowbcat video shows details of the game and comparisons, but there’s not much else explained. If we evaluate the game based on this, it’s very good, but all these details make the game boring when played without understanding, which is evident from the comments on the topic.
Unlike other Far Cry games, Far Cry 2 is based on conveying full reality to the player rather than an artificial one, making it a true survival game. Those who dismiss Far Cry 2 as boring are actually defeated by the sense of struggle it offers or miss out on the experience because they often don’t understand it. In the game, we are constantly battling with our avatar, enemies, nature, and vehicles, and this battle never stops. I think this design choice is wonderful and definitely better and more realistic than the sense of struggle offered by Souls games, which can’t go beyond absurdities.
The player shapes the story of Far Cry 2 within certain plot boundaries. The opening sequence of the game in Africa, where we go to kill our character from the first game, introduces us to the atmosphere and then to our main target, Jack Carver, aka The Jackal. The character development and change from the first game are great because the janky-style character from the first game appears in the second game with a purpose and philosophy. We don’t encounter him much in the game, and unfortunately, we try to understand his philosophy and the mentioned characteristic features through voice recordings. An alternative and interactive design choice could have made the game more memorable.
‘What your old clients don’t seem to understand is that they can’t kill me. Do you understand what I’m saying? Nobody kills me. Nobody. I’m the one who decides who lives and who dies - me.’ - The Jackal
The choice of Africa as the setting for the game and the open world created with various areas provided a completely different experience for the player in 2008. The lighting and colors used in the game were way ahead of their time. The fact that our character has malaria and the game uses this mechanically was also one of the best choices made by the developer to make the game special for its time and still criticized today. This is important for the man vs. nature theme because in Far Cry 2, unlike other games, we are not the king of death; we feel this with the mechanics the game offers. Most dangers in other games are actually fake dangers, but the mechanics in this game are quite real. The struggle we face when we run out of malaria pills or the difficulties experienced during a fight when malaria strikes are design choices not seen in games today, presented to the player in 2008 as a risk but a very successful one. Turning malaria into an enemy inside us rather than keeping the enemy outside is a mechanic only producers at Ubisoft’s level could attempt. Far Cry 2 is essentially a lesson in how to create a sense of fun from anti-fun, replacing scripted events with natural reactions to provide an immersive experience. If the challenging mechanics of this game were removed, it would be nothing more than a generic shooter, and it would lose its experimental essence that makes it a topic of discussion even today. Keeping the stress mechanic at such a high level in the game and making it more casual in subsequent games has helped the Far Cry brand survive and maintain a core audience despite criticism.
In open-world games, the player’s primary goal is to plan and then adapt or improvise based on the situation. Far Cry 2, however, uses its stress mechanic to show how a non-scripted disruption can alter and change the player’s planned course of action, demonstrating that even perfect plans can be misunderstood, as evidenced by this game. The stress experienced by the player, whether due to a malaria attack or the absence of a medkit during a firefight, reflects the survivalist state of our avatar, the harshness of the terrain, and the man vs. nature theme, all achieved through primitive health restoration methods. Additionally, the game’s random weapon jams, which create tension in combat because you never know when they might occur, beautifully reflect this stress mechanic. The fire mechanic in the game, which is neutral and can be both a friend and a foe, is another silent in-game element that perfectly conveys this stress. The backfire from your rocket launcher can cause large fires depending on the area, adding to the tension.
In Far Cry 2, almost everything outside the region is foreign to it. Cars, weapons, equipment, and characters are elements that are not native to the geography but are essential for the survival of characters who are strangers to the area. For example, our main target is The Jackal, but all the equipment we use to reach him are smuggled goods from The Jackal. The way The Jackal’s anti-villain characteristics are portrayed is a testament to Ubisoft Montreal’s design success.
First-person shooter game designs are often defined by a weapon or object, and this is experienced as weapon vs. everything. In Far Cry 2, the weapons we use tell the story best; they are not produced in the region and do not belong there, but they reflect the region’s cheapness and poor quality. For instance, the details on an IED, a heavy weapon designed to be detonated remotely, tell us about the nature of the game. A cheap cell phone, messy wires, and a bomb that could explode in our hands at any moment. The cheap design of the weapons in the game consistently reflects your world and emphasizes that our character is not as powerful as we might think.
Unfortunately, other FPS games do not offer the experience of telling a story through the weapons used. The weapons in the game can convey excitement, stress, panic, and anger. Where else can we experience a weapon exploding in our face during combat? The game presents its weapons with the best animations for its time, including idle, reload, and jam animations, despite some issues. The fact that fixed machine guns catch fire and become unusable after firing for a while is considered a luxury today. The deterioration and rusting of a newly purchased weapon over time aesthetically demonstrate how challenging the game’s geography is.
There is even a hidden stealth system in the game that is not fully revealed to the player. The game realistically conveys the cheapness of the geography with a few pieces of paper for a map, the accompanying GPS, and the cheap cell phone used in side quests and generally. Offering complex gameplay with simple mechanics is not an easy task. The open world of the game is deliberately designed to be challenging, ensuring that everyone who wants to play the game and see the end of the story fully adapts to its world. The chain of reactions is the real winner of this game. Your plans can be disrupted by a weapon jam, unpredictable AI enemies can attack you with RPGs, you can have a malaria attack, and you can be surrounded by fire caused by the rocket, all of which naturally present a sense of freedom and difficulty that is a masterpiece.
In Far Cry 2, the main manifesto of our silent character is the character’s hands. Apart from the weapons we use, the hands are the best element that tells us about our character, helping us find where to go, discover hidden elements in the region, repair vehicles, and heal. Today’s FPS games often lack hand animations in our character interactions, usually reduced to button mashing (especially in subsequent Far Cry games). The question of whether the feeling of interaction created by hands can form the foundation of a game is best answered by Far Cry 2. Our character’s hands realistically convey feelings of disappointment, pain, hesitation, effort, and skill, essential for our survival.
Far Cry 2’s inspiration comes from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now.
The game has a fantastic sound design and music that fully reflects the geography it is set in, drawing you deeper into the atmosphere as you listen. Although it does not appeal to everyone and is subject to criticism by the casual crowd, for me, it is Ubisoft’s masterpiece, and the closest they have come to surpassing it is with Far Cry 6, which only reaches about halfway there.
Unfortunately, people focused on its shortcomings when the game was released. Since the game was not designed for the casual audience, it remained an obscure production. However, Far Cry 2 is far beyond that and is an incomparable creation. The famous Crowbcat video shows details of the game and comparisons, but there’s not much else explained. If we evaluate the game based on this, it’s very good, but all these details make the game boring when played without understanding, which is evident from the comments on the topic.
Unlike other Far Cry games, Far Cry 2 is based on conveying full reality to the player rather than an artificial one, making it a true survival game. Those who dismiss Far Cry 2 as boring are actually defeated by the sense of struggle it offers or miss out on the experience because they often don’t understand it. In the game, we are constantly battling with our avatar, enemies, nature, and vehicles, and this battle never stops. I think this design choice is wonderful and definitely better and more realistic than the sense of struggle offered by Souls games, which can’t go beyond absurdities.
The player shapes the story of Far Cry 2 within certain plot boundaries. The opening sequence of the game in Africa, where we go to kill our character from the first game, introduces us to the atmosphere and then to our main target, Jack Carver, aka The Jackal. The character development and change from the first game are great because the janky-style character from the first game appears in the second game with a purpose and philosophy. We don’t encounter him much in the game, and unfortunately, we try to understand his philosophy and the mentioned characteristic features through voice recordings. An alternative and interactive design choice could have made the game more memorable.
‘What your old clients don’t seem to understand is that they can’t kill me. Do you understand what I’m saying? Nobody kills me. Nobody. I’m the one who decides who lives and who dies - me.’ - The Jackal
The choice of Africa as the setting for the game and the open world created with various areas provided a completely different experience for the player in 2008. The lighting and colors used in the game were way ahead of their time. The fact that our character has malaria and the game uses this mechanically was also one of the best choices made by the developer to make the game special for its time and still criticized today. This is important for the man vs. nature theme because in Far Cry 2, unlike other games, we are not the king of death; we feel this with the mechanics the game offers. Most dangers in other games are actually fake dangers, but the mechanics in this game are quite real. The struggle we face when we run out of malaria pills or the difficulties experienced during a fight when malaria strikes are design choices not seen in games today, presented to the player in 2008 as a risk but a very successful one. Turning malaria into an enemy inside us rather than keeping the enemy outside is a mechanic only producers at Ubisoft’s level could attempt. Far Cry 2 is essentially a lesson in how to create a sense of fun from anti-fun, replacing scripted events with natural reactions to provide an immersive experience. If the challenging mechanics of this game were removed, it would be nothing more than a generic shooter, and it would lose its experimental essence that makes it a topic of discussion even today. Keeping the stress mechanic at such a high level in the game and making it more casual in subsequent games has helped the Far Cry brand survive and maintain a core audience despite criticism.
In open-world games, the player’s primary goal is to plan and then adapt or improvise based on the situation. Far Cry 2, however, uses its stress mechanic to show how a non-scripted disruption can alter and change the player’s planned course of action, demonstrating that even perfect plans can be misunderstood, as evidenced by this game. The stress experienced by the player, whether due to a malaria attack or the absence of a medkit during a firefight, reflects the survivalist state of our avatar, the harshness of the terrain, and the man vs. nature theme, all achieved through primitive health restoration methods. Additionally, the game’s random weapon jams, which create tension in combat because you never know when they might occur, beautifully reflect this stress mechanic. The fire mechanic in the game, which is neutral and can be both a friend and a foe, is another silent in-game element that perfectly conveys this stress. The backfire from your rocket launcher can cause large fires depending on the area, adding to the tension.
In Far Cry 2, almost everything outside the region is foreign to it. Cars, weapons, equipment, and characters are elements that are not native to the geography but are essential for the survival of characters who are strangers to the area. For example, our main target is The Jackal, but all the equipment we use to reach him are smuggled goods from The Jackal. The way The Jackal’s anti-villain characteristics are portrayed is a testament to Ubisoft Montreal’s design success.
First-person shooter game designs are often defined by a weapon or object, and this is experienced as weapon vs. everything. In Far Cry 2, the weapons we use tell the story best; they are not produced in the region and do not belong there, but they reflect the region’s cheapness and poor quality. For instance, the details on an IED, a heavy weapon designed to be detonated remotely, tell us about the nature of the game. A cheap cell phone, messy wires, and a bomb that could explode in our hands at any moment. The cheap design of the weapons in the game consistently reflects your world and emphasizes that our character is not as powerful as we might think.
Unfortunately, other FPS games do not offer the experience of telling a story through the weapons used. The weapons in the game can convey excitement, stress, panic, and anger. Where else can we experience a weapon exploding in our face during combat? The game presents its weapons with the best animations for its time, including idle, reload, and jam animations, despite some issues. The fact that fixed machine guns catch fire and become unusable after firing for a while is considered a luxury today. The deterioration and rusting of a newly purchased weapon over time aesthetically demonstrate how challenging the game’s geography is.
There is even a hidden stealth system in the game that is not fully revealed to the player. The game realistically conveys the cheapness of the geography with a few pieces of paper for a map, the accompanying GPS, and the cheap cell phone used in side quests and generally. Offering complex gameplay with simple mechanics is not an easy task. The open world of the game is deliberately designed to be challenging, ensuring that everyone who wants to play the game and see the end of the story fully adapts to its world. The chain of reactions is the real winner of this game. Your plans can be disrupted by a weapon jam, unpredictable AI enemies can attack you with RPGs, you can have a malaria attack, and you can be surrounded by fire caused by the rocket, all of which naturally present a sense of freedom and difficulty that is a masterpiece.
In Far Cry 2, the main manifesto of our silent character is the character’s hands. Apart from the weapons we use, the hands are the best element that tells us about our character, helping us find where to go, discover hidden elements in the region, repair vehicles, and heal. Today’s FPS games often lack hand animations in our character interactions, usually reduced to button mashing (especially in subsequent Far Cry games). The question of whether the feeling of interaction created by hands can form the foundation of a game is best answered by Far Cry 2. Our character’s hands realistically convey feelings of disappointment, pain, hesitation, effort, and skill, essential for our survival.
Far Cry 2’s inspiration comes from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now.
The game has a fantastic sound design and music that fully reflects the geography it is set in, drawing you deeper into the atmosphere as you listen. Although it does not appeal to everyone and is subject to criticism by the casual crowd, for me, it is Ubisoft’s masterpiece, and the closest they have come to surpassing it is with Far Cry 6, which only reaches about halfway there.
I was never more excited to play a game, as all the trailers and previews showed so many cool ideas. Gun jamming, realistic fire effects, and paragliding across an open world map (new at the time) was jaw-dropping. And I thoroughly enjoyed the game overall. Unfortunately, it was let down heavily by a couple of annoyances, such as respawning enemy outposts and frequently having to search for medication.
Didn't like the story. But holy fuck the combat and the healing is awesome
There are some really great things about Far Cry 2. Sadly, the mission design really let it down for me. Still, I think it is worth a look for a deeply flawed but one of a kind experience.
On paper this is an incredible game but it's buggy in the most frustrating ways (even after the really egregious stuff gets fixed with mods).
ele é bom até, mais é muito maçante
I fell asleep to "every gun jamming animation" once
ande pra caralho de carro até uma missão na puta que pariu, que consiste em destruir algo, salvar um cara ou matar um cara, desça do carro e seja atropelado do nada, volte no save lá na pqp(repete isso até o jogo acabar)
Far Cry 2 is probably the biggest experiment Ubisoft ever did to achieve a game that feels something like a survival-merc sim game. In Far Cry 2, you can select your character but it is essentially a meaningless choice. You can choose from two factions but it is a meaningless choice. You can choose how you approach things but it will always be a bloodbath in the end. You cannot save anyone and anything.
Far Cry 2's nihilism is something that is rarely in videogames nowadays. The hopeless, meaningless nature of the monotonous tasks that you are given truly tire you out in a way a real mercenary would probably get the tired of the same thing over and over again. Not much changes in a middle of a war, just the targets.
In order to view Far Cry 2 as a game, I need to ignore the artistic intention and choices that the devs clearly build the game around, because Far Cry 2 as a game can be very boring when it comes to variety. The game does not provide varied side activities, it does not have meaningful choices and overall, it does not provide stealth options for combat. It has some silenced weapons but most of the objectives require you to blow up things, which instantly ruin the stealth so you need a backup plan.
Weapon merchants provide you with different guns that you need to work for in order to able to buy them. These missions are pretty uninteresting as they are always the same and all of them are really close to the fast travel bus stations, so they are just tedious to do.
What I really liked however is the driving and the different vehicles. Going to one point to an another, switching different vehicles, stopping at a weapon merchant, seeking out an entry point to my objective really made me feel like a mercenary and the atmosphere is without a doubt spot on. The hopeless nature of the combat, how enemies react to shots and how some of them do not die when you shoot them. Some might stand up, and try to move to cover to lay down, some just kneel down and start to use their sidearm in order to protect themselves. You can see that their comrades are even picking them up if they are injured, leaving both of them vulnerable for the player. Speaking of enemies, when you are see two of them hop into a vehicle to chase you, just stop, get out of your car and try to deal with them as soon as possible. If you let them chase you, they will 100% destroy your vehicle and if you exit the car you are in, they just ram into you causing an instant death. If the game decides to really screw you over, 3-4 of these drivers can spawn in and one of them eventually just ram you over if you are not fast enough. The drivers are reckless and pretty much insane.
Even if you cannot use stealth that much, the game provides you with way too many options to cause mayhem. You can burn everything to the ground with a flamethrower and a molotov, you can cause several explosions or you can shoot your targets from afar while using an SMG for close encounters.
Beware, if you use your guns too much, they slowly become dirty and they can malfunction, so be sure to take care of them because they will always jam at the worst possible time. Similarly to your guns, you need to take care of yourself as you are suffering from malaria and you need to take mediciation from time to time. Both of these systems are great and can cause memorable situations, combined with the way the enemies react to you.
Overall, Far Cry 2 is a very memorable game that has a lot of artistic value in it, it is just not that great of a game. It is good, do not get me wrong, but the gameplay was pushed aside in favor for the mechanics and the setting. When it works, it feels like nothing else on the market.
Far Cry 2's nihilism is something that is rarely in videogames nowadays. The hopeless, meaningless nature of the monotonous tasks that you are given truly tire you out in a way a real mercenary would probably get the tired of the same thing over and over again. Not much changes in a middle of a war, just the targets.
In order to view Far Cry 2 as a game, I need to ignore the artistic intention and choices that the devs clearly build the game around, because Far Cry 2 as a game can be very boring when it comes to variety. The game does not provide varied side activities, it does not have meaningful choices and overall, it does not provide stealth options for combat. It has some silenced weapons but most of the objectives require you to blow up things, which instantly ruin the stealth so you need a backup plan.
Weapon merchants provide you with different guns that you need to work for in order to able to buy them. These missions are pretty uninteresting as they are always the same and all of them are really close to the fast travel bus stations, so they are just tedious to do.
What I really liked however is the driving and the different vehicles. Going to one point to an another, switching different vehicles, stopping at a weapon merchant, seeking out an entry point to my objective really made me feel like a mercenary and the atmosphere is without a doubt spot on. The hopeless nature of the combat, how enemies react to shots and how some of them do not die when you shoot them. Some might stand up, and try to move to cover to lay down, some just kneel down and start to use their sidearm in order to protect themselves. You can see that their comrades are even picking them up if they are injured, leaving both of them vulnerable for the player. Speaking of enemies, when you are see two of them hop into a vehicle to chase you, just stop, get out of your car and try to deal with them as soon as possible. If you let them chase you, they will 100% destroy your vehicle and if you exit the car you are in, they just ram into you causing an instant death. If the game decides to really screw you over, 3-4 of these drivers can spawn in and one of them eventually just ram you over if you are not fast enough. The drivers are reckless and pretty much insane.
Even if you cannot use stealth that much, the game provides you with way too many options to cause mayhem. You can burn everything to the ground with a flamethrower and a molotov, you can cause several explosions or you can shoot your targets from afar while using an SMG for close encounters.
Beware, if you use your guns too much, they slowly become dirty and they can malfunction, so be sure to take care of them because they will always jam at the worst possible time. Similarly to your guns, you need to take care of yourself as you are suffering from malaria and you need to take mediciation from time to time. Both of these systems are great and can cause memorable situations, combined with the way the enemies react to you.
Overall, Far Cry 2 is a very memorable game that has a lot of artistic value in it, it is just not that great of a game. It is good, do not get me wrong, but the gameplay was pushed aside in favor for the mechanics and the setting. When it works, it feels like nothing else on the market.
Full of artistic integrity, hazy and dreamlike landscapes, raw and demoralizing combat, and an ultimately nihilistic setting and story, Far Cry 2 in my opinion is the peak of what Ubisoft has given towards the "video games are art" discussion.
FC2 is a violent and brooding game coasting off of the coattails of the ever campy and colorful FarCry. It is a reboot in everything but mechanics and even those are overhauled, tweaked, and re-envisioned into something that only mid-2000's Ubisoft could pull off. Led by Splinter Cell alumni Clint Hocking, the artistic vision of FC2 sees a brutally ravaged unnamed African country through a lens of repenting nihilism. It's one of the few times where I've felt nihilism straight-forward displayed is actively treated maturely and not veering into satire a la GTA or eye-rolling edgy fluff.
The entire game is oppressive and bleak. You are still playing a predator lurking from a distance, yet you are on the same playing field as everyone else. Actually, no you aren't because upon arrival you get hit with Malaria. Playing this game is a struggle while trying to maintain your survival, managing your disease, and keeping your in real life sanity as this game puts you through the wringer. It is no secret that this game uses bull shit to keep you on your knees, but after a while the tricks start to blend into the background. In fact, by the second half of this game, I was more than having fun with the combat and exploration loops, soon nihilism turned absurd and I wasn't paying attention to the story anymore. Just blazing through camps and deepening the messages set by the game.
This isn't without mentioning the environment design itself. Despite taking place in a drab and empty Savannah, Far Cry 2 couldn't be anymore diverse in its individual locations. In the first half of the game you have narrow roads, even narrower rivers, and shanty shacks that fall apart easily. The second half is some of the coolest environment design I've ever seen, with ancient villages and valleys, ransacked facilities, and the murkiest swamp I have ever seen in a shooter. This game's dream like atmosphere helps instill that feeling of loneliness and apathy toward the world as it caves in. As empty as it is (because I know that is a turn off for some people), I wouldn't have it any other way.
This game is a trailblazing hell of a time should you learn to adapt to it, I couldn't recommend it higher enough.
FC2 is a violent and brooding game coasting off of the coattails of the ever campy and colorful FarCry. It is a reboot in everything but mechanics and even those are overhauled, tweaked, and re-envisioned into something that only mid-2000's Ubisoft could pull off. Led by Splinter Cell alumni Clint Hocking, the artistic vision of FC2 sees a brutally ravaged unnamed African country through a lens of repenting nihilism. It's one of the few times where I've felt nihilism straight-forward displayed is actively treated maturely and not veering into satire a la GTA or eye-rolling edgy fluff.
The entire game is oppressive and bleak. You are still playing a predator lurking from a distance, yet you are on the same playing field as everyone else. Actually, no you aren't because upon arrival you get hit with Malaria. Playing this game is a struggle while trying to maintain your survival, managing your disease, and keeping your in real life sanity as this game puts you through the wringer. It is no secret that this game uses bull shit to keep you on your knees, but after a while the tricks start to blend into the background. In fact, by the second half of this game, I was more than having fun with the combat and exploration loops, soon nihilism turned absurd and I wasn't paying attention to the story anymore. Just blazing through camps and deepening the messages set by the game.
This isn't without mentioning the environment design itself. Despite taking place in a drab and empty Savannah, Far Cry 2 couldn't be anymore diverse in its individual locations. In the first half of the game you have narrow roads, even narrower rivers, and shanty shacks that fall apart easily. The second half is some of the coolest environment design I've ever seen, with ancient villages and valleys, ransacked facilities, and the murkiest swamp I have ever seen in a shooter. This game's dream like atmosphere helps instill that feeling of loneliness and apathy toward the world as it caves in. As empty as it is (because I know that is a turn off for some people), I wouldn't have it any other way.
This game is a trailblazing hell of a time should you learn to adapt to it, I couldn't recommend it higher enough.