About a decade ago was when I played Far Cry 2 for the first time, hot off having gone through Far Cry 3 a second time earlier. It was one of the roughest experiences I ever had with a video game, so much so that I labeled this game as my sworn nemesis in video game form. I hated this so much and only got even more furious at its fans for praising this game that I had such a miserable time with to the high heavens, all the while dunking on the incredible sequels in the franchise. A certain someone very near and dear to my heart had just gone through it this year and expressed how much fun it was for them. For their sake, I thought of experiencing this game again. With the help of a much more modern computer that can handle this game, as well as a fan patch that keeps the experience much tighter with far less bugs and glitches than when I played it all those years ago, I think I owe Far Cry 2 an apology.

The story is as sparse as it can get; you are here to eliminate a target known as The Jackal in the heart of an unnamed African country, but in order to get to him, you bide your time doing mercenary work for either of the two warring factions long enough to gain their trust and find out where your target is hiding. You have buddies with agendas of their own who only wish to reap whatever little there is left of this dying land, and you can choose to be a spicy lad who offers to help out in favor of, well, let's get to that later actually. There aren't any outposts to capture, and you will constantly be harassed by enemies, especially at checkpoints, who will hop in vehicles and hunt you down to the ends of the earth simply for existing. The terrain is much more restrictive, where travel is slow due to the distances you have to drive as well as interference from random enemies on the road as well as enemy checkpoints you have to drive by. Almost all of your missions boil down to neutralizing a specific target or sabotaging an object of some kind at key locations, with enemies dispersed around just to make your job a little harder.

I normally don't do this, but for the sake of this review in particular, I would like to start out with the negatives first to use as a jumping point to highlight the positives of this game. If my experience in the past was any indication, this is an extremely jank game held together with paperclips and duct tape. The game itself has little to no story to keep you interested, with a constant supply of repetitive missions. There isn't any meaningful choice to make in the game, not only because neither faction ever tries to have a philosophy that would incentivize you to join one over the other, but over how actually choosing to side with one only means that you have to do the missions provided by the other. All of this is delivered by uncaring voice performances trying to get through all their dialogue as quickly and through as few takes as possible, punctuation be damned. Enemy AI is frustratingly dumb; they will almost never take cover, instead choosing to run up to you while shooting incessantly in a straight fashion that makes lining headshots easier than in later games where enemies move a lot more naturally. What's even more frustrating is the pinpoint sniper accuracy they display even when not using appropriate weaponry; I swear I had a guy two hundred meters away who kept sniping at me with an Ak-47, something you can't even do due to bullet spread. It only gets worse as not only does stealth not work whatsoever in this game, but every enemy loaded in will know where you are, which is especially more frustrating when there are "snipers" with RPGs perched around.

A lot of elements in the game just feel pointless as well; helping your buddies supposedly upgrades your "base", but you never normally have to go to any of them since gun stores are fairly easy to reach on the map, which houses all the supplies a base could ever provide you. This also is one of those games where you'll be hitting the Quick Save key a lot, as there are no automatic checkpoints at all. I'm not a fan of how the economy works in this game; you gain diamonds through missions or through finding diamond briefcases scattered around the map which your compass will point towards whenever you are in proximity. Going after these diamond briefcases are a minor inconvenience at worst for most occasions, but doing it enough only serves to undermine much of the side content in the game in the form of assassinations, which is about the same as doing regular main missions albeit within the walls of ceasefire zones. The main missions and diamond briefcases are just about enough to net you most of the guns you'll probably actually use, with a large amount of purchases on stealth equipment, manuals, repair kits and base upgrades being too trivial to ever give any attention. Finally, on a lighter note, though I didn't experience it this time thanks to the patch which restored proper calculation, fall damage was binary in the sense where you either took no damage or immediately died, and the difference was as small as having to jump above or below 3 meters it felt. There's also a buddy rescue mechanic that is just so inconsistent on being triggered, but also so pointless in the first place with how you can just save whenever you want at any tie.

Now to get into how the game works somehow, and it's through all the elements described above congealing together to create this unique flavor of open world first person shooter. There's a level of friction in its design which demands you meet the game on its own terms rather than mow down everything like a human tank. You are squishy and a hair away from a Game Over, with nature interfering through either forcing you to need to take your Malaria pills lest you die, or through water, mud and grime making your weapons less reliable at the worst moments where they could either jam or break in the middle of a firefight. Fire and explosive weaponry are incredibly effective as they are risky should they backfire and hurt you in the process. Seriously, one grenade launcher shot too close is enough to immediately incapacitate you from full health. In regards to both sides being so anemic in charisma, perhaps one way to look at it is that your character doesn't care whatsoever; you are just a colonialist mercenary working as a guns for hire just to get to your assassination target, and you have no love for the region beyond the blood-stained resources you exploit for your own benefits. It further cements the themes of this game which it clearly borrows from the classic novel Heart of Darkness. You are simply not the good guy; just another amoral psychopath with a gun in a land bled dry.

I appreciate some of the friction assigned to the handling of certain weaponry in the game. Your first choice of snipers is the Springfield M1903, and it is clearly worse than the other two options you will encounter later (or three if you count the dart gun) not only for its bolt-action nature, but also how you must stop aiming down sights to cycle between shots, thus making missed shots even way more frustrating to deal with than normal. The limited ammo, especially at the beginning of the game, means you will rely on a lot of the checkpoints with certain types of resources, and can affect how you plot your route when heading to missions. The more grounded experience behind the wheels, with only fast travel allowed between five fixed points on the map, mean that you will have to commit to whatever missions you choose, and with time can learn the lay of the land as you pass by the same areas of the map over and over again. The lack of outposts to capture means most if not all routes taken will involve surprises and unpredictability, as you will have to get out of your vehicle to defend yourself from random enemies driving around, or even take certain checkpoints by surprise to clear them out before any enemies can attack you, all of which serves to wear your weapons down further and cementing the weapon degradation system further as a vital part of the experience. While you do have to spend money to unlock weapons, some of them can be acquired in such dreadful states from enemies, meaning you can try some of them before you decide to commit to any purchases, but not for too long as they will crumble to dust after only a few tries. The malaria mechanic works as a great invisible timer meant to keep you on your toes, as every few hours you will need to do underground missions which would help you restock on your medicine necessary in keeping you alive.

Now to talk about some further negatives, but this time aimed at some of the elements that work against the parts of this game that are genuinely fun. I appreciate the cumbersome way the map works with how you have to hold it out as so, but there's no excuse for why you can only access either the entire map or the quadrant you are currently in. It makes planning routes ahead frustrating when you intend to travel across more than one quadrant of the map. The enemy AI does get frustrating after a while, especially coming from the newer games where they actually do use covers and take other actions beyond just shooting at you while standing in the middle of the crossfire zone, like tossing grenades at you to flush you out and keeping track of your last known location if not actively searching for you. While you could make the argument that the lack of intrigue regarding the warring factions factors in favor of the narrative, I found myself absolutely bored as early as the halfway point even, and I stopped doing missions beyond the main missions just so that I could finish the game as soon as possible. It certainly doesn't help that all the missions are the exact same anyways. I had to drag myself to the finish line for the last 20% of the game or so. I am also very disappointed in how little of a role the wildlife plays in this game, being relegated to just simple set dressings for the region. I can understand the appeal of enemies being hard to spot against the grass, but it's extra frustrating when your HUD is so unreliable in terms of showing the direction of damage, or even mortar and rocket trails being difficult to track the origins of. Lastly, I wish the buddies' system could be used for something far more interesting, because whatever twists and turns with them only end up falling on uncaring ears with how little care was given to them in the first place.

To summarize, Far Cry 2 is an old and frustrating game, but is quite fun if you are invested in this particular niche of open world shooters, with a particular flavor that hasn't been replicated elsewhere. I would like to see this idea tackled again, hopefully with a lot more tact and introspection into the culture of the African country chosen for the next time. I would recommend this, but I would also suggest to ignore the side content aside from the Gun Shop missions just to be able to unlock more guns, and even if I advise playing till the very end even beyond the point of boredom, I advise at the very least reaching the south map before quitting. It's a good game albeit for an acquired taste. One thing's for certain is that this entire experience has certainly changed my perspective on how I remember some old games I had terrible times with.