Far Cry® 2

really not worth it i love the setting and the world to explore but its just a driving sim with way too tough ai

Far Cry 2 is a giant waste of time. Far Cry 2 is very different to the first entry, but very similar to what the Far Cry formula would be for the next games in the franchise. Far Cry 1 felt like it wanted to empower the player with different ways of engaging with each combat encounter. Far Cry 2 is more about disempowering the player, resulting in a more hardcore experience. That might be what you are looking for, but the steps they have taken to achieve this experience result in a more frustrating game. What are the differences between the first and second entry then. The first Far Cry had missions with large handcrafted combat encounters that you could approach in different ways. Far Cry 2 has a big open world for you to explore, so you would think that would result in the same approach when it comes to player freedom. To a certain extent they did achieve that. You can go anywhere you want, but there is next to zero reason to actually explore. You can find cases of diamonds, which you can use to upgrade your character or acquire new guns. The thing is, each case give so few diamonds, it doesn't even feel worth it. Completing missions will give you way more, making the cases feel like busy work. So the missions then, what are they like. Every single side missions AND main story mission I did consisted of roughly 2 kinds of objectives. Either they make you kill a target, surrounded by other enemy NPCs, or they make you blow something up. That is 60 percent of what you are going to be doing for 13-15 or so hours of gameplay. The other 40 percent will be driving back and forth between your mission objectives and whoever will be giving you the mission in the first place. When driving you will be constantly harassed by enemy vehicles every 2-5 minutes. The worst f*cking thing is enemy outposts will respawn so there is ZERO reason for you to clear them out. Speaking about the driving, the vehicle roster is far worse in 2 compared to 1. In the first game there were enemy helicopters, boats with turrets and cars with turrets. The second game removes helicopters and boats are rarely used. The frustration of having to change seats every time you get ganked by an enemy vehicle before you can use your turret is so perplexing when in the first game you could drive and shoot at the same time. Kill the enemy vehicle chasing you, get out to repair the car, repeat. Every now and then you need to take pills for your Malaria. Once you've spent all of your pills you need to go get some more in exchange for a favour, again busy work that wastes your time. Gunplay is also arguably worse than the first game for a couple of reasons. You can no longer lean left or right, which in fairness I never used, but if you are going to give the option of stealth then why remove the feature? Secondly there is weapon jamming. In theory I like the idea of weapons degrading over time and having to maintain them. Fallout does weapon degradation well enough and so does Red Dead Redemption 2. Unfortunately for Far Cry 2 there is no way of repairing weapons once they degrade. Every weapon picked up from enemies will be in such terrible condition they aren't even worth using, which results in less weapon experimentation. They have also removed the alternative fire modes for weapons, resulting in less depth to combat. Across the board the game has worse weapon firing sounds too. There is next to no story and that doesn't necessarily result in a bad game. The first Far Cry game had a super forgettable villain and main protagonist, and the story felt like an excuse for the developer to have the player go kill more guys. So why am I harping on 2 when 1 did the exact same thing? Because the first game had really engaging combat and each encounter felt different to the next. I went into the game with the pre existing knowledge that the villain of the game was the main character from the first game. That sounded like a cool idea, but the execution left me feeling nothing. He looks nothing and sounds nothing like he did in the first game so he might as well be a completely different character. There were no story beats that had me excited for what would come next. Possibly the games strongest point is the actual setting of Africa. I really enjoyed the look of the world and would've loved for the game to explore African culture more. The music is a massive downgrade from the first game, with the exception of the main menu theme being incredible. You would think they would have added a radio to the cars with how much f*cking driving the game makes you do. I can understand the cult following the game has, but to me Far Cry 3 took every good aspect of this game and did it better with richer gameplay systems and a more interesting world.