Lighting the savanna aflame

by dj

After delving into Far Cry 2 I'm starting to really get into it. The gunplay is really enjoyable and feels pretty satisfying. There are a large variety of weapons that all have their own unique feel so its always fun to pick up something new. One feature that I really enjoy is having a little armory that you fill with all of your preferred weapons ready to go at any safe house. Thats always really convenient. Sadly every mission devolves into, go here and kill this or blow up that. Since you have to do a whole lot of that after a while it does begin to feel repetitive. In order to try and mitigate the repetitiveness I try to change up my tactics for each mission. Far Cry does leave alot of room for you to tackle each mission in a variety of different ways. For you could go in guns blazin' and smoke fools or you could throw a couple of Molotov's sneak around the back and slice em up real ninja like.

While the gun play feels rather generic the setting does a good job of carving out a unique niche. It's extremely refreshing to see some colors other than gray or brown. Being set in Africa allows for a whole lot of variety. Everything from lush jungles to expansive deserts are featured. Changing your surroundings up keep the repetitive game play fresh. This world is so much fun to explore, it is a big difference after exploring the oppressive world of Fallout 3. Both present very different ways to tackle open world game play. Each game encourage exploration but Fallout makes the world so barren that its no fun to explore. Far Cry's setting is always changing and keeping it fresh so you want to explore the breath taking scenery.

While most elements of Far Cry feel like they have gone through alot of polish the story feels like it was filler just to have a bullet point on the back of the box. You play as a ruthless mercenary just looking to get paid. The story revolves around to rivaling factions on different sides of a civil war. Problem is that I can't see any difference between the two factions. The story fails to motivate me to care about anyone because in the end it seems everyone just wants you dead. Even when you are doing missions for this faction all of their forces will still shoot you. I don't understand why they can't just tell them to not shoot at the guy doing missions for us.

From what I hear this game is somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty to thirty hours. That really worries me because I'm already getting kind of sick of the repetitive game play and lack luster story. While the setting is quite the looker it still can't cover up the fact that Far Cry 2 is just another run of the mill shooter.