Tech Olive

Today I start the first of hopefully many reviews on Tech Olive with the new game Far Cry 2. I may end up regretting the choice of such a power-house of a game as my first review, but I’ll try my best.

At the start of the game, you find yourself in a taxi, being driven from the air-strip you arrived from to an untold destination. Once you arrive at said destination, you are overcome with Malaria and pass out. When you awake, you are lying in a hospital bed, still sick, but conscious.

A bit of an abrupt beginning if you ask me, but it serves its purpose of commencing the storyline and thrusting you into it.

As you proceed through the game, you have full choice of how, when, and where you want to engage any battle situation, adding a bit of a strategy element to every gun fight. However, the use of any strategy is fully optional. You will not have much trouble surviving even if you just run in and guns blazing as long as you use cover properly. This is not to say that the game is easy or has stupid AI. I have found that the AI is not quite the most intelligent, but they will use their surroundings to their advantage. They’ll use mounted weapons, cars, and trees for cover/offense. Although, the common problem of AI being too good is shooting through bushes and tall grass when you can’t even see them. But it’s not nearly as bad as other games.

There are a few interesting game play mechanics that Ubisoft has added to this game that are unique. I’ll mention some of the more worthy ones.

• Implementation of a “buddy-system”. How this works is as you get deeper into the story, you meet people along the way that will fight with you and will give you side-missions to do for extra bonuses (weapons, money, etc.). These “buddies” serve another purpose as well. If you are killed in combat, the “buddy” nearest you will come to your rescue, take you out of the middle of the battle, and escort you to safety.
• Another thing that caught my attention was the way you are directed to your objective. Given the massive world in Far Cry 2, it is to be expected that there will be lots of travel. With all of the villages and safe houses, all of the roads can get confusing and it makes it quite easy to get lost, even with the aid of your map. How Ubisoft decided to help players along was they added signs at cross-roads and color-coded the corresponding sign with the objective on your map. So, if you have an objective on your map that is red, the sign that points to the correct path to take is also red (see image below). This helps immensely when you are trucking through and don’t want to stop for anything. You can just quickly determine the color of the sign and turn on to that road and continue on your way.

At first glance, I didn’t enjoy the game much. I couldn’t put my finger on what was bothering me about it, but after a few hours of game play, I purchased a scoped rifle and all of the sudden the entire game made sense. This is what I mean by freedom of combat. You can take on combat situations however you want. For me, it’s finding a nice hill nearby, waiting until night comes, and then slowly taking the enemies out one by one at range with my rifle. I just love the freedom in games like this. You can do it however you want. You can spend hours planning your attack and pull it off with military-like precision, or you can just equip a large machine gun and go in with a hail of bullets.

In some ways this game is similar to its predecessor in the respect of the vast landscapes and open combat, but if you’re looking at it like that, Far Cry 2 could be the sequel of any number of games, including the GTA series. I’m not saying this game isn’t worthy of the Far Cry name, but if you’re playing the game hoping for anything remotely similar to the original, look elsewhere. Having said that, I think it’s a great game, but I don’t exactly agree with all of the stellar scores it received. Clearly, I am too critical on little things, but that’s the way I am.

Score: 8 Olives