So much potential
The game actually has a great number of redeeming points, not the least of which being that this may be the most gorgeous game I've ever played. The African landscape is absolutely beautiful and you're capable of exploring almost every inch of it, from sprawling Savannah plains to wet, stormy jungles. The environment you find yourself in are overwhelming and is easily the star of the game.
Yet sadly, that's about the only thing in the game I can speak glowingly of. Actually, while the environments look great, they can be equally annoying because they're just so stinkin' HUGE. It can take a preposterous amount of time to drive to your next mission objective, and of course much longer if you try to run there. But if you do pick up a car and try to drive your way there, you're gonna have to stop at least once on the trip over. Why? Because the cars have engines that are apparently made out of play-doh and held together with prayers. A moderate bump or a couple of gunshots can cause your engine to start belching smoke and slow down to about 1/4 speed. You're then forced to stop, get out, and labor away with a socket wrench until your car stops being broken. (Yeah: EVERYTHING can be fixed with a socket wrench.) What's that? You just want to try to run past the guard posts set along the roads? Good luck. Enemies will jump into their respective gun-toting trucks and chase you down. Despite the fact that you appear to be driving the same model of car and are less weight-laden, your enemies can ALWAYS drive at apparently twice your speed and catch up. Put the pedal to the metal all you want. Your top speed just isn't nearly what theirs is for some reason.
Okay, so you get it. I don't like vehicles. Fine, let's move on to standard combat. Let me start by saying that the guys you go up against are the best shots I've ever seen in my life. You can be hiding 300 yards away in a bush, at night, wearing a camouflage suit and they'll still be able to pick you out of the surrounding foliage and put a dozen rounds into your face regardless of the fact that they're using a dirt-encrusted AK-47 that probably came straight out of the Motherland in the early days of the Cold War. These are not poorly-trained African militia fighters. These are clearly ex-Spetsnaz operatives with a touch of Zulu and maybe a little Sam Fisher thrown in for good measure. The problem is that you are still sitting on your couch with your human eyes, while these guys have the advantage of having crazy computer vision programmed into their AI, and they misuse it all the time. Plus, they're just tough little buggers. Somebody that's already been hit and is on the ground can still take up to 4 shots with a Desert Eagle. When you can get the upper hand on your enemies, then the game can actually be great. Sneaking up on a guard post and lighting the whole place on fire, picking off survivors with an anti-material rifle is pretty great. But those moments are few and far between.
Finally let's get to the biggest problem the game has: bad programming. I feel bad for saying so, as these guys clearly did put a lot of work into this game as is evidenced in the detail of every little thing in the world. But gameplay is ultimately more important, and they just fell kinda short here. For starters, the game world you're in is supposed to have two distinct factions vying for control. As far as I can tell, there's no difference visually between these two enemy types. Both will attack you freely out in the world between main missions, which I suppose I can understand. You're a mercenary and you don't have loyalties to anyone. Okay, fine. But the problem is that even when you take a mission from one of the two leaders, they give you a little speech about how "no one can know, so even our own people will attack you". Call it a plot device, call it realism, call it what you will: I call it laziness. It just comes off as the people made the game didn't want to put the effort into making two different AI types. So no matter what you do, wherever you go, you will always have people attacking you because they're all just the same AI. Just downright lazy. Then there's the bugs. Oh, sweet heavenly God the bugs. This is the thing that outright ruined the game for me. I am actually unable (not unwilling: unable) to finish this game. Why? Because (and supposedly this is a common problem) when I hit 73% completion, the area in which I get my next mission to advance the story is unavailable. Reloading saves doesn't work and doing other missions doesn't free it up. I'm simply stuck in limbo, unable to do anything of worth for the rest of the game. I understand that this has happened to a significant number of people who bought this game, and that's just unacceptable. A serious bug, one that literally halts the game in it's tracks, is not something that can be shrugged off as you continue to play.
In short, I wanted to like Far Cry. It could have been truly great. The potential was there, but the game was simply wracked with too many problems to be considered worthy of any praise.