Great African setting, but flawed gameplay mechanics.
First, lets take a look at the pros of Far Cry 2 and the features that make it an enjoyable experience.To begin with, the African setting is simply amazing and is what makes this game truly shine. Every minute you spend in the game world, the more you feel like you're in a war-torn African country. From the mosquito infested swamps to the dry and barren desert. It doesn't hurt that the game looks beautiful. Besides Crysis, this game is probably the best looking game on the market. The shadow quality is some of the best that I have seen in a game since Crysis. The system requirements are not that high and most decent gaming computers should be able to run this game quite well (unlike Crysis). The story revolves around an arms dealer called the Jackal and your character's journey to hunt him down, which is fairly entertaining but nothing new to the industry. I would just like to add that the game world is massive and works both to the game's advantage and disadvantage. The weapon selection is very diverse and caters to many play styles, such as stealth and all out assault. One of the features that I personally like is the advanced health system where you must perform self-surgery if the health bar gets low enough. When I say self-surgery I mean pulling a bullet out of your arm with a pliers. I hope that I have given you a good idea of the strengths of Far Cry 2.
Now I will look at the cons of Far Cry 2. Like I said, the game world is massive and can be overwhelming at first. This fact is made worse by the incredibly slow moving vehicles. I want to make it clear that this game does not have a quick jump option on the map, which can be very annoying when you don't want to travel miles across mercenary infested land. The mercenaries that I'm talking about have so many checkpoints scattered across the map that it can become extremely repetitive. Every time you accept a mission you have to travel basically across the map and in the course of the mission you encounter a checkpoint every 500 ft. Each time you find a checkpoint you must get out and shoot everyone there. I know your probably thinking, "why not just drive through the checkpoints?" Well if you do, then the mercenaries will jump into their vehicles and chase you until their mounted weapons destroy your vehicle. Even with its flaws, Far Cry 2 is an amazing game that delivers on most of its promises but does not always deliver on the basics. Thanks for checking out my review and I hope that it helped with your decision.