Far Cry 2 follow-up review

Having explored the Northern map to a much larger extent certain points have arisen that require a follow-up to my original review of Far Cry 2.

First off is weapon choice, although the Flame Thrower is by far a seriously cool weapon it rapidly shows itself to be a poorer choice than others taking up your special weapon slot with a short range weapon that only causes damage when on target or to set fires only in the dry, grass covered areas. As you have a default stock of three Molotov cocktails that have a further range and accomplish much the same thing I find myself sticking to a Missile Launcher which had an obviously much longer range and the benefits of being able to take out vehicles; a target which crops up in some missions.

With enough currency I also quickly ditched the Assault Rifles and picked up a Sniper Rifle, less ammunition, but requires less to take down an enemy. For close-up frantic action I ditched the default 'pop-gun' for a sub-machine gun which happily sprays bullets with abandon.

As a result I've seen less requirement to purchase or upgrade any other weaponry. Likewise I haven't seen the need to upgrade my ability to repair vehicles being happy to drive for a distance then ditch it to go in on foot.

Talking about vehicles I need to mention two in particular - the glider and the boat. My reason for this is simply that, unlike the first jeep you get in to, you get no tutorial as to controls. In theory this shouldn't be a problem, surely all the vehicles use the same controls? Well no they don't, not quite.

The controls for the boat certainly match the jeep except in one regard - in the jeep pressing the X key will switch you from the driver's seat to the turret gun or vice versa; this isn't available on the boat despite it also possessing a fixed forward pintel. On the boat you have to press the Triangle key, that is get out of the driving seat, move forward to the gun then press Triangle again to use the gun; this is painful, decidedly so as you cannot distinguish between the press Triangle to drive prompt and press Triangle to shoot prompt. I've lost count of the number of times I've jumped from my seat to get to the gun, then promptly sat back down again whilst the enemy happily pumps me full of bullets.

Also as a result of this double key press, the Triangle key doesn't make you leave the boat, you have to do that under your own power. Simple if it wasn't for two things - firstly the drivers seat has a surrounding cover and secondly the boat will drift along. So you get out of the seat and have to move forward to clear the awning then jump over the side, which you fail to do as the boat has drifted in the middle of your jump and you're stuck under the awning. Again doing this under fire rapidly becomes annoying.

Next up is the glider. Perform a search for Far Cry 2 and glider and you'll see a rash of posts along the lines of "How do I control the glider"; the simply answer is you don't.

The only control available is the left analogue stick to tilt down or turn; oh and the tilt is reversed which is why so many crash instantly. What is worse is that a single injury sustained during a flight will cause you to let go of the glider and normally fall to your death. So why use the glider at all? Because certain collectable items can only be reached using the glider which, my oh my, happens to be close at hand. That's it - the sole purpose of the annoying glider is to reach collectables that with better level design shouldn't be there in the first place.

This leads me to the placement of said collectables. Now I like scouring around looking for them, and with the short-range tracking device it adds a nice touch to remember to use it at odd intervals to see if anything is around. Likewise once you've picked up a signal it's fun to discover that little path winding through the rocks that you might normally have missed. If that were the extent of it I'd be happy, but of course it's not. As already mentioned some collectables can only be reached by glider; but others have to be reached by one of two strange methods.

First method is the bunny hopping - the collectable is sitting on top of the roof of a train car, now despite the fact this car has ladders on all four corners you can't use them, oh no that'd be easy. Instead you have to use the stairs to climb the silo next to it, then you have to jump up onto the railing, ensuring you don't overjump and plummet to your death. Then you have to back up along the railing so you're facing the car then run and jump to land on the roof. Oh and don't twist in mid air or it's a swoosh thump ending. It's not just carriage roofs, it's shack roofs too. Hopping onto sandbags and trying to find the one point you can hop onto the roof, which amusing has occasionally been home to a sniper; so don't ask how he got up their unless - shock horror they used their hands like some sort of barbarian. Of course being civilised you don't use your hands at all except in pre-scripted occurrences.

Anyhoo the second method is the leap of faith. For one collectable it was high up on a rock face with no handy glider around. Scouting around I found a tilted angle of rock that would put me at a level higher than needed, except it meant jumping from said rock onto a knobby outcrop with smooth edges that practically screamed unclimbable. Turned out if you landed just right you wouldn't slide off the sides and could clamber down. Now seeing as there is no instant save in this game would you take the risk? I did simply out of frustration at finding no other method up there. A game shouldn't feature such out-of-place elements.

Final point and that's the respawning of enemies at check-points, I swear the game uses something similar to the old Soul Reaver method of level streaming in that once you've left an area it gets reloaded back up with everything back to default positions. Taking out snipers on a fort (at that collectable) I head back down the road and round an outcropping and head to my primary objective at which point I get shot by the snipers I'd just taken out. Really needs a better mechanism there.

Okay all said and done I'm still playing it; it's interesting to find the limitations and I can still see a variety of ways to accomplish the tasks I've been set so I still judge it as replayable.