Farcry 2

[the shutdown man]

I've been playing this for about half an hour and it's already a hugely frustrating experience. They seem to have gone for a somewhat realistic style of interface this time, i.e. there's no crosshair, so shooting from the hip is nearly useless, and you need to take the time to actually aim down the sights. Also, if you want to see where you're going, you need to put away your weapon and take out your map, a bit like walking around with the torch in Doom 3. You can't have both at the same time, unless you're in the car.

Then, there's the time issue. They've gone for a Fallout 3 style open world, where it's a 24-hour day and everyone's running on a clock. Great in theory. It works in Fallout, doesn't it? Except picture this; Your boss tells you to find some diamonds outside. This is a slow exercise involving a beeper and your map. When you move closer to the diamonds, your beeper beeps faster. Further away, it beeps slower. You can potentially be walking around out there for ages before you find anything. So once you get them, you're told to go to Mike's Bar to buy some proper weapons. Great. Get in the car and drive to the far side of the map, which takes ages. There's nobody there. Why? It's the wrong time of day. But my boss told me to go there! So now, all I can do is drive back to the only safehouse I've unlocked so far (which is back on the other side of the map), to go to sleep for a few hours to make the time pass and hope the guy will be there when I wake up.

But that was when I quit the game.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

I quit when I stormed a drug lord's mansion (it might have been a general). I fought my way in and, under heavy fire, began a room by room search. He was nowhere to be found. I tried again, and again, and again. Each time I spent and inordinate amount of time driving to the mansion, then ages in an unfair fight (it was early in the game, I had a pants gun and was up against dozens of well armed goons). Then, on my fourth or fifth attempt - and about two hours of playing - I stumbled across the drug lord. Well, when I say stumbled - he started speaking to me from an empty chair. The bloomin' game was knackered and the graphics to show the general weren't there. So what I had ignored as an empty room on my previous attempts was, in fact, his office and he was "there".

At that point I decided to buy Gears of War 2.

[SamuelAWilkinson]

If you'd asked beforehand, I could have warned you that this was total pap. The big open world is nice in principle, but it's populated entirely by generic baddies who respawn in exactly the same place, which leads to such stupidities as busting your way through a checkpoint on the way to a mission, then fighting an identical squad in the same place on the way home again.

The story's entirely irredeemable, too. Indeed, the only thing going for it is the fire, which is quite nice.

[the shutdown man]

I haven't even got to try the fire yet....

Oh well. I'll have to try something else.

[Dr Feeley Good]

I stuck with this game and it did get better ! until a got 3/4 through the game and it crashed when it was saving!!! totally ruining the save! could not be bothered starting it again when i read online that loads of people had the same problem!!!!

[Zarjazzer]

I'm sticking with the original. The Trygens were fab and totally absent from this. Fallout 3 sounds a better bet.

[Roger Godpleton]

I find it odd that the evil arms dealer in this game became so wealthy when all the guns he sold jammed every three minutes.

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

The gamer reviews all seem pretty negative yet the Computer mags mostly give FarCry2  the thumbs up. Were they bribed by the game makers?  

[Devons Daddy]

Were they bribed by the game makers?

sadly since the demise of the EGM, which had the editorial BXXls to say when a game sucked, several mags tend to pander on the softly softly approach of new games if advertising revenue comes into question or exclusives on upcoming stuff.

i find these days,they all tend to take a less then direct approach unless its so bad it cant be avoided. i buy about three mags a month on console games, all ok, but none of them truly harsh and honest most of the time.