Far Cry 2

If I have, then for God's sake please comment and let me know.

I really think that Far Cry 2 is a noble attempt at an "open world" architecture game, but I do get really frustrated at things that propose to be one thing and are not that at all.

Far Cry 2 might appear huge at first, and I suppose it is, but it's really quite empty and repetitive. The story appears to be quite linear, track and kill The Jackal by taking on and completing random missions that take you all over the map repeating similar objectives time and again. That seems to me like lazy storytelling. I'd have rather had a proper plot to follow, with a story unfolding and there just seems to be none of that. You do get to help and therefore recruit some one-dimensional "buddies" who can turn up and help you when you're in trouble, but frankly I don't care about any of them.

There's other lazy touches too. You might scope out a guard post, kill 'em all and get it marked off on the map, but go back to that same guard post at any point afterwards (seconds or hours later) and all the same guards have re-spawned in the same places. You might be driving (tediously) across the savannah when you meet another jeep coming your way. It will always attack, no question, no reason why, no nothing. One bloke will stand in the turret and shoot, so you kill him. The other bloke will then (and only then) climb out of the cab, stand there for A FULL TEN SECONDS before deciding to unholster his rifle. By which time you've killed him too. Repeat this ad nauseam. Your GPS will alert you to a nearby diamond cache (diamonds are the only currency) so you stop, climb out and find that the diamond case is on top of the roof of a building which you cannot climb, you can't shoot it down and the building is indestructible despite the fact that it's made of four wooden struts and topped with two sheets of corrugated iron and you're hitting it with a rocket launcher. SO WHY THE HELL IS THE DIAMOND THERE???? I'm annoyed. I won't bother stopping next time. Get a mission where your aim is to assassinate someone (anyone, who cares?) so you trundle off to find said poor devil. He's driving in circles by a trainyard. Shoot his bodyguards, then just wait for him to drive in the same circle a few times more and shoot him once each time. Don't worry, he'll come back around in that circle again so you've ample time to finish him off. I feel a bit like I'm shooting at a sheep now. This person is clearly very simple - he must be a real danger to society if he happily drives around and around on full lock steering without noticing that the bloke in the other car keeps shooting him. AI clearly stands for Absent Intelligence in Far Cry 2. Since this stuff forms the vast majority of the playing time (when you're not driving) it has a massive effect on your enjoyment of the game. In fact, it's ruined it.

Maybe it's not all bad. The graphics are pretty good, even on medium settings, so the first few hours are, wierdly, quite relaxing as you drive around the area taking in the scenery.

No, I'm annoyed again. I'm more than a little irritated by the fact that the country you're in is "Africa". Africa is, apparently, a tiny war-torn hell only 50km across, full of jobbing mercs and no normal people at all, punctuated by the odd cease-fire zone (where you can easily get shot). Everybody's out to kill me - Why??? What did I do? I'd have happily driven past all these people - they're not aliens or robots, their death is not central to my mission. It's a bit nondescript isn't it? Let alone insulting.

I am really, deeply disappointed. Far Cry 2 was looking amazing, and the gaming press say it's one of the best shooters ever. Was I playing a different game? Should I give it more time? Why?? If it is the wrong game, can someone tell me what happened to that mega-title that the press are on about? I wanted to love it, and for the first three hours I did like it, but it's just tiresome now.

It's a shooter that wants to be an adventure game, but there's seemingly no adventure to be had here and it's not being sold as a roleplayer. As a shooter, it's not particularly good. Yes you point guns at folk and shoot them, but there's nothing that sets this apart from any other mediocre FPS. If driving around, shooting the same guys over and over and over again and redoing the same missions in different settings is your bag, by all means knock yourself out. Personally though, I've been spoiled over the last few years by some really amazing games so you'll have to forgive me for uninstalling this product and taking it back. Oh, and I can't sell it either - Thanks for nothing, SecuROM. I'm the baddie again.

Being an avid gamer, I was really looking forward to this one as FarCry was excellent. However, this is quite dull and repetitive. Too much time is spent driving around, and the missions are all the same and don't require much nouse to complete. Even the movement is a bit poor, with the jump command not really achieving much. Overall a disappointment

I'm about 10 hours into this title, and I've well and truly had enough. The Dunias engine is up there with Crysis for technical excellence, and exceeds it in some ways. At last, it really exploits recent developments in PC technology - it loves Vista and DX10, and actually runs slightly faster in DX10 mode than DX9. It loves SLi and runs flawlessly with dual GPUs (nVidia GPUs, anyway). It loves quad-core CPUs; a Q6600 at 2400Mhz runs as fast as an E8400 at 3000Mhz. Ubisoft created the stunning Dunias engine, then wrapped it around an utterly mediocre game.

Every mission runs the same formula. Drive around. Get shot at. Stop, deal with the shooters, fix your now shot-up car. Repeat at least one more time. Get to the mission area, shoot some more. Repeat this list in reverse on your way to the next mission. Get paid. Do it all again.

Staggeringly, unbelievably dull stuff once you get past the impressive visuals. Avoid, even at budget. About the only reason you might want this is because it's got a very nice built-in benchmarking routine. Just don't actually consider it as a "game".