Far Cry 2

Ah the GTA of War simulation. Complete with competing factions, car stealing, diamond jacking, and really awkward animations from buddy characters.

The game opens with a fairly long intro. And truthfully it sets a mood it never follows through on. Essentially that the world you've been dropped into is a politically charged war zone. Turns out it isn't. It's really just a bunch of bland blind enemies who've decided shooting at you is better then not. Which admitted in some places can really happen, but the game spends such a great amount of its energy indicating that whatever you do matters, but it doesn't. It creates a sense of grandeur it never lives up to.

The graphics and controls are both well done and very solid. Driving feels wonky at first, but once you adjust to its peculiarities, it's a solid system for control. The game however meanders more often then not even with these wonderful interaction devices. The landscape is wonderful and beautiful. If you can take your eyes off how well the scenery is animated. The beauty of the land doesn't translate into virtually any character models, everyone is poorly modeled and poorly animated. It feels like they placed middle of the road last gen models and movements into this game. It feels wrong to actually watch any character doing anything. It makes you wonder how the dev team managed to spend so much time on the land and not spend any time on how the actual interactions progressed which is fairly awkward. In fact it does seem they were mindful of how bad dealing with characters can be considering when purchasing weapons you are required to access a computer in the weapon dealers shop. Disturbing.

The sound is very well done. With a proper sound setup you can pinpoint where nearly anything is. In one very short test I managed to actually take down to guards using only sound. To me that is damn fine sound. No flaws in my opinion. Except when you get into voice acting. But that was mostly awful, except for the Jackal's first appearance.

The game's slow pace and lack of story development hinders the ability to feel properly invested. Otherwise its fairly solid.

Graphics - 8/10 - Well done until you look at character models, then forget it.

Sound - 10/10 - If you can kill people by using sound alone, the sound is perfect, even if the voice acting is poor.

Control - 8/10 - Tight controls but a few awkward bits during combat cause a bit of trouble.

Fun Factor - 6/10 - Combat is extremely satisfying, but the rest of the game feels like it's trapped in molasses and that tears the game down, hard.

Reviewer's Lean - 6/10 - The story and lack of forward movement crushes the momentum of the opening to the point where it never really recovers.

Total Score - 7/10 - Eh. It was ok.