Far Cry 2 (PS3)

As the late '80s poet Axl Rose once sagely said, "Welcome to the jungle, we've got fun and games."
10/24/2008 4:43 PM | 0 Comments | Page 3 of 4

This happened again a few missions later: I got confused, pressed the wrong button, and boom, I'd turned my friend into a corpse. And the game makes it clear that once a Buddy is gone, he (or she) is gone forever (i.e., for the remainder of the game). I felt genuinely sad in these moments, and found myself engaging in a bit of fictional reverie. "Remember that time I came back to the Safe House and you'd fixed chili for the both of us, and we watched a rerun of "Two and a Half Men"? That was always your favorite show..." But mostly I felt angry at the developers for making it too easy for me to execute someone who had been asking me for help.

While I'm complaining, I also didn't appreciate the game's constant parade of ambushes. I'd be merrily driving along, trying to look at my map, en route to my next objective, when suddenly a jeep with a manned turret would come barreling over a hill, shooting out my tires so that I'd inevitably have to pull over, get out, and deal with them. Once I'd finished them off (CG Tip: Shoot the man on the turret first, then hit the driver), I'd repair my car (go to the hood, press the triangle button), get back in, start the engine, and begin driving again, only to have the same exact thing happen again about 30 seconds later. This happened approximately 37,000 times while playing Far Cry 2.

Another complaint: This is yet another game that requires a mandatory start-up install on the PlayStation 3. This one is a bit shorter -- only around seven minutes or so, compared with the standard 10 to 15 that most PS3 games require -- but be sure to keep some reading material handy to pass the time. If you own both a PS3 and an Xbox 360 and are trying to decide which version to get, it comes down to a question of controller preference. For me, the PS3's DualShock always feels too loose for the precision control needed for first-person shooters. And for some odd reason, the developers inverted the shoulder button controls on the PS3; R1 and L1 are gas and brake for vehicles, and R2 and L2 are grenades/molotovs and health injections. The PS3 version does include full Trophy support, for those Trophy collectors out there.

Far Cry 2, as I said, isn't a short game. In fact, it's probably around 20 hours too long for most gamers. In the name of speeding things along, the voiceover actors were obviously directed to leave all spaces out of their dialogue, sometimes to hilarious effect.

Example: "IneedyoutogotothePoliceStationtocauseadisturbancelargeenough
todistractthemilitaryguardsfromthenearbybuildings."

And should you be looking to extend the life of the game even further, the disc also features some relatively robust multiplayer options for those looking to take the game online. Choose from six different Classes -- Commando, Sharpshooter, Guerilla, Rebel, Gunner and, my favorite, Saboteur (I love sneaking about in the underbrush hitting enemies with my neurotoxin darts). On the downside, you get four fairly pedestrian multiplayer modes -- Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Diamond and Uprising. But on the upside, you get this absolutely massive, lush world in which to play these modes.