No I won't see The End: Far Cry 2 (Review)

This is a game which gave me mixed feelings. What I think about the gameplay, the story, the atmosphere, the level design, and etc somewhat conflicting. All I can do is try to explain what happened when I played it, and how come I won't see The End.

Why do I seem to have problems finishing games with cool logos?

I suppose I'll start by saying the positive aspects. Far Cry 2 is a gorgeous game. There's no way to get around it. This game looks fantastic. In fact, one of the biggest driving forces for playing this game is just to see how great it looks. Trees, water, explosions, everything looks great.

 Trees! Forests! Jungles! It's like being outdoors yet I don't actually have to get up and walk!

And besides looking good, it also plays pretty well. You get four weapons: one melee (Machete), one small (pistols, sawed-off shotgun, uzi, things like that), one medium (rifle, submachine, shotgun, etc.), and one large (rocket-launcher, grenade launcher, light machine gun, etc.). Switching between the weapons is simple enough, and you can also swap for the weapons your enemy drops.

While shooting, if you're holding a weapon an enemy dropped that is old and rusty, it might misfire or jam, which will have to be undone. It's a simple enough process, and forces you to think more about what you're doing.

Health system is decent, with a neat feature of having 5 health bars, the last of which decreases over time unless you stabilize yourself (removing a bullet, putting out fire, etc.), and you can use medkits to heal yourself. It doesn't get in the way and is simple enough to add strategy to the game.

No the game is technically fine. I haven't even mentioned vehicles yet, but let me say that they drive decently and the repair mechanic is a godsend.

No, the problem is that I won't finish the story.

The story has you as foreign assassin, sent to kill an arms dealer called The Jackal in a small African country in the midst of a civil war. This goes wrong when you catch malaria, and he saves you. Then you work for the opposing factions to try and catch up to him again so you can finish your job.

Which is decent enough, I suppose. You basically go around, sabotaging each side's stuff and do more morally-just mission from some of your buddies that you meet in your travels. But then something happens in act 2. As my character would write in his journal:

The APR sets me up, and begins a massive assault against resistors. They plan to stage two assaults, one against Mike's Bar, and one against the innocents in the church.

My companions had proven to be decent enough survivalists and fighters, so I left them. The church was basically defenseless, after all. I go in, I hide those inside, and the faction attacks. I'm clearly outnumbered, and slowly but surely I start running out of health and medkits. Eventually someone gets me with a shotgun and I go down.

But I'm still alive. They think I'm dead, and lose me amongst the bodies. I fall off the truck. The jackal once again rescues me. I wonder about my companions, and what happened to them. What happened to Michelle, or Bearclaw and Punk? Did they survive? Likely, no. I was outnumbered, they were outnumbered. Hell, even if I had gone to save them, we wouldn't have survived.

So I go back to the factions. It's The Jackal that caused all this. He gave them the guns, its his fault. I have to find him.

But they want me to do something that I can't do.

They want me to spread malaria among the enemy combatants.

It surprised me, at first. They wanted to make the enemy sick, give them a terrible disease. Then I was angry, and realized that there was nothing else they would ask me to do. Both sides wanted the other sick and weak.

I couldn't do it. I turned down both jobs. I went to a bar and sat down. Why was this a problem? I had already killed a huge number of people. The bodycount was somewhere in the seventies for sure. I had destroyed so much and yet couldn't do this.

The others were dead. They had died because I had let them fall into a trap. If I continued there would be new traps, and new companions would die. Regardless of what I did, The Jackal would always slip away.

I got up off the bar. I jumped on my ATV and drove off. What was I gonna do? I drive through the grass and the trees till I come to a cliffside. I stop, and look out over it. The sun's going down. The grass is painted gold and it looks beautiful. These sides are gonna kill eachother, and nobody is gonna win. My companions didn't win. I won't win. Only The Jackal will win. What can I hope to do?

What a view.

Maybe this is the end. Maybe it's not. I really don't know. I have to think. To think and decide. It's tough. It's not evil, and it's not good. What is good and evil anyways, in a world where everyone simply wants to kill? How can I, as an agent of death, stop the killing? I can't figure it out. I need to rest, for sure. Maybe I'll have an answer later. For now, I'll just watch the sunset.

Far Cry 2 is a game that I just don't know about. It plays well, though I warn that travelling takes a lot of time so you need a lot of patience. The story on its own is passable, but when you think about it and get involved it becomes really good. But I don't know if I'll be able to finish it. I just have a problem with doing this. It's too bad really.

Regardless of my inability (currently) to finish, I recommend this game. I rank this game at:

 An Interesting and Fun Experience