My goodness, this game is good. I’m hesitant to say that I like — even love — this game because I didn’t buy into the hype of Far Cry 2 until, well, four days ago. I just couldn’t get excited about it. I was a huge fan of Far Cry when it was released, but that game’s bread and butter, the Crytek team, went on to develop Crysis without Ubisoft. To me, Crysis was the true successor to Far Cry. It was superior in every way to whatever Far Cry 2 could possibly accomplish, but Ubisoft has done a decent job with the property without Crytek. Is it a better shooter than Crysis? The two can hardly be compared.
The shadows are amazing.
Far Cry 2’s similarity to Crysis ends after the pretty graphics, big open worlds, and guns. But the differences don’t stop Far Cry 2 from creating a very unique shooter experience unlike those that we’re used to.
Graphics
The first thing that really struck my attention with this game is its constant obsession with immersion. Your point of view is constantly stuck on the shoulders of your character. Everything they do, from sitting in a jeep, to typing at a computer, tending a wound, or taking a pill is all seen from the eyes of the character, and those animations are done beautifully. Never leaving the character imparts tremendous perspective.
The visuals in Far Cry 2 are very good, though not top-tier. While Crysis remains graphically superior, Far Cry 2 does manage pull out all the stops when it comes to lighting. I was impressed when the brightly-shining sun cast shadows through leaves that had been made translucent by the daylight. This brand of immersion is an effect that not even Crysis performs.
Far Cry 2’s day/night cycles also break rank with Crysis. While Crysis arbitrarily advanced the time of day to fit the story, Far Cry 2’s day/night cycles are persistent and advance at a constant pace. Fighting through the night and seeing the sun rise over the haze of a burning brush fire is quite a sight.
The effects in Far Cry 2, if anything, are evidence of the impact Crysis has had on visual quality; it has raised the bar tremendously in regards to what’s possible with real-time graphics.
Disappointingly, Far Cry 2’s world feels much more static than Crysis’. When a grenade goes off inside a shack, I expect it to be blown apart. When I fire at a tree with a .50 calibre machine gun, I want it to snap in half. Far Cry 2 does have its share of breakables, but it doesn’t compare to the level of destructibility in Crysis. In fact, I’d say we’ve been spoiled, as you’ll immediately see a difference if you’ve played both games.
That lingering “close, but not quite…” feeling cropped up again for Far Cry 2’s so-so character models. They’re not bad, but they’re just not Crysis. After seeing real time subsurface scattering implemented on character models in Crysis, I just sort of expect that technology to be there in a new game. It added a level of realism that has become a detractor in its absence.
Far Cry 2’s loss of motion blur is slightly harder for me to excuse, as it has become a de facto hallmark of DX10 engines. The subtle application of that technology adds so much to the realism of an experience, that Far Cry 2 seems to take a big step backwards without it. But enough shop talk, how does it play?
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