Far Cry 2: 8.5/10

Far Cry 2 is an open world, first person, shooter in which you play a mercenary in an unnamed African country. Your mission is to kill the notorious arms dealer, the Jackel. Unfortunately, you muff up the job by nearly dying of malaria and the Jackel escapes not long after the opening credits are over. You then spend most of the rest of the game leasing your skills to whomever will pay and finding other mercenary buddies who are willing to lend you a hand on your various missions. There is some attempt at trying to weave these missions into the story of the Jackel, but it is a weak one. In fact, the Jackel plays a very small roll in most of what you spend your time doing. As far as the story goes, the thing's rather aimless.

That said, the world you are put in is massive and beautifully realized. The environmental effects are the best I've ever scene. I've actually stopped what I've been doing to admire a sun set, or to watch a tree burn (eirily beautiful at night). In fact, the explosions and fire take on a life of their own. Shoot a propane tank and it doesn't just explode, it shoots a jet of fire out of the bullet whole, spinning crazily. The weather effects are also wonderful. The wind will pick up suddenly whipping the trees into a frenzy, cloud cover changes, storms roll in. It really is an accomplishment.

Although the quests can get repetative, and it's annoying that almost everyone shoots at you on sight, it's still a lot of fun. There's a large variety of weapons and you can arm yourself based upon your play style, quiet and stalking, or running in guns blazing. Although the story telling is rather scattered, I like the whole "heart of darkness" mood of the game. The various characters are well animated and the voice work is excellent. There's also multi-player (sadly no co-op which would have been awesome) and an amazingly powerful map editor if you are into that kind of thing (I'm not). Overall, the game is immersive and a lot of fun, though at times glitchy (something I'm not used to from Ubisoft Montreal). A particularly painful bug corrupts saved game files which can be very frustrating. The bug caught me a couple of times before I came up with a saving regime that worked around it. Maybe there's a patch now, but there wasn't one during the time I was playing.

Story: 4
Interface: 3
Game Play: 4
Challenge: 4
Fun: 4

Overall: 8.5/10