Ubisoft Montreal have been promising a fantastic first person shooter with open world elements and a huge open world. Does it bring the high octane action of the first or disappoint?

Don't worry, if you've never played Far Cry you don't need to play it the original to understand the story. Far Cry 2 has nothing to do with the first game. Far Cry 2 abandons the science fiction aspects of its predecessor in favor of a more realistic setting.

First you choose your character out of nine, now this just effects the clothes you wear and your friends. Nothing more, it doesn't really matter who you choose, but they give you a picture of them and a description. It really questions exactly why the player just can't create their own character since the player never talks nor does it have a back story.

You arrive in a war torn African country. You're sent here to kill The Jackal, a man who's real name unknown. He is a arms dealer who supplies weapons to two factions fighting over the country and is the true enemy. He supplies weapons to two leading factions fighting for control of the destroyed country, first the Alliance for Popular Resistance (APR) and second the United Front for Liberation and Labor (UFFL). Once you arrive in Africa and are traveling to a safe location your vehicle is attacked by one of the factions and you're captured and meet The Jackal. Then you go through a quick tutorial to learn how to play and escape the fire fight.

Visuals like these help show Africa

In the game you develop malaria which is a life threatening disease in Africa. You'll have random attacks and need pills to sustain your disease and not die. Dying means game over and game over means loading the last save which is bad so saving is important.

After that you must do missions for both factions and leaders of the faction to screw the other faction. Once you earn enough respect and notoriety until you can finally kill The Jackal. You will see him several times before finally taking him out so it's really interesting to learn more about him.

Characters are not very memorable, besides The Jackal of course, but besides that you'll forget most characters you meet. You may remember a few of your friends, but it seems that they are unimportant.

Far Cry 2 features a friend system. You meet new people by traveling to the local bar and doing a mission for them. You then can ask them to save you if you die and they can give you a better deal when doing a mission and having a stronger relationship with the character. Having a stronger relationship will lead to better bonuses. This system surprisingly works very well and leads to actually caring about relationships. Friends can die and be crippled where you can either use a med kit to heal them, take your gun and shoot them, or just leaving them.

Inside the jungle, showing the stealth aspect

There are a ton of side missions, you can intercept phone calls and fill out the mission yourself and earn the money, destroy weapons trucks to earn more weapons and upgrades to buy, and search for pills to save you from malaria. There are options to this so nothing is required besides the main story which is great.

Far Cry 2 is a tactical first person shooter. Choosing the right weapon is very important or you'll end up dead. Missions are usually killing someone or destroying a village. Doing missions with friends will lead to more rewards then money, but you'll have to go out of your way to do the mission, but the reward is definitely fair.

The game is a step in a different direction offering a open world unlike linear games like Halo and Call of Duty. The games give you 50 kilometers of land, but this is the weakest part of the game because you'll be doing a lot of driving in the African out back which leads to repetitive random encounters and stale gameplay. There are four ways of traveling, from car, boat through the many rivers, land by flying with a hang glider, and by bus by reaching a bus stop that'll take you to another bus stop. You'll want to use the bus the most to save time and it leads to less interaction with enemies.

Although the combat is repetive, the surrondings are always different.

There are a ton of weapons and upgrades to purchase at a dealer. The game's currency is diamonds which is earned by finding or doing missions. Weapons, manuals, and upgrades all need to be bought and it brings in a strategy into the game to form your own character selecting a few weapons, upgrades, and manuals.

Different to most shooters Far Cry 2 features a health bar similar to Resistance: Fall of Man. Players will carry around health items like a needle you can take to gain back all your health. If your health bar reaches the final one you'll have to perform a quick surgery which is really graphic. This can be snapping your leg back into place, biting a bullet out of your arm, or pulling a stick out of your leg. You can also find water around to gain back health and find health packs to earn back lost needles through med kits.

You have all types of weapons from regulars like assault rifles, sub-machine guns, snipers, shot guns, rockets, pistols, flamethrowers, and more. You also get some cooler weapons like explosives and stealth weapons. The upgrades are awesome from holding more med kits, holding more grenades, and holding more ammo.

The game features an amazing hub. The map is very easy to tell and the GPS used in vehicles is amazing. The whole hub takes up very little space which is very appreciated and needs to be seen in more games. The map is amazing, it shows off all the roads and rivers. You can also track enemies using a bionicular to locate specific enemies to kill in a stealthy style.

Far Cry 2 has a very indepth multiplayer component. It features several maps brought to you by Ubisoft for Ranked matches, but players create a map using a map editor like Halo 3's Forge which popular maps can be played in Player matches. Also like Halo 3, the game features a leveling, but unlike Halo, every time you level up you are given a diamond to upgrade one class of player. You have Commando, Sharpeshooter, Guerrilla, Rebel, Gunner, and Saboteur. Upgrading these classes will add more weapons and a secondary weapon. There are 4 multiplayer modes, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Diamond which is just capture the flag, and Uprising wh