Okay...in Far Cry 1 you are a Hawaiian shirt wearing wise cracking cynical 'Rambo' by the name of Jack. In Far Cry 3, you play an average white jock who awakens his inner savage and embraces his new psychotic self. In Far Cry 2...you are a psychotic merc with malaria. You are sent to Africa to assassinate an arms dealer by the name of the Jackal. The Jackal finds you passed out from the effects of your condition...realizes that you were sent there to kill him and tells you not to do try doing that anymore. Pretty charitable of him ...considering.
You go around from mission to mission. If you play on hard...death happens...a lot. Kill Him. Blow up that. Right or Wrong? It doesn't matter. The target is the target; that's all. The most interesting way of doing missions are given to you from your buddies. You don't get any extra pay from doing them the 'Buddy way' and it takes you generally 3 times longer. There is also usually some way that the buddy is benefiting by having you do it their way. As you gain 'History' (as it is referred to) with the buddies...your safe houses become upgraded. However...The upgrades to the safe houses reset between acts. Doing more tasks increases your 'Reputation'... which is supposed to frighten enemies into doing stupid things. This, apparently, has been not actually activated in the scripts AI. So that's pointless as well. Aaaaand (**spoilers) all your buddies 'go missing' in the first act. You see them again at the end of the game when they try to kill you (that's gratitude for you). In the second act, the amount of work you have to do to even minimally upgrade the safe houses is, at best, a waste of time. So why do it? Well...this is the game. You play it or you don't. With 5 fast travel points that link to each other only on a VERY large map, you find yourself fighting up to an entire platoon between each leg of your journey...and that doesn't include the people you are supposed to fight. If you like A TON of tactical level combat then this game won't disappoint. You get to appreciate the epic size of this map...over and over again. I wouldn't mind travelling across the map once or twice ...say if your mission was to drive some supplies to a camp somewhere. All the time, though realistic, kills the fun for those who want more than constant gun fights with some stupid little outpost somewhere. You would think that killing a garrison means that you can go back that way when you want to return...nope. Go around the corner and come back and the garrison is back to full strength again...not fun OR realistic. After a while the constant gun battles and travelling just seem to blur together and you find yourself bored.
With paying missions, you can buy better equipment and weapons. The voice acting can be described as quick, monotonic, mumble...which works for a character that talks that way naturally. The problem is: they ALL talk that way! What really bugs me is having to do a buddy mission. Travel across the planet shooting everyone in your way...do the mission...travel back...shooting the same people (because of nasty re spawn rates) just to hear some monotonic 'Thanks'. Couldn't I just call the buddy to tell them it's done??? That's just sloppy. You get the feeling very early on that your buddies are just there to abuse your services...which, I guess, must have been the point. Though I'm sure, with most people, a sledgehammer was a slightly too large tool for the insertion of that point.
There are some fun moments in the game; Ambushing the commander that set you up was one of them. Defending the barge...another. It's a very long (and often tedious) game that could have been pruned down to it's tastier points. I can't complain too much. The team that made this did come up with Far Cry 3...so they did learn from this.
You character starts off as just some kill-for-money goon and goes through the 99.9% of the game as that same character. At the very end, both your character and the Jackal realize they are both scum and decide to do one last good act before (or while) ending their own life. Here's the rub, though; If you are scum and you know it...and you are on the other side of the border with a ton of diamonds...to give away those diamonds for the greater good means that you are no longer the scum you were for the entire story.
You kill yourself doing something for the greater good...and because you are scum. But if you are scum you wouldn't do something for the greater good. Ironic.
You go around from mission to mission. If you play on hard...death happens...a lot. Kill Him. Blow up that. Right or Wrong? It doesn't matter. The target is the target; that's all. The most interesting way of doing missions are given to you from your buddies. You don't get any extra pay from doing them the 'Buddy way' and it takes you generally 3 times longer. There is also usually some way that the buddy is benefiting by having you do it their way. As you gain 'History' (as it is referred to) with the buddies...your safe houses become upgraded. However...The upgrades to the safe houses reset between acts. Doing more tasks increases your 'Reputation'... which is supposed to frighten enemies into doing stupid things. This, apparently, has been not actually activated in the scripts AI. So that's pointless as well. Aaaaand (**spoilers) all your buddies 'go missing' in the first act. You see them again at the end of the game when they try to kill you (that's gratitude for you). In the second act, the amount of work you have to do to even minimally upgrade the safe houses is, at best, a waste of time. So why do it? Well...this is the game. You play it or you don't. With 5 fast travel points that link to each other only on a VERY large map, you find yourself fighting up to an entire platoon between each leg of your journey...and that doesn't include the people you are supposed to fight. If you like A TON of tactical level combat then this game won't disappoint. You get to appreciate the epic size of this map...over and over again. I wouldn't mind travelling across the map once or twice ...say if your mission was to drive some supplies to a camp somewhere. All the time, though realistic, kills the fun for those who want more than constant gun fights with some stupid little outpost somewhere. You would think that killing a garrison means that you can go back that way when you want to return...nope. Go around the corner and come back and the garrison is back to full strength again...not fun OR realistic. After a while the constant gun battles and travelling just seem to blur together and you find yourself bored.
With paying missions, you can buy better equipment and weapons. The voice acting can be described as quick, monotonic, mumble...which works for a character that talks that way naturally. The problem is: they ALL talk that way! What really bugs me is having to do a buddy mission. Travel across the planet shooting everyone in your way...do the mission...travel back...shooting the same people (because of nasty re spawn rates) just to hear some monotonic 'Thanks'. Couldn't I just call the buddy to tell them it's done??? That's just sloppy. You get the feeling very early on that your buddies are just there to abuse your services...which, I guess, must have been the point. Though I'm sure, with most people, a sledgehammer was a slightly too large tool for the insertion of that point.
There are some fun moments in the game; Ambushing the commander that set you up was one of them. Defending the barge...another. It's a very long (and often tedious) game that could have been pruned down to it's tastier points. I can't complain too much. The team that made this did come up with Far Cry 3...so they did learn from this.
You character starts off as just some kill-for-money goon and goes through the 99.9% of the game as that same character. At the very end, both your character and the Jackal realize they are both scum and decide to do one last good act before (or while) ending their own life. Here's the rub, though; If you are scum and you know it...and you are on the other side of the border with a ton of diamonds...to give away those diamonds for the greater good means that you are no longer the scum you were for the entire story.
You kill yourself doing something for the greater good...and because you are scum. But if you are scum you wouldn't do something for the greater good. Ironic.