You DO NOT need Uplay or any other third-party app to play this game on Steam.


Playing Far Cry 2 and taking advantage of the good points this game has to offer cannot be done without accepting its defaults. Its kind of dumb AI, its journeys endlessly interrupted by irrelevant and time-consuming trifles or even the irritating idea of ​​malaria for example. However, the extreme quality of its 3D engine (at the time of release) makes it a delight for the eyes and helps to immerse us in the primary missions of Far Cry 2, those which leave the player the possibility of experimenting and acting as he pleases. If you have always dreamed of playing as a mercenary in Africa, you will surely find what you are looking for in this game.


Back when Far Cry 2 was released, the press saw one of the FPS of the year, a blockbuster aiming for perfection. Far Cry 2 follows the footsteps of an illustrious predecessor and takes us to visit a beautiful country in Africa. But beauty isn't everything, it takes a full head to hold things together for the long haul.

Somewhere in Africa, a country is in the throes of a civil war where two factions compete for power, supplied with weapons by a man nicknamed "the Jackal" whom you have decided to flush out. To achieve this, you will work for its clients, the APR and the UFLL, the only entities that can bring you closer to this arms trafficker. Here is the pitch of Far Cry 2 and the reason why you will spend a good 30 hours immersed in an Africa that is beautiful. If I had to summarize what will follow in this review, I could say that Far Cry 2 is beautiful, immersive, that it offers the most appreciable freedom of action and some memorable moments but that its qualities are handicapped by a confusing AI and elements of gameplay and side missions of a painful heaviness. You begin by following a guide in a totally open environment divided in two parts, the north and the south. The first remarkable point is obviously the technical and aesthetic quality of the game, particularly on PC. Lights, climate change, vegetation, Far Cry 2 is a simulator of an Africa of great beauty.

As in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. you will have to accomplish the main missions with one faction or the other which you will find in the big cities of the country. These missions often have for objective to steal or destroy something in the usual “go, kill, come back” mode. Systematically, once a contract is in your pocket, your main ally at the moment will give you a phone call to offer you an additional objective likely to facilitate your task. As a good open game, Far Cry 2 leaves you free to choose how you will approach the mission. First and foremost, you obviously need to equip yourself, preferably by spending your money at the gunsmith to make sure you use weapons in good condition. Here again, the desire to stick to a certain reality causes the weapons picked up in combat to jam or even explode in your hands. You will have more than enough weapons to build your personal arsenal and then choose whether you would like to infiltrate a place or just destroy everything in your path. It remains to choose the time at which you will operate. Like a real sandbox game, Far Cry 2 suddenly has a lot to offer by varying the pleasures and by offering multiple methods of approach which will also be influenced by an often unpredictable element: fire. Whether it does the housework for you or dislodges you from your hideout, this disruptive element always has a say in combat.

In addition to these main missions which alone represent a campaign of around thirty hours, there is a small batch of other side missions. Assassination missions obtained by anonymous calls, destruction missions on behalf of the gunsmith who rewards us with new toys or even quest for medications. These secondary components have the annoying habit of repeating themselves and being all strictly identical, namely that in the first two cases, it will most often be a convoy that will, for example, be blown up by placing explosives on its route before leaving. Most of the time, they are short, so short that you will ultimately have spent more time getting there than completing the mission itself. Which brings me to the big black spot of the game, precisely this ratio of combat time to time spent doing unnecessary stuff.

Whatever you do, including malaria missions which I will come back to, prepare for long and painful journeys. You will first have to go and win a contract, then go to the site of its execution, often long journeys but still lengthened by the presence of many guard posts, most of which cannot be bypassed, especially in the second half of the game. It will therefore be necessary to stop, clear the guard post and then resume on your way. During the first hours, I appreciated this addition to the challenge until I realized that each cleared checkpoint is immediately repopulated by fresh enemies. The result? You will have to eliminate them at each passage or try to force through, hoping not to be followed by a jeep. At the end of the twelfth time, I started to be a little annoyed, especially when I had to pass 3 or 4 checkpoints in a row that I already cleared 5 times. Not to forget the patrols. Very frequently but like really very, very frequently, you will come across a jeep carrying a driver and a guy at the controls of a mounted machine gun. The pattern will then be immutable, the jeep rushes towards your vehicle, you get off to kill the gunman, then the driver who has just got out. You then repair your car and take the road until the next stop; another patrol, another armed post. These forced stops, I tolerated them at the beginning. After a few hours, I could no longer because in the end, it is not uncommon to take more than 20 minutes to get somewhere to finally spend barely 10 minutes to fulfill a mission and therefore do something interesting.

In the same vein, Ubisoft Montreal decided to hand over malaria to the player. This disease, therefore, has an impact on the game. Sometimes you will be struck by a fever attack which will cripple you. Apart from taking medication you can do nothing more. As much to say that if it happens in the middle of a fight, you have got off to a bad start. But it will be even worse if you run out of pills. This is why, from time to time you will have to do a quest for medication. And don't plan to do a series of missions to stock up, it's impossible. To obtain your medicine, there is only one solution: help refugees who try to flee. You will first go see a guy who will give you passports that you will have to give in another cabin. To say there is nothing exciting in that is a euphemism.

With this game I oscillated between several contradictory feelings. The pleasure provided by the immersion and the freedom of action which makes it possible to manage the most interesting missions at will and the frustration induced by the considerable time lost in futility, in delivery missions and in crossing checkpoints. However, there is one last point to be seen; the artificial intelligence (the quality of which can make a game a hit or not). Far Cry 2's AI concerns are not new. You will sometimes see the enemies take cover and sometimes they will remain in the open for no reason. Some enemies shoot in the wrong direction while others are able to easily kill you at long range with a machine gun while you are moving in a vehicle. In short, Far Cry 2's AI is completely fickle, but its operation is based on pure aggression. The best example I can think of is that one enemy was caught in the flames and instead of running away he preferred to keep shooting at me. There is nothing smart about it, but I can take the opportunity to salute such self-sacrifice. It commands respect.

To summarise, Far Cry 2 is an excellent game, a classic but it suffers from various defaults such as time consuming journeys and an unstable AI.

You DO NOT need Uplay or any other third-party app to play this game on Steam. [h1]Short review[/h1] Playing Far Cry 2 and taking advantage of the good points this game has to offer cannot be done without accepting its defaults. Its kind of dumb AI, its journeys endlessly interrupted by irrelevant and time-consuming trifles or even the irritating idea of ​​malaria for example. However, the extreme quality of its 3D engine (at the time of release) makes it a delight for the eyes and helps to immerse us in the primary missions of Far Cry 2, those which leave the player the possibility of experimenting and acting as he pleases. If you have always dreamed of playing as a mercenary in Africa, you will surely find what you are looking for in this game. [h1]Long review[/h1] Back when Far Cry 2 was released, the press saw one of the FPS of the year, a blockbuster aiming for perfection. Far Cry 2 follows the footsteps of an illustrious predecessor and takes us to visit a beautiful country in Africa. But beauty isn't everything, it takes a full head to hold things together for the long haul. Somewhere in Africa, a country is in the throes of a civil war where two factions compete for power, supplied with weapons by a man nicknamed "the Jackal" whom you have decided to flush out. To achieve this, you will work for its clients, the APR and the UFLL, the only entities that can bring you closer to this arms trafficker. Here is the pitch of Far Cry 2 and the reason why you will spend a good 30 hours immersed in an Africa that is beautiful. If I had to summarize what will follow in this review, I could say that Far Cry 2 is beautiful, immersive, that it offers the most appreciable freedom of action and some memorable moments but that its qualities are handicapped by a confusing AI and elements of gameplay and side missions of a painful heaviness. You begin by following a guide in a totally open environment divided in two parts, the north and the south. The first remarkable point is obviously the technical and aesthetic quality of the game, particularly on PC. Lights, climate change, vegetation, Far Cry 2 is a simulator of an Africa of great beauty. As in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. you will have to accomplish the main missions with one faction or the other which you will find in the big cities of the country. These missions often have for objective to steal or destroy something in the usual “go, kill, come back” mode. Systematically, once a contract is in your pocket, your main ally at the moment will give you a phone call to offer you an additional objective likely to facilitate your task. As a good open game, Far Cry 2 leaves you free to choose how you will approach the mission. First and foremost, you obviously need to equip yourself, preferably by spending your money at the gunsmith to make sure you use weapons in good condition. Here again, the desire to stick to a certain reality causes the weapons picked up in combat to jam or even explode in your hands. You will have more than enough weapons to build your personal arsenal and then choose whether you would like to infiltrate a place or just destroy everything in your path. It remains to choose the time at which you will operate. Like a real sandbox game, Far Cry 2 suddenly has a lot to offer by varying the pleasures and by offering multiple methods of approach which will also be influenced by an often unpredictable element: fire. Whether it does the housework for you or dislodges you from your hideout, this disruptive element always has a say in combat. In addition to these main missions which alone represent a campaign of around thirty hours, there is a small batch of other side missions. Assassination missions obtained by anonymous calls, destruction missions on behalf of the gunsmith who rewards us with new toys or even quest for medications. These secondary components have the annoying habit of repeating themselves and being all strictly identical, namely that in the first two cases, it will most often be a convoy that will, for example, be blown up by placing explosives on its route before leaving. Most of the time, they are short, so short that you will ultimately have spent more time getting there than completing the mission itself. Which brings me to the big black spot of the game, precisely this ratio of combat time to time spent doing unnecessary stuff. Whatever you do, including malaria missions which I will come back to, prepare for long and painful journeys. You will first have to go and win a contract, then go to the site of its execution, often long journeys but still lengthened by the presence of many guard posts, most of which cannot be bypassed, especially in the second half of the game. It will therefore be necessary to stop, clear the guard post and then resume on your way. During the first hours, I appreciated this addition to the challenge until I realized that each cleared checkpoint is immediately repopulated by fresh enemies. The result? You will have to eliminate them at each passage or try to force through, hoping not to be followed by a jeep. At the end of the twelfth time, I started to be a little annoyed, especially when I had to pass 3 or 4 checkpoints in a row that I already cleared 5 times. Not to forget the patrols. Very frequently but like really very, very frequently, you will come across a jeep carrying a driver and a guy at the controls of a mounted machine gun. The pattern will then be immutable, the jeep rushes towards your vehicle, you get off to kill the gunman, then the driver who has just got out. You then repair your car and take the road until the next stop; another patrol, another armed post. These forced stops, I tolerated them at the beginning. After a few hours, I could no longer because in the end, it is not uncommon to take more than 20 minutes to get somewhere to finally spend barely 10 minutes to fulfill a mission and therefore do something interesting. In the same vein, Ubisoft Montreal decided to hand over malaria to the player. This disease, therefore, has an impact on the game. Sometimes you will be struck by a fever attack which will cripple you. Apart from taking medication you can do nothing more. As much to say that if it happens in the middle of a fight, you have got off to a bad start. But it will be even worse if you run out of pills. This is why, from time to time you will have to do a quest for medication. And don't plan to do a series of missions to stock up, it's impossible. To obtain your medicine, there is only one solution: help refugees who try to flee. You will first go see a guy who will give you passports that you will have to give in another cabin. To say there is nothing exciting in that is a euphemism. With this game I oscillated between several contradictory feelings. The pleasure provided by the immersion and the freedom of action which makes it possible to manage the most interesting missions at will and the frustration induced by the considerable time lost in futility, in delivery missions and in crossing checkpoints. However, there is one last point to be seen; the artificial intelligence (the quality of which can make a game a hit or not). Far Cry 2's AI concerns are not new. You will sometimes see the enemies take cover and sometimes they will remain in the open for no reason. Some enemies shoot in the wrong direction while others are able to easily kill you at long range with a machine gun while you are moving in a vehicle. In short, Far Cry 2's AI is completely fickle, but its operation is based on pure aggression. The best example I can think of is that one enemy was caught in the flames and instead of running away he preferred to keep shooting at me. There is nothing smart about it, but I can take the opportunity to salute such self-sacrifice. It commands respect. To summarise, Far Cry 2 is an excellent game, a classic but it suffers from various defaults such as time consuming journeys and an unstable AI.