GAMEPLAY
Far Cry 2 is a sequel to the original Far Cry. . Players are able to ally with one or multiple factions, and to progress through the game world and missions as they see fit, resulting in a nonlinear style of gameplay commonly referred to as sandbox mode that allows the story to progress at their speed and in the order they choose.Players can utilize a range of vehicles, including cars, trucks, boats and hang gliders, to travel within the 50 km2(19.3 sq miles) gameplay area. The playing styles range from head-on assaults to stealthy infiltrations and assassinations. The game takes place in a sprawling African landscape, with terrain ranging from desert to savannah to jungle.The health bar represents the health of the protagonist that is divided into five segments, each of which automatically refills if it is not depleted and the player finds cover for a few seconds. Players carry a limited supply of syrettes which can be used at any time to fully replenish the health bar, and are obtainable from first aid boxes located throughout the game world. When nearing death (only one health bar remaining), the character must perform first aid on himself, for example removing bullets with pliers, or snapping twisted or broken fingers into position.
WEAPONS/INVENTORY
The player also has access to a large arsenal of real world weapons, including battle rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, rocket launchers, handguns, and light machine guns. The game breaks these weapons down into three inventory slots, each with a specific list of weapons assigned to it. In addition to the three selectable types of weapons, a machete is carried at all times, and the player can also carry a number of hand grenades and molotov cocktails. All weapons in the game are "mirrored," with ejection ports, charging handles and other user-operated parts on the left side; the exception being the belt-fed machine guns which eject to the right, though this means the PK machine gun is still mirrored. Further changes are made to some, such as the Ithaca 37 having a side ejection port.
A major gameplay feature is that these weapons degrade over time. Weapons become dirty and prone to jamming and will eventually catastrophically fail and become completely unusable. The player can purchase weapons at various gun shops, which provide an unlimited supply of the weapon in serviceable condition, along with manuals to upgrade weapon's reliability and accuracy. More weapons can be unlocked at the gun shop by completing missions involving the destruction of competitors' arms convoys for the gun shop owner. Weapons can also be picked up off of fallen enemies, but they are always in their most degraded condition and can only be used for a short period of time before jamming and ultimately breaking down completely.
The game has realistic features such as weapon degradation and the dynamic weather system. Also, the player needs to hold a physical map and use a handheld navigation system
Several species of African wildlife can be encountered in the game, and are able to distract the enemy as well as make them aware of the player's presence. All the large animals in the game are grazing herbivores, such as zebras, wildebeest, gazelle,buffalo, impala, and gemsbok. Also domestic animals such as goats and chickens can be found. However, none of the wildlife found in the game pose any direct threat to the player.
SYNOPSIS/BRIEFING
The game takes place in a small, failed Central African state, currently embroiled in a civil war. The government has recently collapsed, leaving two factions vying for control. At war are the United Front for Liberation and Labour (UFLL, led by Addi Mbantuwe, a former opposition leader) and the Alliance for Popular Resistance (APR, best far led by Maj. Oliver Tambossa, Chief of Staff for the former government). Both factions have claimed to have the people's interests at heart, but both have shown ruthlessness, warmongering, greed, and a general disregard for the well-being of the people. Both sides have hired many foreign mercenaries to bolster their strength over the course of the conflict. The recent exhaustion of the nation's diamond mines has thrown the nation into further turmoil, leaving many foreign mercenaries without payment and no way out.
The goal of the player's character is to find and assassinate the Jackal, an arms-dealer who has been selling weapons to both sides of the conflict. The player must accomplish this goal by whatever means necessary, even if he has to reach the level of immorality employed by the warring factions and the Jackal himself.
CHARACTERS
Some of the playable characters are: Paul Ferenc (Israeli), Josip Idromeno (Albanian), Warren Clyde (American), Marty Alencar (Brazilian), Frank Bilders (Irish), Andre Hyppolite (Haitian), Hakim Echebbi (Algerian), Xianyong Bai (Chinese), and Quarbani Singh (Mauritian).
The two factions each have a leader and second in command. The UFLL's leader is Addi Mbantuwe and his subordinate's name is Leon Gakumba. The APR's leader is major Oliver Tambossa and his subordinate's name is Prosper Kouassi. The factions also have some kind of "lieutenants" or underbosses that the player will encounter during the game. These lieutenants are:
UFLL: Hector Voorhees, Joaquin Carbonell, Anto Kankaras.
APR: Nick Greaves, Walton Purefoy, Arturo Quiepo.
The player's "Best Buddy" can provide the player alternate, or "subverted" ways to complete most of the main story missions. These subverted missions always require more steps than the standard mission, but they often make the final objective easier. For example, bringing a container ofdefoliant to one Buddy who has access to a plane, will allow him or her to deprive the enemy of cover when the player assaults a plantation, or bringing a fuse to a buddy that has a bomb will allow him or her to blow up a bridge, simply crushing an enemy barge beneath instead of forcing the player to assault the barge. Completing subverted missions also increases the player's standing with the best buddy and adds "upgrades" to every safe house in the region, such as vehicles parked outside, medical pickups and ammo pickups. However, the inevitable final objective of a subverted mission will always be that the player must rescue their buddy (Who by the end of the mission is heavily outnumbered by the enemy and must be rescued). The player must choose to either take on a shorter, more difficult mission, or a longer but easier mission.
The player's "Second Best Buddy" can come to the player's aid when they fall in battle if they are "rescue ready". The buddy will move them to a safer location, then revive them and help fight off the remaining enemies. The buddy then needs to recuperate and will be ready to save the player again once they are visited at a safehouse.
Buddies can be wounded or killed in battle during subverted missions, buddy rescues, and other circumstances. When a buddy dies, their death is permanent, and the player has only a limited number of possible buddies in each region. When all of the player's buddies are dead, subverted missions and buddy rescues are no longer available. When buddies are wounded in battle, they will mark their position with a smoke grenade and cry out for help. The player can choose to render aid, or simply leave the buddy to die. If the buddy's wounds are minor enough, the player can inject them with a syrette to fully heal them. However if the buddy's injuries are too severe, the player's only option is to euthanize them by either overdosing them with syrettes or looking away and shooting them in the head. Buddies usually have three "lives" where if they're shot down a third time, the player will not be able to save them.
PLOT
The game starts off with the player given a mission to kill a 52-year-old famous arms dealer. People call him "The Jackal".On the way to the town of Pala in a cab, the player character begins to suffer from the effects of Malaria and passes out. He awakes inside a hotel and finds the Jackal standing over him. He threatens to kill the player character, but ultimately chooses to spare his life and leaves without his weapons.
Meanwhile, the ceasefire in Pala has collapsed and the UFLL and APR are engaged in open fighting. The player either passes out with malaria after managing to escape or is severely wounded before he can escape. The player is revived in the camp of one of the faction lieutenants in the area. In return for saving the player's life, the lieutenant orders the player to conduct basic errands. The player meets a journalist named Reuben Oluwagembi, who is writing a book about the conflict and the Jackal's part in it. He requests that the player find the tapes of his interview with the Jackal, scattered over the region. Once the player has acquired some malaria medicine from a priest who is helping civilians escape the violence, the player is given the freedom to choose their next mission. In addition to the hunt for the Jackal, the player can provide the Underground with stamped travel documents for refugees in exchange for anti-malarial drugs, ambush convoys of weapon shipments in order to gain access to a greater variety of weapons and equipment from arms dealers, and assassinate targets acquired by intercepting signals from various cell-phone towers in the area.
The player is forced to work with both the UFLL and the APR in Leboa-Sako, each using the player as a deniable agent in order to avoid a full-scale war. When the player is in the faction HQ before he is taking a mission, conversations are heard between the faction leader and the mercenary leader, for example on one occasion they discuss the rumor that the Jackal has cancer and only a few months left to live. After many successful missions, a faction captain (either Prosper Kouassi or Leon Gakumba) contracts the player to assassinate the other faction's captain. Once the assassination is complete, however, the player is betrayed and ambushed by the contractor and his troops. The player escapes, but in the chaos, he is forced to choose either to defend the priest and the civilians under his care, or to aid fellow mercenaries. The player's character eventually falls in combat, and awakes in the back of a truck filled with bodies. Any buddies the player has made up to this point are now either killed or declared missing, dependent on whom the player opted to aid. He falls off of the truck onto the road and seeks shelter in the desert, finally collapsing in the following sandstorm. The Jackal appears and takes the unconscious player to safety, but is then forced to flee when retreating troops of the other faction, now without a captain, arrive. A lieutenant from this faction offers the player a chance to redeem himself by assassinating the faction captain who betrayed the player. The player assassinates the target at a troop rally and escapes south, to the province of Bowa-Seko.
In Bowa-Seko, the player and a Buddy follows the lieutenant's orders to destabilize the area and reignite the conflict by conducting a false flag operation in Port Selao. Following this, the two factions are now at war in the new province, opening up a variety of work from both sides. Eventually, the player is hired by the one of the leaders, either Oliver Tambossa or Addi Mbantuwe, to deliver diamonds to the opposite faction, for a peace settlement between the factions. When the player arrives at the location, however, he finds the area devastated and the faction leader dead. The Jackal appears and explains that he wants the conflict to continue, since the warlords want peace only to conduct their crimes outside the world's attention. He then seizes the diamonds and knocks the player character unconscious.
The player awakes imprisoned in an old slave outpost, and discovers that he has been used as a scapegoat, blamed for murdering a faction leader and disrupting the peace settlement. The player escapes and continues his search for the Jackal. In the process, he performs a series of missions, consisting of assassinating Nick Greaves and Hector Voorhees, the new warlords of the APR and UFLL respectively. However, the player can choose to kill his contractors instead after meeting with Greaves and Voorhees. Reuben then calls the player for help, fearing that he and some other journalists are either going to get deported or shot at the airfield. The player fights off the militia and rescues the journalists.
With Reuben's help, the player finally tracks down and meets with the Jackal (at this point there is a glitch to kill The Jackal), who reveals his intentions to help the civilian population escape the war-torn country. Although he must eventually kill the Jackal, the player character agrees to help. The Jackal's plan is for the player to assassinate the two remaining faction leaders and take a case of diamonds to bribe the border guards. After finding the diamonds, however, the player must fight his fellow mercenaries and friends, as they want the diamonds for themselves to escape the country. It's possible to wound the buddies, rather than kill them outright. Unlike in the rest of the game where the player is offered a choice to give them morphine or a mercy kill, but the player's character draws his pistol first and any wounded buddies draw the barrel to their head and refuse to let go until the player perform a mercy kill. This usually occurs with them thanking the player as their last words.
With both faction leaders dead and the diamonds in hand, the player meets the Jackal at a hut near the border (named 'The Heart of Darkness'). The Jackal plans to dynamite the valley leading to the border, in order to prevent the militia from following the evacuating civilians. However, thedetonating cord has malfunctioned, and the explosives must be short-circuited with a car battery at the site, leading to the detonator's certain death. The Jackal offers the player a choice; he can detonate the explosives, or take the diamonds and shoot himself upon leaving the country, either way ensuring the civilians' escape. The game ends with Reuben Oluwagembi witnessing the explosion, then turning to take a picture of the massed crowd of refugees crossing the border. One of the border guards is seen holding the case of diamonds.
The APR and UFLL warlords have attempted to end hostilities and establish a government but the violence continues. Reuben's story was ignored by the international press, and he is supposedly publishing it on his personal blog. The civilian population largely escaped, and NGOs credit the low casualty rate to the work of the country's Underground. The Jackal has since disappeared, and world governments insist that he died in the conflict, although no body is ever found. In addition, the player's exact fate is unseen, though presumably the protagonist dies, either in the explosion or by the gunshot heard at the end of the game. Such actions are performed linearly without any choice on the part of the player, despite the in-game journal hinting that the protagonist might choose to kill the Jackal instead.
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