Far Cry 2 came out in 2008 and...

[Markbnj]

... it still has one of the best game environments, imo. Picked it back up for another play through recently, and with everything cranked up the world is just stunning. You can knock the game's complete lack of anything resembling depth, and the crappy FPS mechanics, but for a five year-old game I think the world still stands out as close to best in class.

They really nailed everything, from the lighting and shadows to the atmospheric and weather effects, the ambient sounds, the way the vegetation crunches underfoot and moves aside when you walk into it, the hard glint of the sun when it is high overhead. The textures are also some of the best I've seen. The whole effect really does a good job of putting you in some hot, dusty tropical country. And on top of that you can light lots of it on fire .

I think it does a better job of rendering an immersive world (environmentally speaking) than Skyrim, even well-modded. And it's six years old.

 

[Stringjam]

Still one of my favorite FPS titles ever, despite the well-documented annoyances.

I remember playing it for the first time and being totally immersed in that environment.

 

[Dankk]

People often bring up all of the things that Far Cry 2 did poorly, but they also forget to mention the things that Far Cry 2 did extremely well.

Extremely lush, hostile environment, lack of HUD that emphasized atmosphere and immersion, excellent gunplay, absolutely incredible dynamic range in the audio (some of the best I've ever heard in a video game)... when you have all of these things combined together, and turn off the in-game music, it becomes an extremely challenging, immersive, "survivalist" experience.

They threw most of that good stuff out the window with the later Far Cry games. Far Cry 3 was a hand-holding bro shooter with XP points and upgrades and whatnot.

If they fixed some of Far Cry 2's problems (such as adding a decent storyline, getting rid of the respawning enemies, etc) it would have been a perfect open-world FPS. But instead it felt more like a tech demo with some good mechanics, but also some bad ones.

 

[Nebor]

I think it did pretty much everything well except for the weapons\gun damage & respawn of the checkpoints\outposts. But that was enough to make me quit after a couple hours.

 

[kyrax12]

THe no fast traveling sort of killed it for me.

Seriously...

 

[RampantAndroid]

The world looked great...but my appreciation of that world was constantly marred by the constant "drive through checkpoint. Kill people on way through. Finish mission, drive back. Kill the people again." In the course of my playing, without finishing the game, I think I killed a brigade or two...

 

[shortylickens]

Just tried it again last week. Gameplay still irritates the hell out of me.

 

[Markbnj]

I think it did pretty much everything well except for the weapons\gun damage & respawn of the checkpoints\outposts. But that was enough to make me quit after a couple hours.

The respawns were the worst, along with the instant hostility of every NPC outside a city. But both of these were really the result of dirt-simple game mechanics, i.e. no depth at all.

 

[Markbnj]

THe no fast traveling sort of killed it for me.

Seriously...

Well, there's the bus, which I use quite a bit this time through. I actually enjoy moving around on foot.

 

[BFG10K]

I agree, the engine is superb. Outstanding visuals, very fast rendering and extremely stable.

As for gameplay, it's one of my favourite games.

 

[Bateluer]

. . . Ah malaria simulator 2008.

 

[tidy]

.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Game looked great but it was the biggest snorefest i ever played,think i sold it with a rig back in 2010.Horrible year cause i was bored enough with gaming to do this.

I do reserve the look great comment for FC2 because the only good looking games i had were Bioshock/UT3 then a dated BF2 and detail for FC2 was quite a bit better.

 

[futurefields]

FC2 is also runs like butter compared to FC3 which has weird frame pacing ussues on the vast majority of rigs