Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Platform: PC, Xbox360, PS3
Genre(s): First Person Shooter, Action, Sandbox
Released: October 22th 2008
Price: $49.99
Links: Far Cry 2 | Official Site | Ubisoft



The long awaited and eagerly anticipated title, Far Cry 2, has finally hit store shelves. The original Far Cry, developed by Crytek – the same developer as Crysis – was a legend of its days and even still is remembered for its contribution to the gaming realm both in terms of graphics and gameplay. The sequel to the original and the focus of our review, Far Cry 2, does not follow the same story, or even the same gameplay as the original. To be truthful, it is questionable as to why it was decided to be published under the same name as the first, given that it about as far from a sequel as one could imagine. Also, for this title, Ubisoft decided to go with its in house developers, handing the task to Ubisoft Montreal. Not to insinuate that this is necessarily bad; Ubisoft Montreal has released widly popular titles such as Assassin’s Creed, Price of Persia and the Tom Clancy series. As a result, Far Cry 2 was literally re designed from the ground up.

Instead of building off the original CryEngine (which Crytek adapted into CryEngine2, featured in Crysis and sequel Warhead), the backbone consists of a unique Ubisoft concoction, Dunia. While it is unique soley to Far Cry 2, those who have played previous Ubisoft titles, such as Assasin’s Creed, will be able to draw correlations between their work. That said, Dunia brings some incredibly exciting new features to the table. Without going into great detail here are some of the key components:

• Destructible Environments
• Dynamic Weather
• Dynamic fire propagation (influenced by weather system)
• Dynamic vegetation (RealTree), including growth and regrowth of vegetation
• Full day/night cycles
• Dynamic music system
• Support for large player maps, without specific levels
• Non-scripted AI
• Radiosity, or non-direct lighting

With all that “randomness” shoved into a game, any experienced hardware enthusiast or gamer could forsee some rather hefty system requirements. Coupled with the “almost real” visual quality that many screenshots purpot, hardware performance becomes a serious concern. However, the developers have insisted that the game would not be a resource hog, and perform exceptionally on low end and mid range systems, without having to sacrifice much of the visual quality, or the special features of the engine. Well, lets see what its got.