Most of the game's mechanics will be familiar to players of sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto, despite the first person perspective. The game is still primarily a shooter, but the open world, mission structure, and various collectible boondoggles are sandbox staples. The game doesn't force you down corridors or a set path, and you're free to attack any task however you see fit, geography permitting. As a result, I think most people who really enjoy this game will have to be fans of both genres, not just one or the other, as it doesn't really coddle newcomers.

At the start of the game, you pick your character from a fairly large roster, each with a photo and backstory dossier. Note that you won't see your character's face through the rest of the game, so be aware there's no reason to pick the hottest guy unless you really have a thing for forearms. After you select a character, you're tasked with assassinating the Jackal, a mysterious arms dealer providing weapons to two warring factions in an imaginary (but still ripped-from-the-headlines) African country. Before you get too far, however, the effects of a malaria infection leave you incapacitated and struggling. With medication, the symptoms subside, but by then you've lost the target, and you're left to take missions from either side of the war in order to collect diamonds and get closer to the Jackal once again.

You can usually pick and choose missions from either side of the war, and your duplicity doesn't have much of an in-game cost other than a few lines of dialog. There are also Underground missions, which require you to deliver travel papers to villagers wanting to escape in exchange for malaria medicine. You can also accept missions from gun shops, which unlock new and more powerful weapons, or take missions from cell towers, although these are really only for completion-ists or diamond seekers, as they're not interesting and have no effect on the rest of the game. Occasionally you're given an assignment where you have to rescue other mercenaries, who then form a rough third faction of so-called buddies. It's a cute name for them, but they do a bit more than hold your hand on a field trip. They each have side missions to offer, and your primary buddy will call and ask you to subvert the main story missions, usually adding a few tasks and roughly doubling the length. They're entirely optional, but recommended, as they add a bit of variety once the tasks start feeling a little rote. Lastly, your buddies will rescue you from certain death, pulling you out of a firefight and then fighting by your side. This leaves them vulnerable as well, so you need to pick off all the enemies and make sure they they don't get wounded themselves. If they do, you have a choice of using health items on them or putting them out of their misery. The buddy system isn't explained very well in the game, so you really have to pay attention if you want to make sure your buddies stay in fighting shape.

Very few of the missions really stand out in the game. Generally, they require you to go kill someone, steal something, or blow something up. Even doing the minimal number of missions, you will see the same things quite a bit. While the game allows you to remain stealthy to a degree, your attackers are eagle-eyed, finding you in tall grass half a mile away while you'll struggle to locate them a few yards away. Most encounters will come down to a firefight, and you can either choose to pick off all the enemies or accomplish your task and high-tail it out of there. A few missions remain fresh in my mind, such as stealing a truck and blowing up part of a village, or destroying a target hidden at the back of an abandoned village and escaping my attackers using a hang glider, but most have all kind of blended together for me.

You get around primarily by foot, car, and boat, or you can jump from location to location by taking a bus to one of five stations on each large map. While it seems a little silly taking public transportation to destroy a convoy of Ukrainian arms dealers or assassinate a corrupt sheriff, the buses are invaluable: the maps are so large that even driving can take an eternity, as well as leaving you vulnerable to random attack. Driving is responsive and intuitive, although your vehicles don't take much abuse from weapons or the environment before shutting down and requiring repair. As well, enemies are relentless: if they spot you, they will pursue you far longer than should be worth their while. It would be nice if the Reputation meter that you build throughout the game actually affected how your attackers responded to you: after a while, even the most dedicated soldier should be reluctant to go after a guy who's obliterated legions of his countrymen.

There are generous opportunities to save - in safe houses, weapon shops, and other random areas though out the game, as well as upon completion of every part of a mission. Your health bar is separated into several bars, and will regenerate up to the nearest segment after you take damage, at least until you hit the last one. At that point, your health will drain unless you can trigger a gory animation that shows your character taking extreme measures to repair his body, such as popping a dislocated limb back into place or cauterizing a wound with a flare. Although they strain credibility, the scenes are fun, if a little painful to watch. Your malaria will flare-up at random times, distorting the screen and making things tough. There's always the chance you'll have an attack during a tense fight, and the best option is to pop a pill as soon as possible. If you're not behind cover, this may be tough. The game is a decent challenge, even at the easiest level. You can change the difficulty setting up or down at any point and it doesn't affect your standing. It's a fairly long game for a first person shooter, but about on par for most sandbox games: only doing missions will take you about 15-20 hours, but you should expect 25 to 30, more if you're really intent on seeing everything the game has to offer.

You can only carry three weapons at once: a main assault weapon (sniper rifle, shotgun, sub-machine gun), special (rocket launcher, flamethrower), and close combat (pistol, remote controlled explosive). You also get a machete, grenades, and Molotov cocktails. Once you find three that you like, you'll probably stick with them for most of the game. Unfortunately the only way to really tell if a weapon will work for you is to buy it from the store and try it out. After a while, weapons will deteriorate and jam, meaning you should make semi-frequent trips to gun shops and switch them out at no cost, once you've bought the weapon once.

The weapon jams are symptomatic of a theme in the game, where it interrupts your play for some minor, sometimes frustrating task. You can quickly unjam the weapon with a press of a button, just as you can repair a vehicle in a few seconds and pop a milaria pill in even less time, but all of these are a break in the action, ostensibly to add to the realism. Whether these things annoy you or add to the experience may be a major clue to how much you'll enjoy the game.

Far Cry 2 is flat-out gorgeous. It's one of the best looking games I've seen on the Xbox 360, and handles every environment -- jungle, desert, and savanna -- with aplomb. The characters are realistic, although they move a little stiffly. There's a small amount of pop in, and unless you're traveling via the bus, loading screens are minimal and seamless. The game has a full day/night cycle, and there will definitely be times of day where the sun and shadow will get in your way. You can "sleep" for a set number of hours at any safe house and pick the perfect time to attack. The ambient sound is quite impressive, from bird, monkey, and insect calls to rain during a storm. I wish the same could be said for the enemy banter, which gets repetitive, as well as the voice acting, which is generally rushed and monotone. I definitely recommend using some kind of directional sound for the game: hearing where the shots are coming from gives you a big advantage.

The story is actually rather somber, and despite the heavy gunplay and huge explosions, plays out more like a serious drama than an action film. There's a lot of potential for something really deep and meaningful, but unfortunately they weren't able to match the emotional tenor of the story to the setting. In a throwaway line at the beginning of the game, you learn that most of the country's population is in hiding or exile, meaning just about every person you meet outside of the game's main villages is trying to kill you. To me, this is a mistake. With the exception of the few Underground missions, you only take orders from people who are decidedly evil or at least self-interested, and you never really get an understanding of the direness of the situation. If the game had let you take a few missions from regular villagers and not warlords, or let you experience the effect of your actions on a few innocent victims, the emotional stakes of the story could have been more powerful, especially considering a last minute twist at the end.

Aside from a detailed map editor, the multiplayer isn't terribly deep or exciting. It's a nice value add, but the single player game is long enough that the experience of multiplayer isn't necessary for the title. I'd easily trade a deeper single player plot for the multiplayer, but then I'm not the biggest fan of multiplayer to begin with, so your mileage may vary.

In a Nutshell:

Far Cry 2 is an open world game cross-dressing as a shooter, a genre transvestite that really requires you to be familiar with both game types, rather than easing FPS fans into a sandbox world. The game resists a linear path at almost every turn, and as a result can feel confusing or overly complicated, while at the same time rewarding those who take the time to acclimate themselves to the experience.

In a lot of ways, the game is a remarkable achievement, which makes the game's weaknesses stand out even more: a lack of an emotional attachment, frustrating and repetitive missions, and artificial breaks in the action all hamper the experience to varying degrees, and unless you know how much each of those will bother you, it's hard to say how much they will affect your enjoyment. If you can get past those and appreciate what the game does right, then you're in for a pretty exceptional experience. If not, then your play will be mired in a series of frustrations.

8.5 out of 10

(Notes: About 70% of the way through the game, one of my game saves was corrupted and kept hard freezing my Xbox 360. Until I deleted that file, any additional save I tried to make, even when I loaded from a valid game, also froze my Xbox. This is apparently a problem they are working on. If you're playing the game on either console or the PC, I'd recommend keeping several save games, so you don't lose too much game progress if your save is corrupted. Luckily I only lost a few hours, but I've read reports of people only keeping one file and losing all their progress.

I played this game using the Xbox 360 version. By all accounts the PS3 version is nearly identical, and the PC version has some small graphical improvements depending on the setting. None of the additions provided by the Fortune Pack DLC were included for the review playthrough.)