Jackaless African Gun Safari - Far Cry 2 is a Bit Short on Delivery!

I had been serializing Far Cry 2 as you can see in my last two posts, but after the shooting of the King and placing his son in charge of the throne (Far Cry 2 : Snap, Crackle and Pop!) I saw that Far Cry 2 may not be as deep as I thought it was going to be. I was fairly right in this regard, Far Cry 2 is a pretty big game but it isn't as creative an endeavour as say, Fallout 3, (Fallout 3 Welcome to Glitch City!) which I was unable to complete because of technical difficulties. I continued with Far Cry 2 though, and finally completed it. In some of the pictures of the game I see that the guns, etc., are pretty new looking! That is probably due to these 'side missions' that you can complete throughout the game. I decided that I wouldn't do these and made sure that I stuck to the Main Story of the game. I just couldn't see myself running down a 'Caravan" of gun runners half way across the map just to open up a few guns. But indeed it is troubling to have a rifle that Jams on you! Your guns, if they are not your own actually get Rusty throughout the game! This isn't a bad device to tell the truth and does add some realism to the game.
There are Games out there that as soon as they hit the street seem dated already. This, I believe is because the developers/creators of these games are looking a bit in the past at times. This isn't a bad thing, but Far Cry 2 is pretty dated already. It's a game that 'feels' like a generation behind the Gaming Curve. You can start to feel pretty lonely in fact if your playing Far Cry 2, on your own these days. Most game boys have blown by it some time ago. And this was the case with me here, yet I had done pretty much the same with Brotherhood In Arms (A Flash of Hitler - Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway) and in fact, it is kind of nice not to have that kinetic gameboy energy all around. I mean I was thinking I was going to get Killzone 2 and up pops Far Cry 2... so you see the difference! Anyway I'm just saying that Far Cry 2 is a very leisurely game compared to other more recent shooters.
To summarize Far Cry 2, you are an operative on a mission to hunt down The Jackal a Gunrunner who has been supplying munitions to both sides of an African Civil War. The two sides of the conflict the UFLL and the APR are led by their respective Generals who are constantly bickering about generally petty matters. It's a lot of Pride and not much Brain Power, you might say, which is what usually rules these 'fly by night' Militias. The African nation, by the way is fictional.
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.
That's from Wikipedia and yes that was the stated goal, to hunt down the assassin, The Jackal and kill him. Yet the game really doesn't deliver on this or keep the narrative going in this manner. The Jackal rarely shows up in the game at all! You can find Tapes of the Jackal throughout the game, but in the end I only found 2, simply because I wasn't looking for them! Instead of hunting the Jackal you'll find yourself going either to the UFLL or the APR, who when you arrive at the Office they are always ready to either Assassinate their enemies on the other side or blow up and or steal something that their enemies have, the Jackal himself is not much mentioned at all. That's the real problem of Far Cry 2 in that it would have been really very cool to see The Jackal constantly mixing it up with me in the game... but amazingly at the end of the game I don't even get to shoot him!Yet Far Cry 2 is inventive and really pretty fun once you get into the Vibe of the thing. I focused on doing jobs for the UFLL exclusively, but then the game would only let me do jobs for the APR after that... so the games AI wasn't all that expansive after all! Still it was sort of fun to drive around. You usually have to get from place to place by Jeep, etc... although you can take the bus, which is sometimes necessary, you'll often have to go through checkpoints along the road that are heavily fortified with militia. I'd usually stop my Jeep just a bit before they realized I was coming in and Snipe one or two. In fact all you'll really need is the Sniper Rifle. My favorite weapon in any game except for maybe a really powerful Magnum is any Sniper Rifle. I pretty much went through the game blowing away these Militias pretty effectively, especially at the destinations. I found that if you stop a few clicks out from a 'town' or 'village' where your main mission takes you, you can snipe one guard and the entire force of the town will soon arrive. In that way you can get, sometimes, about eight cool kills. I Bagged quite a few this[a]way!
And this is how the game goes for the most part, going back a forth doing the UFLL's and the APR's business for them. I was pretty happy towards the end of the game to get the final sniper rifle which I used to good use, and found throughout the game you can just stop in at your gunshop and update the condition and accuracy of you gun then constantly go to the gun supply area to renew it's newness! This worked out fine, in fact as by the near end of the game all the guns etc, become available. I didn't much bother with finding the cases of diamonds, either, there are about 150 cases throughout the game, you open them up and get a diamond. Well I only got a case when I heard it beeping and couldn't be bothered to hunt everyone of them down... in fact you get plenty of money/diamonds for doing your missions to buy munitions.
That is how Far Cry 2 goes however and only towards the end do you get to see a bit more of the Jackal, he is against Peace and wants an all out assault for both sides, but then later seems to change his tune a bit, all of which I found a bit unusual. If the makers of Far Cry 2 had focused upon the Jackal as the center of the story, as was promised then Far Cry 2 would have had a real emotional impact and purpose to it, but as just a minor character in a very, finely rendered African Savannah, The Jackal doesn't have much 'Teeth' as we would say in the Congo! He's sort of not a part of the conflict it seems... not much of a threat either... still Far Cry 2 is a pretty good game, inventive and has a really good 'feel' to it. You could end up spending many, many hours playing Far Cry 2... I choose to blast through it as fast as possible and even that took me a bit of time to get through... so Far Cry 2 is a worthwhile game but one in which you will wish had got the story better and the conflict with the Jackal more clear and purposeful.