It’s a massive game as I mentioned before and there are numerous road vehicles and a hang-glider to allow you to get around the huge world map. There’s no loading when you’re exploring Africa, but when you reload a save or use one of the many bus routes (quick travel) to get around, the load times are a little longer than we’ve come to expect. It’s a small price to pay for such an unfettered gameworld where unpredictable encounters can happen as you’re driving down the road. There are numerous check points (guard posts) to investigate and repeatedly clear (they always seem to repopulate every time I go back) of hostiles. There are safehouses that can be unlocked (by killing the guards) where you can store weapons, upgrade by doing buddy objectives and save your game by resting (this also allows you to choose the time of day when you might awake. If you want to do a mission at night, sleep until its dark).

Ubisoft have also placed a weapon degradation mechanic into the game, your weapons will get worse with prolonged use and over time. They’ll get dirty, grimy and eventually jam. A jam can be cleared by pressing X on the 360 controller and the only indication of weapon condition is on the gun itself, it will become worn, rusty and look used. Enemy weapons are always in worse condition than the guns you get from your own armoury, so it’s wise to restock your weapon supplies often. There are collectible diamonds to find via your handy map and tracker. Speaking of the map, again, Far Cry 2 keeps you immersed in the game and offers a map that isn’t on a menu. You can open it at any time to consult your next objective marker, see where you are and even scout out a location using a monocular to mark objects such as ammo points and sniper nests.

It all fits together nicely; the sense of full body immersion is captured with effortless ease along with the gorgeous (day or night) African locales. You never pop from the driver’s seat to a gunner’s position; the character will traverse there in first person. The animation in the game is slick, especially for the various field repairs on your own body as well as the medication of your malaria. Ubisoft have taken a great deal of time and effort making this engine perform well, produce some gorgeous graphics even on the console version and provide some top quality animations. The game also supports a full weather system and some of the most gorgeous fire mechanics we’ve seen in a title for a long time. It will propagate with wind, dry grass and whilst it looks pretty – it’s an invaluable tool for causing some serious trouble for your enemies since you can use a flamethrower or Molotov cocktail to ignite mostly anything.

This brings me onto the physics of the game. Once again the engine delivers solid physics with some nice touches such as being able to hurl a grenade into an ammo dump and watch the ammunition go off killing anyone that’s standing nearby. These kinds of physics based systems allow for a wide variety of tactics in terms of mission objectives. You can adapt your techniques on the fly and use the environment and enemy emplacements against them in unique ways not often captured by other first person shooters.

Enemy AI will often make use of flanking moves and tactics. They’ll also call out to each other and attempt to ambush you with false directions. They will also scream in agony if knocked down and start to bleed out, pulling a weapon in desperation. This is where the AI comes into its own; a screaming colleague will draw the attention of his companions and can be used as a trap for either a well placed explosive device or a snappy sniper-shot that kills your intended target as he comes to check on his wounded ally. Its touches like this that makes the experience all the richer and the gameplay transforms into something else. You can easily feel like the hunter when you’re the hunted as you turn the tables on a vastly superior force by clever use of the environment.