YMMV / Far Cry 2

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Both the Jackal and the player character are heavily subject to this, particularly during the endings. For example, did the player really agree with the Jackal in the "Diamond Delivery" ending and commit suicide after his job was done... or did he just do that to trick the Jackal into killing himself with the bomb, thus finally accomplishing his mission to assassinate him? Conversely, did the Jackal fool the player into executing himself while he made a clean getaway in the "Set Off Bomb" ending or was he genuine in his desire to help the refugees and give Africa a chance at recovering?
  • The Jackal in general has a lot of this, especially in regards to The Reveal that he is helping the refugees and innocent civilians escape the country, and that him selling his weapons to the factions at a cheap price is an attempt at preventing the factions from potentially exploiting and/or hurting the people he is trying to help.
  • If you believe that The Jackal is truly motivated by altruism, was this his M.O. for every civil war he got involved in? Or did his rumoured terminal illness cause him to have a Heel Realisation and lead him to attempt to atone for his past actions.
  • It’s possible that The Jackal is a Manipulative Bastard playing everything he comes into contact with for chumps. If so, are his Villain Has a Point moments and Hidden Depths just him making himself appear sympathetic to Reuben and the Player Character, in order to ensure he makes it out of the civil war alive? If this is the case, was this his M.O. for everything he got involved? Including his position in a civil war in Africa (manipulating a random mercenary with a conscience into helping him escape, and then starting the cycle anew in a different area of Africa?)
  • And what of his ultimate fate? Was the fact that his body was never found an implication that he never truly intended on committing suicide after fulfilling his objective? Did he make sure that there was no body left to find? Did whoever hired the Player Character to assassinate him have an ulterior motive for wanting him dead, and concealed any information on his true fate (background dialogue in the fifth game reveals that the file on The Jackal was heavily classified and wouldn’t be made public until three decades after the events of this game). Or is The Jackal just that much of an implacable badass that he managed to survive his Heroic Suicide and just decided that attempting to off himself wasn’t worth the trouble. The latter two options only create more questions if you subscribe to the theory that The Jackal is the mutagen altered Jack Carver from the first game.
  • The more altruistic buddies crossing the Moral Event Horizon by stealing the diamonds needed to ensure the refugees’ safe escape. Did the time spent in the country cause them to grow more cynical and selfish, leading to them deciding that self-preservation was more important than helping the innocent? Were they always self-serving bastards whose previous Pet the Dog moments were just them trying to feel good about themselves or an attempt to manipulate the Player Character? Are they even aware of what the Player Character intends to use the diamonds for? Or are their actions in the final stretch of the game just the developers trying to tie all loose ends regardless of what choices you made previously?
• Ass Pull: In the last mission of the game, all your missing buddies from the first act alongside your current best buddy reappear only to betray you by trying to steal the blood diamonds needed to save a large group of refugees, this is never clearly foreshadowed in the story outside of characters telling you to never trust anybody as everybody is in for themselves.
• Contested Sequel: This is considered the most debated installment in the franchise, with many people loving the game despite the game often working against the player thanks to its themes, tone and unforgiving world, while others hate it for just about the same reasons, with an ending that ties loose ends in a very rushed manner..
• Critical Dissonance: At the time of its release, Far Cry 2 enjoyed a highly positive reception by many critics. However, reception from the general playerbase was much more polarized.
• Demonic Spiders: Mortar operators in Act 2. Also, the soldiers. They soak up ammo, do a huge amount of damage, and have the tendency to try and run you down with their cars — an instant One-Hit Kill.
• Evil Is Cool: While more morally gray than evil, the Jackal is regarded as one of the best parts of the game by fans. While not as flamboyant or larger-than-life as future Far Cry villains, the Jackal's creepy mannerisms, personal philosophy and surprisingly well-founded self-justifications for his actions has led to him being seen by fans as an interesting character perfectly fitting the style of the game.
• Franchise Original Sin: The overall series, up until Far Cry 6 finally addressed the problem, had to deal with the issue of increasingly bleaker endings. Far Cry 2 was the start of the problem, where your ending choices are either to do one mission that you will most assuredly die in or do another one and then kill yourself, the latter of which also involves killing all of your mercenary buddies. It was accepted in this game because no matter which one you go for, the game ends with you helping refugees escape after the factions decide on a cease-fire specifically to massacre those refugees; your choice boils down to whether you blow up the one road out of the country after they've passed so the factions can't chase them down, or bribe the border guards with diamonds to let the refugees pass, which takes a game that was in general bleak and depressing and ends it on a somewhat hopeful note. Things only became a problem when later games gradually lost the nuance or any sense of a Hope Spot; Far Cry 3 had a bad ending that was pretty bad, but you still had a clear choice between it and a good ending that was still good while fitting the game's tone, but then Far Cry 4 had no ending that could really be considered "good", with the only upside being that its repercussions would be restricted to Kyrat (and you could limit the damage by killing off the remaining Golden Path leader after the ending), and then Far Cry 5 came about without any ending in which Joseph Seed is brought to justice, with its most infamous ending resulting in nuclear war for reasons that are barely hinted at and completely out of the player's control. Not helping is that Far Cry 2 and the next two games operate on Grey-and-Gray Morality - 3 and 4, being Lighter and Softer at least in the sense that one side doesn't shoot everyone else on-sight, still gives them several flaws to balance out the more overt evil of their opposition - while 5 works on Black-and-White Morality, where everyone in Hope County is uniformly a righteous hero while, even when the Seed family advises you not to use violence against them, the Project at Eden's Gate cult invariably shoots you on sight. As such, when one ending reveals the cult was correct the whole time and everything you did trying to stop them was All for Nothing, it felt unbelievably unfair to the player.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The M-79 Grenade Launcher. Very reliable, powerful, capable to kill multiple enemies in a single blow, and counts as a sidearm. While it can be used in a similar way to the Type 63 Mortar, the only drawback is its reloading speed. Its cousin the MGL-140 can be this for its rate of fire and the ability to hold four grenades at once, though you have to give up a more generalized primary weapon like an assault or sniper rifle for it.
  • For those who own the Fortune's Edition DLC, the Explosive Crossbow can become this early in the game. Despite its rate of fire, lowest blast radius and average reliability, it's a massive upgrade for the RPG-7 in hands of a skilled player, since it features a combat scope in which gives you the advantage to perform an accurate shot while trying to take down convoys.
  • Despite being the weakest sniper rifle in the game, the SVD Dragunov is an excellent choice while paired with a MAC-10/Uzi and any Special type weapon, such as the PKM. Its high rate-of-fire can allow you to quickly dispatch enemies even at point-blank range thanks to its quick sharpshooting capabilities.
  • The Dart Rifle is also pretty damn powerful, regardless which body part you hit, which always results in a One-Hit Kill as long as its low reliability doesn't let it down.
  • A glitch involving the Golden AK-47 causes it to become fully restored to perfect condition if done correctly (see Good Bad Bugs section below).
• Goddamned Bats: The enemy jeeps spawned at checkpoints are relentless and fighting them quickly gets tedious.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • It's rather amusing watching a bison walk head-first into an open car door or even a parked ATV and spontaneously drop dead.
  • If you crouch into a shallow part of a lake and let yourself drown, using the Heal Thyself button produces amusing results, such as your character setting a broken arm in three places to pulling spontaneously-appearing rebar out of his torso; all of that from just swimming. Observe!
  • There's a little-known glitch involving the Golden AK-47. If you have bought the standard AK from the arms dealer and you have the golden version as your primary gun, you can abuse this glitch by accessing the armoury next to the shop at any map it's on and switch to the standard AK. When your golden version has been dropped in favour of the standard version, pick up the golden version, and exit the armoury. Your Golden AK is as good as new like it was when you first picked it up from its original location. With this, you'll never need another assault rifle again, saving up precious diamonds. The only thing to keep in mind is that the golden version cannot receive upgrades from the weapons shop as those are its only drawbacks.
• Headscratchers: The Southern District town of Mosake-Selao is significantly larger and more developed than Pala in the Northern District. So why the hell did you, master world mercenary, fly into UAC via dumpy Pala?
• He's Just Hiding: Both the Jackal and the player character get this with several fans believing that one or even both managed to somehow survive at the end of the story. The fact that the game cuts away before either is shown dying and the fact that the Jackal is explicitly mentioned as a case of Never Found the Body afterwards has only fueled fan theories on how they could have survived.
• Hype Backlash: The game was widely praised at the time of the 2008 release, but is often seen as the Black Sheep of the franchise. It's not as arcade-like as its predecessor, and it's not as surreal as its successors. It's a game that actively wants the player to feel uncomfortable. However, it's still praised because of this design choice; it's what makes this game such an interesting oddity within the series.
• I Knew It!: A variation: while being interviewed during a Far Cry series retrospective made for the run-up to Far Cry 6, the creative director of Far Cry 2 confirmed the popular fan theory that the Jackal was an older Jack Carver - at least, that's what he was originally intended to be.
• Magnificent Bastard: The Jackal is an infamous Arms Dealer, currently funding both the APR and UFLL factions in a war-torn country to play them against each other. Rumoured to be dying of brain cancer, he openly uses cancer as a description of war and how it corrupts people. It is soon revealed he is helping refugees escape the country, by keeping the factions fighting each other, using underhanded tactics to prevent a ceasefire that would kill the civilians; such as stealing blood diamonds and framing the player for his killing of a warlord. Coming out on top of every encounter with the player, he eventually gets them in on his plan to save the last refugees, having the player kill the last warlords and their corrupt "Buddies". The Jackal then has the player take part in his suicide mission to ensure the last refugees escape, claiming that their own deaths are to destroy "every cell" to "keep the cancer from spreading".
• Memetic Mutation: Deadly africanized water ^Explanation The game's canned healing animations occur regardless of context, so naturally healing your drowning results in absurd injury treatment like the waters of Africa commit Body Horror on those that dare tread it.
• Moral Event Horizon: Everyone in the game commits or attempts one, with the exception of Reuben and the Underground.
  • The Faction leaders once the other faction is weakened, will order their followers to rape, pillage and murder those they consider their enemies or threats to their hold in the region.
  • By the end of the game, both sides decide to negotiate a ceasefire... in order to massacre a fleeing population of would-be refugees.
  • Your M.I.A buddies from Act I alongside your current best buddy will team up to steal the diamonds needed to save the would-be refugees by the end of Act III.
• Nausea Fuel: Just listen to the aptly named "Rat-Catcher" and "Gutshot" tapes. You're welcome.
• Nightmare Fuel: Has its own page.
• Obvious Beta: Granted, the game's initial release was less of a trainwreck than some other titles you might care to mention... but every single version of the game had bugs that, while small in number, were utterly crippling when it was first released, and patches haven't entirely eradicated them.
• Older Than They Think: The Wide-Open Sandbox gameworld of Far Cry 2 was actually done a couple years earlier in Boiling Point: Road to Hell, a revolutionary game done in by a buggy pre-patch release and its non-big-name publisher/developer and their lack of publicity. There's also S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, which came out a year before Far Cry 2, and was in development even before the engine for the first Far Cry was created.
• Porting Disaster: The PC version started out locked to the same "fake" widescreen mode as the console versions (ie, cutting the top and bottom off a 4:3 image to make a 16:10 image instead of extending the field of view left and right). This was eventually patched due to complaints that players with multiple monitors were dealing with a field of view so vertically compressed they couldn't see anything.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The malaria mechanic forces the player to occasionally undertake a Fetch Quest to get pills, as the attacks will happen once every 30-40 real-life minutes.
  • Also, the respawning checkpoints. The game is divided into nine grid squares in each of the two maps, and only remembers what the player has done in the current grid to save RAM. Unfortunately, some checkpoints are right next to grid boundaries, so walking a short distance away will instantly respawn all the soldiers at the checkpoint, sometimes while they're still in sight of the player. Those checkpoint also almost always sends a pair of chasers with machine gun mounted offroader after you.
  • Thankfully, there's at least two mods that reduces checkpoint chaser frequency, as well as delaying the Malaria attacks to a rather realistic extent.
  • Two words for casual FPS players: Weapon. Jamming. This wouldn't be that bad of a mechanic, except that most guns in the game start breaking down and malfunctioning after only one or two dozen shots, forcing the player to constantly resupply at arms dealers or risk having their gun jam in the middle of a fight or even blow up in their face if its condition decays enough. This makes gun juggling a must during some of the longer missions as sticking to one favorite is a good way to eat a facefull of lead in the middle of a firefight due to your firearm jamming at the worst possible moment. No scavenging spares from enemy corpses either, since their guns are always in poor condition and usually not worth dropping what you already have. Unsurprisingly, this feature was outright removed in later games.
• Scrappy Weapon: Barely anyone uses the USAS-12 due to its very poor reliability and being very prone to jamming compared to the other shotguns despite its firepower, for example: the Franchi SPAS-12 and Homeland 37 (as both of them are alot more reliable than the latter from Act 2). Some weapons such as the G3KA4 and M1903 fall into this once better weapons like the SVD Dragunov, AK-47 and AR-16 are available to purchase.
  • Regarding stealth being unforgiving in the game, the Silenced Makarov and MP5 are this to the Silenced Shotgun from Fortune's Edition DLC and the Dart Rifle itself.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: The game is noticeably easier than the original Far Cry (especially the Nintendo Hard PC version), due to the addition of Regenerating Health combined with being able to carry several syrettes that can be used to instantly restore all your health. The console versions balance this out with a very unforgiving save system (no automatic checkpoints; manual saves only allowed at safehouses), although the result is generally more an exercise in frustration (having to drive 15 minutes every time you get killed) rather than a test of skill.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: 2 is a very interesting game, to the point where it's notable in how different it is. Rather than being built up for fun, it was developed for immersive gameplay that avoids Gameplay and Story Segregation.
  • Game producer Louis-Pierre Pharand said that they made changes to the design to "make the game feel like you were really there", and they succeeded in making the game feel like a brutal, uncomfortable, and distinctly un-fun warzone. Director Clint Hocking coined the phrase 'Ludonarrative Dissonance' and a desire to avoid that dissonance runs through the game.
    • Weapons deteriorate at very fast rates, and can jam easily even in the middle of a combat.
    • Enemies respawn instantly and endlessly the moment you leave an outpost, creating endless tension even just to get from point A to B.
    • New weapons are unlocked by a diamond hunt for diamond caches hidden into tiny crevices around the map.
    • The player character has malaria, and will get sick once in a while, completely deteriorating your combat ability, requiring you to take medicine and do side missions for medicine. There is a reason why none of the other games were designed like this.
• Spiritual Successor: To Far Cry. The developers of Far Cry 2 have stated that it was meant to be a sequel in spirit, not in plot. This basically set the trend for each succeeding Far Cry title, as the stories are barely connected to one another, if at all, although the Jackal is confirmed by the creative director to be Jack Carver, the protagonist of the first game.
• Squick: Some of the ways you perform an emergency heal on yourself can be pretty gross, like pulling a bullet out of your palm with pliers, or pushing a bullet out the other side of your arm, or resetting your arm with a loud cracking noise.
• Tear Jerker:
  • "You're a terminal case... same as me". Also, the ending, though it might also count as Heartwarming Moment.
  • The "Good Night, Sweet Prince" achievement can be this, depending on how attached you are to your buddies.
  • Your missing buddies from the Northern region betraying you for the diamonds, forcing you to gun them down one by one.

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