FC2 has been significantly overrated by the media for some reason I can't quite figure out. If you look at a meta-review site you'll find the media reviews averaging 8 or so out of 10, but player reviews closer to 5 out of 10 (which is where it should be).
It's not that it's a horrible game... it's just not a great one. It's solidly mediocre in every way other than graphics (which are great for the most part). Gameplay is redundant redundant redundant...
.
.
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redundant.
There are no significant advances on gameplay relative to other similar titles (going back to the quite excellent and underrated "Operation: Flashpoint"). In fact. OFP is in almost EVERY way a better game than FC2... and it's what; a thousand years old?
There are some new minor touches such as gun wear, but how they were implemented is more of a hindrance to immersion rather than a supporting element, and like most of the "realism" touches seems more designed to stage-gate the game rather than to enhance it. AI isn pretty decent but built in cheats given to the opponents to enable them to give you a decent fight are also immersion killing (like the fact that even if you have the zippy dune buggy any NPC in a POS gremlin can run you down with ease).
I find respawn games to in general be a sign of poor design, but in this one they COULD have done it more realistically (reinforcements get dispatched from one of the cities after you take out a checkpoint), but instead they do the usual 'Pop in from nowhere'. It would allow you to get a bit of a payoff as the checkpoint wouldn't be restaffed as soon as you leave the area (avoiding the redundant taking out of the same checkpoint over and over)
The diamond hunt mini-game is silly and redundant, forcing you to run blow a lot of time for a minuscule payoff. Why not have the Player find slips of paper with GPS codes instead of silly proximity blinking lights. And give him a dozen diamonds per cache instead of 1, and put them out in remote areas so the player has to see all the wonderful artistry that went into the environmental work (Class 1 quality there, too bad the rest of the game isn't). I did it a few times but very quickly got bored with the idea and decided if it becomes important as the game progresses to hunt from such small quantities of diamonds I'll just download a hack to give myself the 300 I would have gotten from tracking down all those annoying suitcases.
Missions come from a number of sources but again... redundancy is the name of the game. Cell towers, weapons dealers, resistance cells don't even pretend to variety... giving you the EXACT same missions over and over again... and again... and again. Main plot missions have some variability so far, which (along with the fun of just wandering around sightseeing) has kept me from just chucking the game entirely.
The Malaria thing is another concept that could have been a cool element... but malaria isn't a chronic disease... you get it, you take meds, you get rid of it. In this game it's used to force you to take resistance missions, and it's more like VD... you can't get rid of it (no payoff for doing the missions).
Hint to game makers: if all a player can do through their actions is maintain the status quo... you're just creating an annoyance for them instead of creating a challenge to be overcome.
The plot itself is another serious problem, you're a merc... but for an open ended game this one does a pretty good job of FORCING you to insure your character has no actual personality. You're just a robot who automatically takes missions and executes them, the why's are thrown in as pointless window dressing because you don't really have a CHOICE about it. You HAVE to play both sides, you HAVE to take redundant resistance missions, you take out checkpoints and NPC's over and over with no thought whatsoever to what their role is in the plot... because it doesn't matter - everyone is a target because the back-story is just that - a disconnected story that doesn't really affect what you do in the game.
Open ended gameplay is my favorite style of game, but these folks need to take some lessons in keeping such games engaging... Far Cry 2 had (has) HUGE potential, but weak repetitive gameplay and plot problems are serious flaws that make this title an also-ran.