Far Cry 2 DLC

By rights, I should be asleep but I'm not for reasons too long and complicated to go into here. To pass the time, I downloaded Far Cry 2's DLC.

First things first, the DLC cost £4. I'm not entirely sure if this is worth it or not... On the one hand, it's a rip off. Three new weapons? Is that it? On the other hand, I've spent that much on Wispa bars in the last week so maybe I should re-analyse the way I spend my money.

Anyway, I'm glad I bought it.

And it's not because the weapons that come with the game are especially fantastic. They're not. They're okay. What's nice about them is....


Okay, I have to go off on a slight tangent but bear with me.

Why I love Far Cry 2 almost as much as I love Crysis Warhead is- There's so much variety in the play styles. Both the aforementioned games are masters of varying gameplay. Crysis does it through unparalleled (for an FPS) levels of user interaction with the environments. Far Cry 2 does it by providing you with a huge arsenal but limiting you to three of the superb weapons at a time. There are no perfect combinations, you always have to make sacrifices.

From that point of view, you aren't buying individual things for Far Cry 2, you're expanding one section of the game, the section that makes it truly great - the weapons. You're adding another chunk of variety to an all ready very varied game.

What's quite nice about all these weapons is, once you've bought the DLC, that's it. You have them - they're in a box in all your weapons warehouses. I was kind of expecting to have to buy them in game, which would have been a bit cheeky. As a result, I can see these being really useful early in the game before you've unlocked the serious gear like the automatic grenade launcher and the sniper rifles.

So, what are they like?

1) The Sawn Off Shotgun

This fills the small weapon slot and is therefore competing against the Uzi, the .50 cal and so on. From that point of view, it's quite good. Both barrels are wired to fire at once, which is nice. The re-load time is quite long so if you miss you're pretty screwed but it's quite a nice alternative to the other weapons on offer.

Especially as if I want a gun for the small guns thing, I always take the UZI, never the .50 cal. I never see the point. So it's nice to see more guns on offer for a relatively gun-lite area.


2) The silenced shotgun.

Now, as someone who knows practically nothing about guns, I think the idea of SILENCING a shotgun is utterly ridiculous. The silencer would have to be the size of a house. But if I'm wrong about this, I'm wrong. Screw it.

This is probably the weakest of the new weapons - it's another shotgun, woo. That makes four available for the medium weapon slot alone. I don't think I'll be using it much but what I do like about it is- it expands the game's quite scant stealthy weapons selection. It's a welcome addition for that at least.


3) The Crossbow.

A crossbow. Woo. Talk about bringing a knife to a gun fight.

That's what I thought when I read the word "crossbow" in the same sentence as "far cry 2". Then I played with it and discovered that the cross bow bolts EXPLODE. How? I don't know. Maybe they're magic but they fucking EXPLODE. That's awesome.

This gives you a precious addition to your arsenal - a silent blowing things up weapon that's not the remote mines....

It carries 5 exploding bolts which is quite a fair number. The reload time is also considerably less than for either of the RPG's so I can see it taking the place of those for some missions. It isn't heat seeking like the big arse RPG but that's what this game is about - balancing pro's and cons.


There are new vehicles as well in this pack and they're quite nice I suppose. I'm extremely apathetic about them. If they're around, I use them. If they're not, I don't. I also don't give two shits about the extra multiplayer maps as the multiplayer in FC2 really isn't very good.

So what conclusions can I take from this?

Well, I quite like the DLC. It does wrankle slightly to be paying for stuff like this when I'm used to Valve providing it for free but screw it, it's Ubisoft. Ubisoft have been very good to us over the years and are one of the only games companies out there still producing games that could be called in any way original...

Can I recommend it to other people....

Well that's a tough one. It depends how much of the game you've played. If, like me, you're on your third play through and things are feeling a little stale, definitely. It doesn't breathe new life into the game but the new weapons definitely make you approach missions differently to how you'd otherwise be doing them.

To people on their first or second play through... I probably wouldn't recommend it. There's more than enough kit in the game to entertain you. From a practical point of view, there's almost certainly more of this kit incoming and if you wait to get hold of it (as is quite sensible as none of it is jaw-droppingly awesome) it'll be cheaper when the new lot comes out.