A Great, Volumnous shooter held back by pacing issues
I'll start off with the game play. Far Cry 2 is totally open world, no loading screens whatsoever when driving about the map, which is absolutely huge. the size of the map can work against the game sometimes, if you become stranded without a vehicle in the middle of nowhere, you will have to trek for a very long time to get another one. The game has an immense sense of realism and submersion, you never leave the view of the character you play for the duration of the game, and the spectacular animations of your character really help bring you in. It has a very unique health system, where you carry a number of syringes with morphine or something used to heal yourself, and if you health gets too low, you have to perform self surgery, which is done with another spectacular animation.
The combat in the game is decent, but not amazing, and the lack of prone and peek abilities can make cover hard to come by. this is partly saved by a simple yet highly useful sliding mechanic, which has saved my ass many, many times in intense combat. Usually, you will be fighting your way through checkpoints, rather annoying hostile stations placed all over the main routes of transportation. the spawn times of the enemy are very, very short, so if you clear out a checkpoint and come back in 10 minutes, it will be repopulated. The gunplay is solid, with good sound effects and kick, but the enemies take too much damage before they die, and the enemy AI is often broken, with enemies not seeing you when you stand right beside them.
Now onto the pacing issues. At times, the plot is very engrossing, between acts 1 and 2, 2 and three, and the end of three the missions link together and the game is at it's best. but between those times, the games slows to a crawl. you have to do often painful side missions to get medicine for your malaria, and other side missions to unlock weapons. luckily, there is a very useful bus system that helps eliminate travel times, but you will still spend a lot of time in a car driving around. luckily the cars handle very well, and those with guns on the back help for clearing out checkpoints.
If the singleplayer mode is not for you, Far Cry 2 also has a fun and robust multiplayer, with unlockable weapons, and unlimited maps thanks to the easy to use map editor. The multiplayer is held back by a silly match joining system, where you have to wait for a new match to start before you can join, but usually this is not a problem since there are so many servers, you can usually start playing with in 2 minutes of starting the multiplayer, often less.
Visually, this game is outstanding. It has a very clean, polished look to it, and it is very well optimized to boot. it also scales very well, so the game looks great on more modest rigs. the lighting and shading effects are spectacular, shadows are very detailed but soft, and textures are clean with just the right amount of specular, so that it looks very realistic. The firephysics are very well done, and can turn a standard firefight into a scramble to escape a blazing fires path. The character models are not as good as the rest of the visuals, but they are still decent. the gun models are amazing, the start out shiny when new, and grow rusty and scratched with age. Far Cry 2 gets a 10/10 in the visual and technical department, it looks great, runs great, and has minimal loading screens.
Overall, i would reccomend this game to any shooter fan, but please, go in with a open mind and don't let all the negative coverage of the game sway your opinions. it is a very fun game that can entertain you for months.