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Far Cry 2 (October 21)

The Scoop: Far Cry 2; Genre: first-person shooter; By: Ubisoft Montreal; From: Ubisoft; For: PlayStation 3, Windows, Xbox 360; Rating: Mature

Info: Deposited in a fictionalized slice of central Africa, players explore sprawling savannah and jungle zones any way they like, stalking an arms dealer dubbed "The Jackal" who has been selling weapons to rival factions battling over a diamond-plundered nation.

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Matt: Move over, Crysis. Far Cry 2 has all your visual sophistication (breakable vegetation, dynamic weather, destructible pretty much anything) and then some. The question is, will Far Cry 2 run on anything less than a supercomputer? And more important, can it slip free of the curse of open-ended "sandbox" games that slap handcuffs on players as the final act nears to force a predictable outcome? I'm all for "What happens if I do this?" game play--let's hope that Far Cry 2's endgame can capitalize on that freedom instead of flinching from it.

Darren: I have one thing to say to anyone who played the original Far Cry: rocket-launching gorillas. While that sounded all kinds of awesome, I found myself scratching my head so much that I kept getting killed. And no thanks to the original game's broken save-point system (developer-placed, invisible checkpoints that saved the game when you found them), I once had to redo an hour of progress after dying. Fun! What the heck does any of that have to do with the sequel? Nothing, I hope. A different development team is at the helm here, and an amazing amount of detail is going into the environment--as well as into how you can affect it. Go on, grab a flamethrower and burn down a virtual rain forest. Matt, you should be a little worried about your PC's beefiness. Far Cry 2 looks like the next big game to push graphical limits. Who knows--maybe this title will wind up in our WorldBench PC test suite someday.