Fifa 09
Pros: Good animations
Cons: A new year, a new game…
Fifa 09 is available for just about every platform you’d care to name, although they do vary slightly. EA boasts of a new animation engine with FIFA 09, and certainly the players, stadiums and general animation are of a very high quality, although you’ll typically be too busy playing to take too much notice. As FIFA games tend to, it plays a good, tactical game of soccer – those looking for a quick knockabout game will find all but the game’s lowest difficulty settings just too challenging. As with previous FIFA titles one of the key points of appeal is the vast number of teams, leagues and cups on offer; if you can think of a football competition, it’s almost certainly here. The games console roots definitely shine through in this little number and as always, everything’s more fun with a gamepad.
Overall I score it a 3.5/5.
Far Cry 2
Pros: Looks gorgeous; huge open-ended world
Cons: Some dull missions; a little buggy
The second game in the Far Cry series relocates the action to a grimy African nation torn apart by war – quite a bit of war, as you’ll quickly discover, having taken on the task of hunting down the chap who’s immorally getting rich off the proceeds of selling weapons to both sides. That’s not a recipe for the happiest game, and things don’t look any less bleak when you start the game with a crippling bout of malaria.
In some ways, that should in fact be a recipe for a game that’s a bit too close to reality, but Far Cry 2 manages to pull it off. It’s a first person shooter with some light puzzles and some absolutely stunning visuals within what is a huge game world. Ubisoft claims it’s over 50 square kilometres, and I’m tempted to believe it.
Far Cry 2 has plenty of length, although it does get annoying that some missions are deliberately set miles apart just to make them longer. I also found that the game was full of bugs and loves to crash, especially after a long spell of not saving, oh how fun that can be.
Games that try for ‘realism’ have to be careful to deliver ‘fun’ as well, and for the most part, Far Cry 2 does this reasonably well.
Overall I score it a 3.5/5.
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