Far cry 2 Christmas Special !

The first patch for PC will be released today worldwide, and will autoupdate when you launch the game. Patch 1.01

This patch is just a first step in our efforts to support you and our games, and we are still working on other issues reported, meaning you can expect other patches and updates to come soon.

Thanks all for your patience as we continue working on improving your gaming experience.

Far Cry was indeed an absolute classic. It's hard to think that the game is so many years old and it still looks and feels so fantastic. The lighting, shadows, character detail and overall story was phenomenal and there has been little to match up to the standards Far Cry set. With this in mind Far Cry 2 really did have huge expectations.

Throughout the game you are given missions which you have to fulfil. This can become quite tedious. Very similar to the style which is adopted in Assassins Creed. You obtain a mission brief, carry out the objective and return to receive the next brief. This for me felt quite repetitive. It's very much the case of drive here, shoot up enemies, drive there shoot up some more enemies. The distance you have to travel to complete missions really slows down the gameplay and you might well get bored quite quickly.

To conclude, this game was far from what I expected. With the high expectations that Far Cry the original set, Far Cry 2 did have some tough goals to achieve and sadly I feel they have not been. Enemy battles are the very much the same at the beginning of the game as they are through to the end, you might find this fun for 30 minutes but for the duration of the game itself? it gets quite boring. The bad points put aside, the game is a visual paradise but is this enough to merit it being a worthwhile purchase? I'm not too sure it is.

The service is through Xbox.com or PSN’s network, but it’s on Ubisoft’s server

There are two strategies, because if you created a map and then if you [set up] a match with it, people that connect to your game will download it from you

But if you post it on Ubisoft’s server, then players will connect to your game but they won’t have your map. The engine will select which has the best connection - is it from you or the Ubisoft server? - and then it will download it from the fastest connection

To watch the video

I think it's more fun for everybody. In Call of Duty 4, the good guys are always the same, they always play the same way. In Far Cry 2 you cannot do that. You have to adapt, you have to change your strategy. And with the map editor you won't be able to learn your maps, because you have so many and if you want to play with your friends and with different people then you have to switch - it will be a bit of a surprise all of the time. So I think it's more fun.

• So What’s it all about
• LP Pharand and Clint Hocking talk to Lazygamer
• Hands-on with Far Cry 2’s Single Player Campaign
• Hands-On With Far Cry 2’s Multiplayer
• A Map Editor To Destroy All Map Editors

Far Cry 2 began development in 2005, before the awful Far Cry: Instincts had made it to consoles. The developers from Ubisoft Montreal were asked to renew the Far Cry brand and bring something special to the plate. 174 people worked on the game for a total of three and a half years.

Inspiration was taken from books such as Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness as well as movies such as the 1961 Japanese film, Yojimbo, Apocalypse Now, Red Harvest and Fist Full of Dollars.

Characters look sharp and the animations are realistic. You will have complex areas of towns, huts, rivers, roads and people as well as open savannas with animals and plains. The framerate has taken a bit of a knock from it though as you will easily see that it doesn’t run very close to the 60fps mark but still keeps things smooth and playable.

The game ships with 14 maps, six large, four medium and six small. This does however, mean absolutely nothing. While the maps are a lot of fun to play, the real fun is going to come in the shape of the map editor.

Of course, when you're roaming the streets of an African shanty town, it pays to have a friend by your side. In Far Cry 2's main campaign you have access to buddies who will risk their lives to rescue you in combat, and in multiplayer you'll be able to perform the same service for your team mates. Assuming the opposition doesn't completely destroy you (with a rocket, for example), there will be a brief window of opportunity after an attack knocks you out of the fight. If a friend can get to you before you bleed to death, they'll help you back up to your feet and you can carry on fighting. However, there's a catch here: your attacker might still be in the vicinity - and if they've not finished you off, there's probably a reason for that. Remember the sniper scene from the end of Full Metal Jacket? In this game, rescuing a fallen comrade is extremely risky. All the same, you'll want to give it a go because a) you'll feel like a champion if you pull it off and b) saving a friend means their kill isn't counted on the other side's score. In a close team deathmatch, this could be the deciding factor that brings you victory.

Presented in association with our good selves, Jackal Hunt is a turn-based multiplayer game and competition in which players have to try and track down a specific player and bump him off before another, unidentified player takes them out instead.

The game will show you the location of your target, but not the person tracking you. Eek! However, you do get to see the person tracking them, allowing you to try and triangulate to some extent. The idea is to set as high a score as possible by killing enemies, collecting pickups and surviving for as long as possible.

If you're good enough to rise to the rank of Jackal and put a score on a leaderboard, you could win one of four gaming PCs, ten XFX graphics cards, a PlayStation 3, an Xbox 360, a Philips amBX ambient gaming peripheral system, or loads of Far Cry 2 merchandise.

Direct link to source, It hasn't been announced yet but it is still midday. So watch this space, well be posting the relevant update shortly

Farcry 2 Grabs 9 out of 10!

Whatever happens you'll believe it's a real world and a fantastic setting for the action. It's not as dense or as varied as, say, Oblivion - you'll go somewhere, kill everyone, every mission - but it's utterly convincing and engrossing.

We're in a massively exciting period for FPS games and, along with contemporaries like Mirror's Edge, Bioshock and Fallout 3, this is an essential chapter in the new wave of shooters.

For sure, starting last fall, it was like the new reference for multiplayer

We played it a lot, and people on the team played it a lot, and then we discussed. Some people wanted to be exactly like it and then we said, ‘No. Our core technology and the core mechanics of single-player are not Call of Duty-like.

We wanted to keep some of the cool things that Call of Duty brought – the progressions system is one thing – but then, we tried the same progression, as in you unlock weapons as you go, etc, but it didn’t work for us. It was a bit too chaotic. Our map, with the dynamics of the destructibility, the fire, the night and day cycle: it wasn’t working fine.

So we said, ‘OK, we have some mechanics that are really good from the single-player and we’re going to bring them to the multiplayer and just adapt them.’ So, some of the animation, reloading, iron sight, we tweaked them so they’re a bit faster in multiplayer, but not as fast as another shooter

To me, a multiplayer game needs to be accessible above everything else. Players need to understand what you have to do the moment you're dropped in the game and that wasn't the case with Kane & Lynch. With Far Cry 2, however, you know exactly what you have to do -- shoot the enemy!

Another aspect that marked the game out was being able to revive team mates. It opened up some quite dark strategies -- at one point I sniped someone from the opposing team and as their teammates went to revive them I picked them off one by one!

When we first got the single-player code in I wasn't that impressed with how it looked and played, and that was on a 360, as was our multiplayer experience. Unfortunately the main shooting mechanics of Far Cry 2 don't stand up to the opposition, it's not as fast or precise, and that's quite obvious in multiplayer. It's not as solid a shooter as either Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4, and I'm not sure if it does enough different to oust either of those games from the top spot. Gamers -- even the most dedicated hardcore -- only have time for one or two multiplayer games, due to the dedication needed to get good and learn the maps, so I'm not sure Far Cry 2 has enough to take from either of those.

Far Cry will always be a single-player game to me -- that's why I'm excited about playing through Far Cry 2, to explore the open world and have an experience that'll be different from anyone else's. And while I don't think the multiplayer has to same edge as Call of Duty, I do think it's an entertaining way to spend a few hours. I'll definitely give it a go when the final game comes out.

Farcry 2 Grabs 9 out of 10!

Far Cry 2 is this year's equivalent of Assassin's Creed... when it comes to enveloping the player in exotic sights and sounds, Ubisoft has absolutely nailed it," says our reviewer Ben Talbot, explaining why Far Cry 2 could be this year's big hit like Ubisoft's acrobatic Assassin's Creed was in 2007. "What separates Far Cry 2 from other shooters of this ilk is that there really aren't any rules to follow.

the custom map feature makes Halo 3's editor look like a joke." And speaking of the game's difficulty, Ben also says that "it provides a truly refreshing level of difficulty for the hardcore.