What are friends for? In GTA IV they act as the keys to progression, doling out missions and rewarding you with abilities – all the while lending the world a persistence that makes it feel alive. In firstperson shooter Far Cry 2 they act similarly, giving meaning and a loose structure to the game’s huge open world. But they differ in two fundamental respects: they can be struck from the script at any moment by a hail of gunfire, and you don’t ever have to take them bowling.

There are 12 such characters in the game, of which the nine men are playable – when you select one to play as he is effectively removed from the storyline and given over to the player as a blank slate.

“The remaining buddies are randomly seeded into the world at the beginning,” explains Ubisoft Montreal’s creative director, Clint Hocking. “They’re mostly being held captive by someone, somewhere, although there are a few that are found just through exploration. You will be sent at the very beginning of the game on at least one mission to rescue a buddy. If you succeed and they live, you can meet them in the safehouses you’ve unlocked and they’ll offer optional ways to do missions.”



During our time with the game, Irishman Frank Bilders asks us to blow up a pipeline on the outskirts of a jungle. Another buddy, Warren, offers to give us a hand if we find ourselves in trouble. Should we be shot down, Warren will now appear to drag us from combat and patch us up, but in so doing puts his own life at risk. Such a safety net is worth having, however – combat in Far Cry 2 is no breeze. Guns jam and run out of bullets frequently. Enemies are rarely down in a single shot, and react to their surroundings shrewdly. This makes them formidable opponents, but also means that positioning and geography make fights play out differently depending on the angle of attack. It turns the openness of the world into a source of emergent tactical possibility, particularly when combined with the use of fire to cut off enemies’ access to their redoubt, or funnel them to their deaths.

Of course, fire isn’t easily controlled in parched grassland, as we discover when our overzealous use of Molotov cocktails turns a militia outpost into a barbecue. We escape by fleeing across a bridge in a jeep, moments before it is consumed by flames. If the level of world detail we saw in our hands-on demo is indicative of the game as a whole, then Ubisoft Montreal has created an Africa bustling with diversion, a place that feels populated and dynamic. How the interaction with NPCs knits each mission into the wider experience remains to be seen, but that kernel of the game – the world itself, how you move through it, who you shoot and what they do next – has been realized with acumen. We hope our buddies can live up to it.