Far Cry

The original Far Cry was a PC game that was perhaps the first of the "next-gen" first-person shooter games exemplified by the likes of Half Life 2, Doom 3, and F.E.A.R. It was released a few months before Doom 3 and Half Life 2 by the then-unknown developers Crytek, for whom it was their debut title. The game was critically acclaimed for what was at the time truly mind-blowing graphics, wide-open open-ended levels set in lush tropical jungle islands, and advanced enemy A.I.

The basic premise of the game has boat captain Jack Carver, a sarcastic, ill-tempered man in a gaudy Hawaiian T-shirt, having his boat blown up and forced into battling a small army of mercenaries on a series of tropical islands owned by reclusive geneticist Dr. Krieger. After several levels, killer mutants known as Trigens start attacking both Jack and the mercenaries, and it is revealed that Krieger has been working on creating mutants For Science!!

The game's popularity spawned a console version, Far Cry: Instincts, which was made by Ubisoft instead of Crytek and had the same characters and basic plot premise, but markedly different gameplay, levels, and story. Besides simplified A.I. and graphics and more console-style gameplay, Far Cry: Instincts also gave the player character access to special mutant "feral powers" which included regenerating health, super-speed, super-jumps, and super-melee attacks. Far Cry Instincts: Evolution was the sequel to the console version, and switched from fighting mercenaries and mutants in a fictional series of tropical islands to fighting pirates and feral warriors in Indonesia. The story for Evolution has Jack being lured into a gunrunning scheme by half-native Femme Fatale Kade, which ultimately leads to him battling pirates and government soldiers while being hunted by Westerner-hating native warrior Semeru and his tribe of feral warriors, who all possess the same feral powers as Jack.

After publisher Ubisoft and developer Crytek parted ways, Crytek kept their engine and went on to create Crysis, while Ubisoft retained the name rights and went on to develop Far Cry 2, a sequel In Name Only that has the player take the role of one of a dozen mercenaries working in a war-torn African nation, playing both sides while hunting a notorious arms dealer known as the Jackal. The game lacks the mutants and sci-fi aspects of the original Far Cry, instead opting for a darker, morally ambiguous story inspired by the Joseph Conrad novel The Heart of Darkness (not to mention Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal). Far Cry 2 features a completely Wide Open Sandbox game structure. There are no levels, and the game takes place in a 20 square mile area that the player can explore freely, traveling on foot, via vehicles, or by riding buses from station to station.

Far Cry 3 has just been announced and is in development. The game returns back to the island setting and see you play as Jason Brody, part of a group of vacationers that had the misfortune of getting stranded on an island in the middle of a civil war. Jason's brother is killed and his girlfriend is kidnapped by Vaas, the deranged leader of a group of armed mercenaries. Now Jason must take on his entire army to get her back, though his sanity may be on the line along the way.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

Far Cry 4

Far Cry 5

There was also a movie made of Far Cry made by... Uwe Boll. Most notable in that Stuttering Craig and Handsome Tom of ScrewAttack are in it, and so are Hugo Stiglitz and Anthony Bourdain, oddly enough.


 * Action Girl: Valerie Cortez really likes to kill people in Instincts. In Far Cry... not so much.
 * The All-Seeing AI: Notably averted; enemies can't see you if you hide in foliage, and a large part of the game involves jungle warfare using the plants to conceal your position from the enemy. Trigens, on the other hand...
 * All Your Powers Combined:  has the abilities of all 3 humanoid Trigen types (superjumps, super durability, and cloaking). Interestingly, this makes him quite similar to the nanosuit-wearing protagonist of Crysis.
 * Artificial Stupidity: The Feral Warriors in Evolution will occasional overshoot their super-jumps and end up flying off cliffs Wily Coyote style.
 * Authority Equals Asskicking: In Far Cry, Crowe the mercenary leader is a bit tougher than his men (partially because he has a bit more health, but mostly because he has an M249), and Krieger himself . In Far Cry: Instincts, Crowe  . Likewise, in Far Cry Instincts: Vengeance, both the Commando Leader and Big Bad Semeru put up a much bigger fight than their standard Mooks.
 * Bad Boss: In Instincts, Crowe releases the mutants all over the islands, causing his own men to be overrun. Not to be outdone, Krieger sends in his personal elite troops to kill everybody to clean up Crowe's mess.
 * Bare Your Midriff: Val. Sheesh, girl, put on a flak jacket!
 * In Instincts, Val starts out wearing nothing but short shorts and the briefest of tube tops, the better to show off her perfect abs. After the shooting starts, though, the next time you meet her she's wearing a reasonably sensible, non-midriff baring khaki safari shirt, long pants, and hiking boots.
 * Black Helicopters: Well, Ospreys.
 * Bond Villain Stupidity: The Mole reveals his identity at the end for no reason other than to gloat at you, motivating you to spend your last minutes to hunt him down and kill him.
 * In Vengeance, the Wii version of Evolution, Kade stabs Jack after he kills Semeru for her, then gives him a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness speech. Unfortunately for her, Jack, a superpowered killing machine, is barely phased by the stab and very much pissed at learning about her betrayal.
 * Chekhov's Volcano: At the end of the first game.
 * Collapsing Lair: See above.
 * Convection, Schmonvection: The final battle takes place in the crater of an active volcano.
 * Copy Protection: In an early example of Ubisoft's rather draconian attitudes toward possible software piracy, the game would refuse to start if it detected certain CD copying or emulation programs on the system. It went further than just not letting you simultaneously run the game and the tools in question, however -- the game would actually demand that you uninstall any tools it thought could be used for piracy. It Got Worse if the tools in question did a less-than-perfect uninstallation, which would require you to trawl through the registry and Program Files directory in order to satisfy the game's demands. Or, alternatively, you could just use a hacked executable.
 * Darker and Edgier: The Instincts storyline is noticeably darker than the original Far Cry, with all the characters generally being much bigger jerks.
 * Dungeon Bypass: In the PC version, you can shoot the chains holding the lifeboat from the lower deck of the carrier in the second level. Doing so lets you skip the shootout on top of the carrier.
 * Enemy Scan: One function of the binoculars is the ability to tag enemies so they appear on your radar.
 * Elite Mooks: The gasmask-wearing Elite Mercenaries in Far Cry, armed with the best weapons and armor and possessing superior tactics and thermal-vision goggles. These guys can take about half a mag of assault rifle fire to kill, compared to just a few shots for the standard enemy Mooks.
 * They appear in the last 2 levels of Far Cry Instincts, too. There's also the Alpha Trigen Soldiers; you fight a few dozen of them just before the final boss fight. Both of these enemy types also have a 50% damage bonus to their bullets, which means they can kill you much faster than you can kill them.
 * Escort Mission: In Far Cry, Valerie tags along for about 10 minutes at the beginning of the Swamp level, but she's tolerable as long as you don't try to shove her into an actual firefight. In Instincts you have to protect Doyle through a gauntlet of a few dozen Elite Mooks, and again in Evolution you have to defend him from waves of attacking rebels.
 * Everything's Better with Monkeys: Subverted by the monkey Trigens, who were generally hated by many players due to their ability to quickly kill you.
 * For Science!: Krieger's apparent motive for creating the Trigens in the first place.
 * Giant Mook: The 9-foot tall "Fat Boy" Trigens, who have a rocket launcher for an arm and can soak almost a hundred bullets worth of assault rifle fire. In a game with otherwise "realistic" combat where enemies can be brought down with about 3 assault rifle hits each, this can be quite jarring at first.
 * Harder Than Hard: Realistic difficulty. Made easier if you know how to take cover and dodge shots efficiently, and know the enemy locations, but good luck if you can't find any armor... highest levels are straight up Nintendo Hard.
 * Hopeless Boss Fight: Your first encounter with Big Bad Semeru in Instincts: Evolution. You can't kill him, and the fight ends as soon as he lands a hit on you.
 * Invisibility Flicker: Averted. The Stealth Trigen are truly invisible, with almost no distortion giving them away (fortunately, you're armed with special goggles that reveal them). However, when the player first encounters them there's a pool of shallow water nearby that makes plainly visible ripples when they step in it.
 * Lighter and Softer: Vengeance, the Wii version of Evolution, is a bit lighter and softer; notably Jack is a slightly nicer guy (even suffering something of the Dulcinea Effect in regards to Kade). He also never manages to sleep with her in Vengeance.
 * Mad Scientist: Krieger. Lampshaded by copies of Evil Science magazine found here and there throughout the game.
 * Melee a Trois: Jack vs. Mercs vs. Trigens. Mercs vs. Soldier Trigen fights are pretty static, though, since AI NPCs do dramatically reduced damage to other AI NPCs, so if you just hide and wait for them to kill each other you'll be waiting a LONG time.
 * Instincts has a four-way fight between Jack, Crowe's Mercs, the Mutants, and Kriger's personal elite troopers who he sends in to kill all of the above.
 * Ms. Fanservice: Val. And Kade in Far Cry Instincts: Evolution.
 * The Mole:.
 * Never Found the Body: Lampshaded by Val in Instincts after Doyle disappears following a huge helicopter crash. Sure enough, he turns up again at the end just fine. Averted in Evolution, where
 * No-Gear Level: One of the final levels has Dr. Krieger taking away all your guns and dropping you into a jungle full of battling Trigens and mercenaries.
 * He does give you ONE weapon... An assault rifle with ten rounds in it, just enough to kill the first trigen you see. After that, it is a No-Gear Level.
 * One-Man Army: Jack Carver. Enemy mooks speculate about how one person could not possibly pull off the stunts he does. However, his Genre Savvy allies Val and Doyle both expect and demand that he be a One-Man Army on a regular basis.
 * Even lampshaded at one point in Evolution. Carver asks Doyle why he has to do 3 mission objectives while Doyle only gets one, Doyle replies simply that he doesn't have Jack's "skills".
 * Outrun the Fireball: Done with a nuke.
 * Power Fist: Jack's arms a quarter of the way through Instincts.
 * Psycho Serum: Krieger's mutagen causes massively increased muscle development, but also induces complete mindless psychotic rage. In Instincts it's not even that good, turning most of his subjects into rabid gun-wielding zombies.
 * Race Lift: Mainly as a result of the Instincts characters being extremely different from their Far Cry counterparts. Most notably, in Far Cry Roland Doyle is a black scientist who, while in Instincts David Doyle is a white guy who kinda looks like Bruce Campbell and sort of becomes your Vitriolic Best Buds. Also, Valerie Constantine is changed to Valerie Cortez in Instincts.
 * Rare Guns: The Pancor Jackhammer and OICW appear as quite common standard weapons, the Jackhammer as the game's default shotgun, and the OICW as the weapon of choice for the game's Elite Mooks.
 * Rule of Perception: The weapon in your hand, and only that weapon, governs how long you can sprint for.
 * Scenery Porn: One of the game's defining attributes.
 * Shoot the Shaggy Dog: In Evolution, after going through one of the game's most annoying difficult fights in order to protect a badly injured Doyle from attacking rebels, you go off to look for an escape vehicle, and when you get back Doyle has apparently crawled off, leaving a trail of blood for you to follow. After following his trail for 2 entire levels,.
 * The Starscream: . In the Instincts storyline, Crowe turns against Krieger about 3/4ths of the way through the game and tries to take over the operation himself.
 * Stripperiffic: Val again. Notable mostly because while Jack takes the time to put on a bulletproof vest over his attention-attracting shirt, she goes everywhere wearing short shorts and a tank top. Or less.
 * In Instincts, Val starts out like this (wearing nothing but shorts and a tube top to show off her perfect abs), but puts on a reasonably sensible khaki safari shirt, long pants, and hiking boots after the shooting starts. No flak vest, though.
 * Super Drowning Skills: The Trigens' one weakness. It's still unclear whether this was intentional or not. Given that the Korean soldiers in Crysis suffer a similar problem, perhaps not.
 * Superpowered Mooks: The Feral Warriors from Instincts: Evolution. They have enhanced speed, enhanced jumping ability, enhanced durability, and a really mean melee attack... in fact in some ways they're more impressive than the enemy Nanosuit Soldiers in Crysis.
 * Although you can still mow through them quite quickly with Feral Attacks.
 * Unexpected Gameplay Change: The switch from fighting mercenaries using intelligent infantry tactics in the jungle to fighting packs of two-hit-kill melee mutants in dank corridors.
 * Voice with an Internet Connection: Doyle, who talks you through the entire game.
 * Wounded Gazelle Gambit: In Vengeance, the Wii version of Evolution, it's revealed Kade was partners with Semeru in creating the rebel army, and manipulated Jack into killing Semeru so she could take it all for herself. This makes more sense than the original Evolution plotline, where Jack and Kade just run into Semeru repeatedly by sheer bad luck.
 * You Kill It, You Bought It: At the end of Instincts, Jack becomes the new pack Alpha of the mutants after he kills Crowe. That lasts for about 1 minute, as the mutants help Jack kill Krieger then opt to stay behind while the island blows up. In Vengeance, the Wii version of Evolution, the Rebels take Jack as their new leader after he kills Semeru.

Far Cry 2 shows examples of the following tropes:
"The Jackal: The death of a 23 year old from Iwoa gets more air time than the death of 50,000 people he gave his life to protect. Even if they did give a shit about things over here their own media prevents them from taking any action."
 * AKA-47: Mostly averted with real weapon names, save the Desert Eagle ("Eagle .50") and Star Model-P ("Star .45"), though the FAL is labelled as the wrong model ("FAL Paratrooper," a version which should have a folding stock) and the AR-16 is a basically fictional AR-15 pattern rifle given the name of a highly obscure prototype to explain why it's sharing ammo with two battle rifles (see also Rare Guns below). The text on the weapon models, however, quotes fictional company names such as "Precision Armament" instead of Heckler & Koch.
 * Actually, Precision Armaments is a real company that specializes in replicas and what some would consider "ripoffs" of other companies' work, including Heckler & Koch, which throws this into Fridge Brilliance: H&K is far too reputable to take conflict diamonds as payment, but Precision Armaments is just sleazy enough.
 * The All-Seeing AI: Long grass and cover often doesn't seem to have quite the same effect on their line of sight that it does on yours.
 * Arbitrary Maximum Range: Once you light a fire, it will spread...up to a set distance. After which it will go out no matter what's around it. It's fairly obvious this is a gameplay conceit to avoid burning down half the map with a single Molotov, but it's still a little jarring seeing perfect circles of scorched earth surrounded by untouched tinder-dry grass.
 * In a post-mortem developer interview, the developer responsible for the fire tech (who got given the task of implementing a basic fire system expecting it to be a fairly routine job, then ended up getting obsessed with fire dynamics and spending the best part of a year on it) said that they had to put an Arbitrary Maximum Range on it after starting a fire to test the technology out and watching it quickly spread and engulf the entire game world, killing every man, woman and beast in it.
 * Arms Dealer: The Jackal is supposed to be one, the Arms Dealer (which is the only name you ever get for him) is one.
 * Authority Equals Asskicking: Completely averted. Every single assassination target (including the faction leaders), will simply stand there with their hands in the air, telling you not to shoot them. Even if you shoot them in the leg to aggro them, they're no tougher than a standard merc, and are armed only with pistols to boot.
 * Bag of Sharing: Once bought, the storage crates allow a weapon to be placed in any of them and retrieved from any other one. They're at every Safe House and Arms Dealer.
 * BFG: All but one weapon in the heavy weapon slot (the tranq rifle) qualify, as do the mounted M2 heavy machine gun and the Mark 19.
 * Bilingual Bonus: Enemy mercenaries are sometimes heard to shout in Afrikaans.
 * And Xhosa.
 * Knowing either of these languages can give you a tactical bonus. Most of it (as with the English voice files) is just empty threats, but enemy soldiers also sometimes loudly lament the fact that their gun is jammed, or that they need to reload. While they're busy broadcasting their problems to the world in general, you know you can safely hop around the corner for a spell and shoot them in the head.
 * Bling Bling Bang: You can find golden AK-47s throughout the game. For some reasons, they are more durable than the normal, non-shiny ones. Possibly because nobody in universe knows how to maintain a firearm.
 * Bolivian Army Ending: See below.
 * Boring but Practical: While there's a large selection of weaponry, the cross-country drives tend to militate against specialist hardware; gravitating towards M79 / SVD / LPO-50 lets the player deal with almost any potential threat, but leaves all the shinier hardware back at base.
 * Breakable Weapons: Weapons have a chance of jamming, or even exploding in your hand, after prolonged use. Poor condition weapons taken from killed enemy soldiers are most prone to these problems, whereas new guns taken from the armories (next to weapon shops) are much more reliable. A lack of means to repair weapons means prolonged firefights and tactical choice of weaponry go hand in hand.
 * But Thou Must!: It's impossible, despite claims in some reviews, to pick a side; once you've done all one faction's missions in an area, the plot is on hold until you've done the other faction's.
 * Call a Hit Point a Smeerp: Paper money is worthless in the game (which makes sense, considering the local government has folded), and you are paid in fist-sized uncut diamonds for your efforts. You can also shop for weapons, gear, etc., and pay for them... online... with diamonds.
 * Collection Sidequest: Collect diamonds from cases scattered around in order to spend them on weapons. There are also audio tapes to be found which give insight into the Big Bad (which, in a well-known but still uncorrected bug, stop giving different messages after the second map). And promotional content gives predecessor tapes to collect.
 * The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The AI vehicles go much faster than yours, making escape impossible on flat terrain. Thankfully, the AI can't drive worth a damn and will smash into a tree or cliff when you're in the jungle areas.
 * When they see you they suddenly shift gears to catch up; something you can't do.
 * Cool Guns: A fair bit of that page's list is present and correct.
 * Critical Existence Failure: Vehicles can be repaired from near-critical damage to full health infinitely. However, if they're damaged to the point there's black smoke and fire coming from the engine, they're basically doomed.
 * If you look closely at the ratchet, you see the Not Exploding Bolt on the radiator isn't even being tightened or loosened. Merely jiggled a bit.
 * All the weapons fall into this as they all explode in some way once they run out of durability.
 * Cutscene Incompetence: The Jackal always gets the drop on you. In addition, the player character manages to contract Malaria during the opening cinematic.
 * And after you get Malaria, the Jackal nurses you back to health. Yes. It is just as embarrassing as it sounds.
 * Darker and Edgier
 * Difficult but Awesome: If you know how to aim the mortar (hint: press reload to fire HE rounds), you can take down whole bases of heavily armed mercenaries without any resistance.
 * Disc One Final Dungeon: As the player reaches the end of the missions in the North, it seems the game is winding down to a conclusion where one faction emerges victorious. You then totally screw that up and are sent to the second map where the game more or less starts over.
 * Disconnected Side Area: The Very Definitely Final Dungeon is located in the bottom-right of the South map. It looks reachable down the river to the North, but the only actual way through is past a Point of No Return in the next map section over.
 * Double Agent: Regardless of choice, you ultimately end up working for both the UFLL and APR, then later screwing either one of the other to temporarily weaken that side's power in exchange for the other's.
 * Downer Ending: At the end of the game,
 * Downloadable Content: The Fortunes Pack adds three new weapons (sawed-off shotgun, silenced shotgun, explosive crossbow) in a crate in the middle of the Arms Dealer's warehouse, and two new vehicles, the Unimog (a big truck that always has an M2) and quad bike, which respectively replace some of the trucks and cars.
 * Handy when your starter RPG (If you even get it over the LPO) decides to explode in your face. Good luck taking on jeeps with hand grenades.
 * Dragon Ascendant / The Starscream: Nick Greaves and Hector Voorhees, the foreign mercenary commanders working for [APR] and [UFLL], end up taking control of the two factions after the top faction leaders are both killed at the end of Act 2. In turn, the faction Lieutenant who saved you at the beginning of the game, and his opposite number on the other side, hire you to kill Greaves and Voorhees so they can take their place as the top warlords.
 * Easy Logistics: Damaged vehicle? Don't worry about taking it to a repair shop, just pop the hood and tighten the Not Exploding Bolt on the radiator.
 * Emergency Weapon: The machete, literally. Not "stealth weapon" or "one-hit kill weapon", just "emergency weapon".
 * Creating an account with Ubisoft gives you more options for the cosmetic look of the machete.
 * Enemy Scan: The monocular magically fills in everything in "major" area if you spot one thing of that type; the types are vehicles, weapons (mounted guns and snipers), first aid and ammo. Spotting the main powerup in a checkpoint counts as "scouting" it.
 * Equal Opportunity Evil: Because a game that consisted solely of shooting Black people in the face would be incredibly controversial, a fairly large portion of the enemy soldiers in the game are White foreign mercenaries (many of whom possess hilarious South African accents). One of the villainous Faction Lieutenants is even an Evil Brit Evil Albino.
 * Et Tu, Brute?: The game's "final battle" is.
 * Additionally, some of the optional buddy missions (especially those given by the 3 female mercs) given to you at Mike's Bar were actually fairly altruistic in motive (collecting evidence of war crimes, destroying weapon supplies, etc.),.
 * Especially the guys that saved you half a dozen times before, and in whose interest you literally killed for.
 * To be fair to them, they are pretty good friends and they appear to genuinely care for you, risking their own lives to help you. Just that they can't take any more of the crapsack country.
 * Every Car Is a Pinto: Apparently cars in this country are powered by blasting caps and dynamite.
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: Unlike STALKER or Boiling Point: Road to Hell, the game is a near-constant firefight as everyone in the game world will try to shoot you on sight. Only a few mission givers in no-weapon areas can be talked to.
 * Allied with one faction? Don't expect help. Or even neutrality: "your" side will try to kill you too.
 * Evil Versus Evil: The UFLL and APR, the game's two main factions, both claim to have the people's best interests at heart, but both are ultimately shown to be evil, led by greedy ambitious men and staffed with psychopathic killers and thugs. The player character himself/herself also commits a number of morally questionable actions throughout the course of the game, notably shutting off fresh water supplies to a neighboring country, leading to the climactic "final battle" where they.
 * Exploding Barrels: They might not have much else left in this country, but they seem to have a limitless supply of propane and gasoline.
 * Expy: The Jackal is on of Kurtz, from Apocalypse Now.
 * Fetch Quest: A lot of the "subverted" missions boil down to going to a place, getting / destroying / otherwise triggering a thing, then doing whatever the mission was supposed to be. Thank you Obvious Beta.
 * Hand Cannon: Slot 1 gets a Desert Eagle, M79 grenade launcher, and with the DLC also a sawed-off shotgun.
 * Heal Thyself: Injections from syrettes cure any wounds. Even if you run out of health, you get a second chance as long as you have a buddy standing by to revive you. This applies even if you deliberately blew yourself sky-high with a bomb.
 * Heroic Sociopath: Arguably both your character and buddies.
 * Humans Are White: Averted. You're just as likely to be attacked in the jungle by white Afrikaners as you are by black Africans.
 * Hyperactive Metabolism: You can heal your health to full by drinking bottle of waters found lying around enemy bases.
 * Impressive Pyrotechnics: In addition to explosive ammo piles and fuel tanks, dry grass catches on fire very easily. This can be exploited for useful diversions or simply clearing a whole checkpoint with a couple of well placed shots. Kill It with Fire indeed.
 * Improvised Weapon: Seemingly the only reason for the addition of the flare pistol to a game loaded to the brim with flammable materials, besides to call enemy reinforcements. Possibly meant to have more of a role had the game been shipped fully made.
 * Infinite Supplies: The Arms Dealer can furnish you with an infinite number of pristine weapons, despite the fact that everyone else in the country is carrying beat-up wrecks.
 * Informed Ability: The Jackal is supposed to be an arms dealer, but he's never seen actually doing anything to that effect.
 * In Name Only: Besides the name and the expanded concept of a wide-open game world, Far Cry 2 really has nothing to do with the original Far Cry.
 * Kill'Em All: Combined with Downer Ending. The game ends with . The final diary entry made by your character even reads
 * Kill It with Fire: Everyone who's playing the game turns into a pyromaniac pretty quickly. The game takes place in African savannah and jungles where highly flammable foliages are everywhere, and once fire starts, it spreads quickly. Fire can be started by Exploding Barrels, damaged oil/natural gas storages, molotov cocktails, flamethrowers, explosions, rocket backblasts, flares... Additionally, you can start fires to burn down enemies or distract them, allowing you to sneak in, escape, or gun down the panicking enemies. If you find yourself in the middle of a savannah far away from your objective, you'll find yourself throwing molotov cocktails around just for the hell of it.
 * Kleptomaniac Hero: Nobody in the safe areas seems to care about you looting their medical cabinets or walking around with dozens of rough-cut diamonds which presumably belong to someone. They do care if you try to steal theirs though.
 * La Résistance: A non-violent example, and you have to help these people every now and then to obtain medicine to avert your illness.
 * The Law of Conservation of Detail: There are three levels of map; the overall map, the current grid map, and for some areas a special mini-map for that area. You can guarantee that if an area has such a map, it's because a mission is going to take place there at some point.
 * Let's Play: Permanent Death
 * Luck-Based Mission: At one point the player must ride a riverboat as it floats slowly across the middle of a lake while being fired on from all angles, having to swap between manning the turret to kill the attackers and tightening the Not Exploding Bolt while taking fire himself. On hard difficulty the outcome is completely determined by when the gunboats decide to turn up and how close to the riverboat they come. On Infamous difficulty this mission is widely believed to be impossible.
 * Made of Explodium: Most things not made of explodium are made of flame protardant burnium carbonate.
 * The guns in particular are Made of Explodium: even the tranquilizer gun manages to go up in a huge fiery explosion in its failure animation.
 * A Million Is a Statistic: Discussed by the Jackal:

"Description at Level 4: People believe I'm the Devil himself. Heard a rumor that I eat my victims and I prefer wounding rather than killing outright... just for the fun of it."
 * Money Sink: After buying a weapon, there's still the accuracy upgrade, reliability upgrade and ammo upgrade, all of which cost extra. In some cases buying all of them is essential for the weapon to be halfway useful.
 * Moral Myopia: Lampshaded by Greaves, who said to Oliver Tambossa's face that propagandas are only called lies when they're from the UFLL. Also spoofed when Tambossa asks you to steal liberate some TN Ts in a UFLL base.
 * Motor Mouth: Everyone in the game speaks rapidly and quietly. It's very difficult to make out what people are saying without subtitles sometimes.
 * Multinational Team: The player's band of mercenary buddies is a wide assortment of various nationalities, from former US Special Forces to Middle-Eastern guns-for-hire.
 * New Era Speech: At the end of Act 1, after you assassinate one of the faction leaders, the opposing leader will take over the entire northern region and give one of these to his troops.
 * Non-Action Guy: Reuben Oluwagembi, an African reporter who serves as the only really "good" main character in the game.
 * No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom: A common criticism of the map design is the presence of a large number of impassible mountains, effectively turning the wide-open map into a series of fairly wide trails.
 * Not So Different: The Jackal delivers one of these... to Reuben.
 * (Somewhat) Obvious Beta: Granted, the game's initial release was less of a trainwreck than some other titles you might care to mention... but every single version of the game had bugs that, while small in number, were utterly crippling when it was first released, and patches haven't entirely eradicated them.
 * Offscreen Teleportation: All major characters get around this way; rather than traveling across the game world like the player, they just appear in safe houses or at objectives, most likely to stop the player killing them and sabotaging the plot.
 * You can however kill them when they show up to help you after you have fallen. Plot based mission help generally has to be kept alive though.
 * The Arms dealer gets around too.
 * One-Man Army: The player, of course. Also, to a lesser extent, the player's mercenary buddies, who are quite capable of taking out a couple squads of enemy soldiers by themselves. Finally, the Jackal is also a One-Man Army, if the massive carnage and property destruction seen in the aftermath of his attacks is any indication.
 * Only Sane Man: The Jackal, being an Expy of Kurtz from Apocalypse Now, believes himself to be this.
 * Hector Voorhees and especially Nick Greaves both come across as noticeably saner and more self-aware than their propaganda-spewing, Ax Crazy bosses. Like your own character, however, they've decided to just go along with the madness instead of doing anything about it so as to get paid.
 * Patchwork Map: Rivers... do not work that way.
 * The GPS pointer's ability to end up on top of the player character's thumb in certain locations means the patchwork is 3D!
 * Playing Both Sides: The Jackal.
 * Plotline Death: Syrettes and bottled water can cure every ill except Malaria. Or falling over three times if you're not the PC.
 * Point of No Return: There's one right at the game's finale. Annoyingly, the game only informs you that you're approaching it after you think you've already passed it, but there's a path back to the rest of the map. Even so, you're really, really far from the last arms dealer or safe-house at this point.
 * Port Town: The capital of the Southern map is right next to a gigantic lake.
 * Pyrrhic Victory: In the end, you rid yourself of the leaders who ordered you to help them destroy each other and you rescue the civilian population from nation-wide genocide, but
 * Railroading: You might appear to be making choices during the course of the plot, but none of them have any meaningful effect on the outcome.
 * Rare Guns: This pops up in the form of the AR-16, a 7.62mm variant of the AR-10 which never entered production. The SPAS-12 and Desert Eagle also pop up.
 * Reliably Unreliable Guns: The guns wear out at an extremely exaggerated rate; you can actually see the USAS-12 becoming more corroded as it fires. And almost all of them will eventually explode or fall apart.
 * The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Both the UFLL and APR.
 * Right-Handed Left-Handed Guns: Including a top-ejecting Desert Eagle that still has the barrel lock on the wrong side, a Springfield with a lefty bolt (the animation is about as awkward as you'd expect) and, just to get the other side of the equation, a right-ejecting PKM.
 * Sadistic Choice: About halfway through the game, you're given the choice of either saving a church full of civilians or a bar full of your mercenary buddies. There's not enough time to come to the aid of both.
 * Sawed-Off Shotgun: The DLC includes one for the pistol slot.
 * Scenery Porn: Lush jungles, dry savannas teeming with zebras and antelopes, parched deserts and dilapidated shantytowns, all rendered in loving detail.
 * Sequel Difficulty Drop: In Easy difficulty, even new players could easily finish the game in ~15 hours with less than a half dozen deaths. Yet still dying far more than most 'easy' FPS games.
 * Shout-Out: To Apocalypse Now. As well as The Jackal's mumbled rants being an obvious homage to Kurtz, the map for the lower-right corner of the second map contains, in clockwise order, the locations "Marina," "Landing Zone," "Swamp" and "Heart of Darkness," making it a map of the movie.
 * The Silenced Shotgun in the DLC seems to be a Shout-Out to No Country for Old Men, and the gold AKs to Lord of War.
 * Shrouded in Myth: As your reputation level grows, your character eventually gains this status among the enemy Mooks. Their in-game combat dialogue changes accordingly, from "Who's this asshole? Who cares, let's kill him." to "Oh God! It's him! We're all gonna die!".


 * The Jackal suggests intentionally building this image but warns against becoming the image.
 * A Simple Plan: When you're given a mission by one of the two major factions, one of your buddies will often phone you up and suggest additional objectives that will supposedly benefit one or both of you (as well as unlock upgrades for your safe houses). Complete these objectives, however, and your buddy's scheme will rapidly head south, requiring you to come and rescue them. This happens every single time.
 * Sniper Pistol: The handguns are surprisingly useful at long range.
 * Sophisticated As Hell: The Jackal's all over this.
 * Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness: Guns from the Arms Dealer gradually get better as the game goes on, though some wear out faster to balance this.
 * Spiritual Successor: Crysis.
 * The developers of Far Cry 2 have also stated that it was meant to be a sequel in spirit, not in plot.
 * Stuck Items: The machete in the melee slot, grenades, and Molotovs.
 * Suicidal Overconfidence: Enemies will often drive their cars into you, even if they are in an unarmed car or jeep and you are driving a machine-gun armed truck which can perforate them in seconds.
 * Supernatural Aid
 * Taking You with Me: Mortally wounded enemies will draw a pistol if they see you. It's rare to have this happen unless you insist on using the machete on the higher difficulties.
 * Tech Demo Game: The original Far Cry definitely qualifies, even having developed out of Crytek's X-Isle tech demo.
 * Thematic Series: While not so much a thematic successor to the original PC Far Cry, it is something of a thematic successor to Far Cry Instincts and especially Far Cry Evolution (both developed by Ubisoft instead of Crytek), with the overarcing theme of third world strife and suffering. From what's been seen of the plot of Far Cry 3, it will continue the trend.
 * Truce Zone: The main cities.
 * Also a case of The Dev Team Thinks of Everything. If you do start waving guns in people's faces, they stick their hands up and taunt/threaten/try to calm the player. Their buddies however, will all aim their guns at you. If you aim at a dude too long, all the buddies will open fire even if you haven't let off a shot.
 * Ubermensch: The Jackal quotes Friedrich Nietzsche's The Will To Power in the game's opening sequence, forges his own path, defies both factions for the sake of the civilian populace, and in the end  through the force of his personality and the rightness of his cause. Though the fact that the player has no choice is also a factor.
 * Unexpected Gameplay Change: The last part of the game plays out like a fast-paced run-and-gun shooter through a fairly linear path. Since the game mechanics are not designed for this and the enemies can take a lot of punishment, this caused some problems.
 * Universal Ammunition: Weapons of the same type use the same ammo; this means any given pistol is chambered for .45 ACP, 9mm Makarov and .50 Action Express all at the same time. Gets particularly silly with the flare gun; the ammo pickup is shown as the same can of gasoline the flamethrower and molotovs use. Huh?
 * Universal Driver's License: Trucks, boats, cars...If you can get in, you can drive it.
 * Useless Item: The flaregun; sure, it can cause fires, but so can Molotovs, without wasting the pistol slot. It also doesn't produce a useful amount of light, even at night.
 * Also, the Homeland 37. It's the slowest shotgun with the smallest magazine and it doesn't reload that fast either.
 * There are several useless upgrades, as well, such as the repair upgrades for vehicles (there's replacements pretty much everywhere) and accuracy upgrades for weapons that don't need them at all, such as the Flamethrower and the laser-guided Carl-G.
 * Useless Useful Stealth: "Conventional" stealth really isn't the best option; you need to pay a ton for a special stealth suit, the silenced weapons are puny and expensive (save the dart rifle, which just has a tiny ammo count), and sneaking around just means if you mess up you'll be surrounded rather than being able to make the enemies come to you. However, a more limited stealth approach of sneaking around the edges of a camp, in order to have the best position to begin an assault, is a very useful and viable tactic.
 * Video Game Caring Potential: Your dozen or so mercenary buddies are the only friendly faces in the whole country. They help you out in missions and arrive to save you if you're ever critically injured in a firefight. This gives you an incentive to keep them alive throughout the game.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: Aside from the various uses of incendiary devices, you can shoot enemies in the foot or the gut with an SVD to draw their buddies out.
 * Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Except this one. The ammo capacity is unGodly, and thanks to the fire propagation feature, several short bursts can easily flatten an enemy base.
 * Villain Protagonist: The main character of the game, in his obsessive pursuit of his target, will help the opposing armies destroy medicine, kill innocents, and eliminate water supplies. Not to mention one of the fellow Mercenary's side quests, which is to kill a dozen or so people for some drugs to smoke, for fun.
 * Voice with an Internet Connection: The assassination missions are given by tapping phone masts. It is never at all clear who the mission giver actually is.
 * The Jackal, maybe?
 * Wall of Weapons: The Arms Dealer's storehouse, which gradually fills up as you purchase more weaponry.
 * Warp Whistle: For some reason, the bus services in the country are still running and let the player fast-travel to fixed map locations without having to fight anyone in the process. Why the checkpoints have orders to shoot you on sight unless you're on a bus is never particularly clear.
 * We Have Reserves: The APR and UFLL have an unholy number of Mooks available to man those vital checkpoints in the middle of nowhere or drive endlessly in circles.
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Jackal, arguably.
 * Wide Open Sandbox: Half the map is open for you to explore from the get-go.
 * Worst Aid: Far Cry 2 requires the player to perform quick "medical care" in the field when injured if his or her health drops to one bar. This generally involves resetting broken bones with your bare hands, pulling pieces of shrapnel and stray branches from your gut, and removing bullets with pliers, all without even bandaging the wound up and immediately getting back into the fight. You even spit out a tooth in one. Hilariously, this also applies to the gradual damage you take while drowning, and you can heal yourself from the damage taken by drowning in the same way when standing in shallow enough water, leading to you getting bullet wounds, broken limbs, and broken teeth BY SWIMMING.If your health is at least two bars, healing involves simply injecting yourself with a shot of morphine. If a buddy is critically injured, you can heal them simply by injecting them as well. Otherwise, the only options are comforting them in their passing or blowing their brains out to hasten it.
 * Video here.
 * After a given buddy has been rezzed three times, they ask for more -- to put them out of their misery. Three syrettes of morphine is enough to do it. Meanwhile, in a heated battle you can inject yourself with twice that amount, and be fine.
 * Don't forget that a good amount of damage can be repaired simply by waiting a few seconds without being shot.
 * Don't forget that a good amount of damage can be repaired simply by waiting a few seconds without being shot.