I was being a little sarcastic as the ':P' was implied. Obviously it's based on my view of the game which not everybody is goign to share. In fact, I recall making a thread discussing in length about my view of the game.

Far Cry 2's best features were it's graphics and environments, yes. However, other than that I felt like there was nothing to keep me interested. Sort of like the first Far Cry ironically. The story and characters were boring which made the traveling you had to do for every mission hardly worthwhile. I'd say that most of my time was spent traveling and fighting through guardposts that respawned practically 5 minutes after you clear them out than I did actually completing missions to progress the story.

It was okay but I felt that:

a - it looked rushed due to all the changes to plot, approach, etc.  with fairly weak graphics

b - it definately felt dumbed down around the stealth elements

c - it was different to an extent

For me, it showed all the bad decisions you see from developers when they're trying to straddle fences or aim for different goals.

I felt it showed all the symptoms of a title trying to appeal to a different crowd (action FPS/TPS) while trying to keep enough of the old style for fans.

Mostly, such attempts fail, and they did in this case, too.  I just wish developers would admit that they can make a good title with certain gameplay and the potential sales are say 1.5 Million (hypothetical number off the top of my head) for a good stealth title.

Instead, they seem to think - well, the IP is known, we could keep some stealth, but add more combat/shooting and surely we'll get some of the FPS/TPS shooting crowd and sell 4 to 5 Million?

The reality is most of the time the shooting crowd sticks with the titles polished and smooth for shooting while the developer actually loses some of the core demographic crowd, too.

The reality is you can't magically make all titles hit 4 to 5 million and some would be better focusing purely on a smaller demographic to get good sales vs trying to be too much too everyone (which is where the dumbing down, over-simplifying, etc. normally creeps into the equation).

Rent it...unless you like to own the games you play.

When it all comes down...more or less its a 8/10...more than most enjoy while the die hard dislikes.

Don't really understand the dumbed down thing...folks who feel that way more than likely...never play above easy mode.

I will say it is a different approach to previous games...but with all the success most AAA shooters get...you can not blame a company/dev for branching out into what folks like...

Hell....loook at every splinter games sell's...

rather someone try new things in the game than the same old same old...

I agree with many of the post that you've stated, the environment had nothing interesting to explore. Sure the player could try to find all of the the Jackal tapes (Which are very interesting to listen to), but they're all scattered randomly, leaving no clues to the player. The story isn't badly written, it's just poorly told and presented. The only interesting character was the Jackal,  everyone else were one dimensional.

The game certainly had potential to be great, while some ideas were well executed, others were not. I think it's mostly due to the limitations of the consoles that set it backward, not to be a PC elitist, but a game like Far Cry 2 was too ambitious to be made for consoles. 

You should really try the two player coop with a buddy its really fun. I've played it for hours with my cousin and its just pure fun trying to cooperate and not let eachother get caught and help eachother out.  Tho we do spend alot hiding in the dark so it seems half of the time we're is suppose to play the game in black n white?

Im big on offline coop fan so i'd pick this up if it came out for PS3 (even if it is short and mainly focused on the single campaign), but if it stays exclusive then good for 360 to have another awesome game.

I liked the game, but I also rented it and finished it in a night because of how short it was and how easy it was to just plow through the game. It's very well designed, but it wasn't designed for the people who liked Splinter Cell in the past. Instead they've targeted the Gear's of War, Xbox Live crowd and it's paid off by selling well.

Did it sell more than any Splinter Cell title in the past?

buy it fool,the game is awesome.

Download the demo.

From a personal perspective, I hate stealth games, but I quite wanted to play SCC, quite a lot of it was because of the art style with the things objectives appearing on the environment and stuff. The problem is that I hate stealth, and I am kind of rubbish at it, and so I just failed a bit. But I only failed a bit, so I think it it dumbed down from a full stealth game, but not quite just an action game, I don't think there is a way to look down the sights of the gun which basically makes it impossible to play as a proper action game. But the best way to decide is to play the demo and decide if you like the way that the game works

You don't have to play it as a stealth game. A couple parts you do,but those are few. The number of enemies in some parts actually make it impossble to use stealth. Why would you want to look down the sights of the gun,it not a FPS game. lol