Because they created a gorgeous open world and then completely missed the damn point of having one. You know that thing trick in MMOs where the map is dotted with a load of unscalable fences and unclimbable rocks so its essentially a big twisty maze pathway through a load of arbitrary impassable terrain? Far Cry 2 is all over that trope. And to make it worse, eveery single crossroad has a checkpoint. Which means you either have to get out and slowwwwly creep round or get into another firefight. Which exacerbates the other problem the game has - the enemies. They all can take ridiculous amounts of damage for ordinary guys, and they are all interested solely in killing you. If they spot you creeping through the undergrowth ( and they will) everyone tries to kill you. Run away, they send a jeep after you. Passs someone in a car on the road going the other way? They stop, get out and shoot at you. I'm not making that up. The end result feels less like freedom and more like a corridor shooter - drive until you get to checkpoint, get out, kill bloodthirsty supermen, go down road to next checkpoint, repeat. It's like playing Painkiller with all the inventiveness and variety taken out, just killing the same guys over and over again.
FC2 isn't ttoally devoid of fun. The variety of toys to play with is great. And carefully taking out one of the big mission areas with a sniper rifle, flitting from spot to spot to spot in the night, then handing the next mission with a rocket launcher and a machine gun is fantastic. But its way too much boring busywork to get to those moments. Take out about half the rocks to make the game world more open and eliminate half the checkpoints so you can go where you want without killing someone every thirty seconds, and far cry 2 would be great fun. I'm serious, it would be that easy. As it is, its a superb lesson on how NOT to make a sandbox game fun, and has only its technical accomplishments to recommend it.
