It's that time of year again. The holiday season is coming up, and the year's biggest, or at least most-hyped, titles are getting ready for their ship dates. Among those is Ubisoft Montreal's open-world first-person shooter, Far Cry 2, the sequel to Crytek's original. This time around you won't find Trigens or the special scent and strength powers. It's just you, your guns, and a whole lot of enemies across the plains, deserts, and jungles of Africa.

We've put up quite a few previews of the game, but not until recently did we really get to experience the full game world, as before we were either seeing or playing sections specifically constructed for the demo. It's still not finished, but we still got a good sense of what playing the final game might be like. And, as a bonus, we got to see the map editor for the first time, which anyone who played Instincts on Xbox should remember fondly. With Far Cry 2, the map editor's functionality has been expanded and from what we saw, it looks as though the editor should provide players with plenty of opportunity to create a wide range of maps pretty easily on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.

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Console or PC players will be able to dive right into it from the in-game menu, and all subsequent map publishing and sharing amongst users and such can be dealt with within the game. Also, all created maps will be for use in the game's four multiplayer modes, so don't expect to create some kind of elaborate map and tack it onto the single-player game world. There's certainly a wide variety of tweaks you can make to your map in the editor, but you'll need to keep in mind how many objects you're adding on consoles. Too much stuff will result in slowdown and the like, but there'll be handy gauges at the screen's top that update as you add and adjust content, letting you know how close to capacity you are. And at any time you can drop into the map and test it out for yourself, just to see how things look and perform.

Upon first entering the editor, you'll be met with a flat, blank square of land. On consoles you'll bring up most of your build options through a radial menu, while the PC editor has a number of drop down menus across the top and a right side bar featuring small thumbnail images for all the objects that can be added. Before you start dropping down vehicles, structures, or spawn points, you'll probably want to adjust the square's topography. The editor lets you fiddle with the size and shape of your cursor, which you can use to raise and lower terrain as you see fit. You can manipulate terrain with a simple raise/lower function, set specific height limitations for plateaus or lakebeds, and then use the game's texturing tool to lay down grassy, rocky, sandy or a variety of other ground decorations.

It might not look all that natural right off the bat, so to give it a more realistic appearance, Ubisoft Montreal has included an erosion tool that molds the land into shapes that look as though they've been affected by elements like wind and rain. So using this tool will add some dimples in flat surfaces, sharpen slopes, and make it appear as though loose soil has been sliding down hills and piling up where the incline meets the ground. Then, once you've set your general landscape heights, you can raise or lower the overall water level to fill up or empty whatever troughs you've created. Jungles, groupings of rocks, short brush, and plenty of other landscape decorations can then be added using the collection tool. This functions just like the landscape manipulator, giving you the option of expanding or contracting the cursor size which can then simply be moved across the land, adding these trees and other features whenever you hit or hold the activate button.

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Now that the general look of your land is done, it's time to maybe add in some roads and drop down some objects. Any kind of thoroughfare is constructed with a series of nodes, making it easy to pick up and drag sections of road around if you're not happy with its placement further on in the creation process. When it comes time to select objects, there are tons of options. You've got houses and shacks of varying sizes; all kinds of vehicles, such as hang gliders, trucks, and boats; and plenty of individual objects that can be littered around the landscape or combined to create large-scale buildings. Ubisoft Montreal showed off some impressive examples of this with a construction site consisting of a large parking garage, stacks of pipes strewn about, a fence and road surrounding the whole thing with a few houses in the outlying areas, giving it a realistic, lived-in look. The construction site wasn't a pre-made asset, but rather a building made from existing, smaller asset pieces used as building blocks. Another map featured a harbor loading dock, with huge cranes leaning over ships, cargo containers in stacks and arranged in rows, and plenty of paths and hiding spots in between.

At any time it's also possible to adjust the time of day as well as weather effects. So you can create a jungle map at night covered in thick fog, a hilly desert map at sunset with clear skies, or a flatter savannah map populated with grasses and short bushes that get throttled around by the high winds of a rainstorm. By dropping into the map, you'll get a chance to see how everything looks and burns, as the demo version we tried out gave you a number of Molotov cocktails to set the grass on fire. It was interesting to see how weather and wind affected burn patterns, something dedicated map editors will no doubt take into account when designing maps meant for competitive play.

The size of your map needs to be determined as well. Though you'll start off on a large square, it's possible to drag and drop the boundary lines so the final perimeter can be fashioned into a wide range of oddly angled polygons. And in case you're thinking of making some kind of joke map with houses floating fifty feet above the ground and lakes full of hang gliders, Ubisoft Montreal has implemented a validation system that works to ensure a certain minimum requirements are met.

Depending on which of the game's multiplayer modes you're generating the map for, you'll need a certain amount of spawn points, flag depots, and capture spots. If you've missed something when you run the validation check, the game will let you know what's missing and give the option to snap directly to what's out of place or needs to be tweaked. Once the game determines the map is fit for publishing, players can push the map live and send it through to Ubisoft's servers or host multiplayer games with it. Any players who connect to that match would then download the map.



For anyone who finds a user-created map that they think is missing a few elements to be truly great, it's possible to snag the creations of others and re-edit them however you see fit. There'll be an author tag for whoever originally built the map and then a "modified by" field that's filled in with your name. After a match online, the game lets you rate whatever map you've just played, so users will be able to say right away if the changes you've made are any good. The highest rated maps will them bubble up the popularity leaderboards so the rest of the community can see who's playing what maps the most often and which have been rated the highest. As of right now Ubisoft is saying each player will be limited to publishing five maps, though you can create as many as you have space for. If a user demonstrates they can produce high-quality work, Ubisoft might consider expanding their individual publish limit.

Overall, after trying it out for a little while, it seems like Far Cry 2's map editor will provide players with a powerful toolset wrapped in an easy-to-use interface, and should definitely be something to look forward to. With the right amount of creativity and understanding of online first-person shooter gameplay dynamics, it should be pretty easy to make some appealing, engaging maps.

Whenever you get tired of the creation process and online portion of the game, you can always jump back into single-player for a much different experience. We roamed around the game world for a few hours, performing missions for the game's faction bosses, side-quests for the buddies, and randomly wandered around and shot things, and had a pretty good time with it.



Since the single-player world is fairly large -- it can take several minutes to get from the quest-giver to the goal location -- you'll need to rely pretty heavily on vehicle transportation. Thankfully jeeps, cars, and boats are all over the place, so it's never long before you find an option to travel faster. A few bus depots are scattered around the game world as well, which you can instantly travel between. Without these faster methods of travel, it can take a fairly long time to reach your destination. Your character can sprint, but doing so can be tiring for your virtual counterpart, causing the screen to go blurry and forcing you to slow down, especially if there are hostiles in the area, lest you wander into the barrel of someone's AK. And, since your character is affected by malaria, you'll also need to pause from time to time to consume meds, as otherwise the screen will become more and more blurred with a yellow glow and eventually go dark, meaning you passed out. Throughout the game the degree of your sickness will vary, as it's possible to diminish the frequency with which the bouts occur, but it seems they're something you'll consistently have to deal with regardless of how severe the condition happens to be a the time. Eating a few pills doesn't take all that long, only a few seconds for the animation to run its course, but in the midst of a firefight it can be potentially deadly.

Dying doesn't always mean a game reload, though, as your buddies -- NPCs that you can recruit and will help you out -- can provide a revive and pull you back to safe territory. There are different degrees of affinity for each buddy you find in the game world which can be affected by how often you interact with them. To build affinity, you must have an open quest log and go talk to them either at a safe house or Mike's bar, a location where the buddies tend to gather. They'll give you a brief description of a situation and if you want to help them out, you just continue talking with them. Once they're established as your best buddy (affinity status can be seen on a menu tab) they'll call your cell phone after you receive a main mission from one of the game's warring factions and provide an alternate route to follow for completing the quest.

Here's how one mission went down. We approached a faction base in a neutral town and had to hand over our weapons at the door. As we walked to the boss's office, we checked out the interior décor; essentially a strip club setup with zebra pelts on the ground and red lighting. We got a call from a buddy as soon as the mission was accepted. We were originally tasked with having to kill a police officer in a moving motorcade, but the buddy offers the option of visiting the officer's brother to distract him and bring him into a known location, making him a stationary target. So we took a boat to a fishing village where the brother was known to be. Each vehicle in the game, with the exception of the hang glider, has an electronic readout map panel built into it so you can keep track of where you're headed, though we found it necessary to keep open our own map as well. By moving our character's head up and down we were able to navigate the terrain while periodically glancing at the map, and then had to blast our way through enemy patrols to the brother, who was holed up in the village's center. We threatened his life with a machete until he did what was needed.

Unfortunately we died soon afterwards and weren't able to complete the rest of the mission, so upon reloading the game we tried out a buddy quest at Mike's bar. An NPC named Flora Guillen tasked us with destroying a weapons cache in a house that had been overtaken by mercenaries, so we hopped in a jeep, opened up our map, and started driving over. On the way we passed an enemy checkpoint, and they weren't particularly happy about us speeding through. Soon after we passed, a few of them jumped into cars and began a pursuit, eventually nudging the back of our jeep off the road and bringing us to a stop. We saw we were outnumbered and so hopped out and dropped a homemade explosive charge on the ground, took off while hitting the detonator, and managed to blow up three trucks at once. We'd hit the button a little too soon, however, causing about three-quarters of our health bar to be depleted. At this point we'd normally use a syrette to restore our health, but we didn't have any left.



We covered the rest of the distance to the house on foot and set up on a nearby hill to survey the area. It seemed the enemies hadn't yet noticed our presence, so we readied our sniper rifle and, one-by-one, started picking off foes. After we felled a few the survivors took notice and ran back into the house for cover. This proved to be to our advantage, as we circled the house and charged up from behind, lobbing in a few Molotov cocktails that set its wooden walls and inhabitants ablaze. It also destroyed the ammo crate located within, completing our mission. Upon surveying the scene after the fire had died down and sending a few bullets into the backs of the survivors, we found a stash of syrettes and replenished our health. Then it was simply a matter of finding transportation back to Flora for a debriefing.

Beyond buddies and main quests, the game provides structured content through weapons dealers and radio towers. One dealer we talked with asked us to do something for him, and in return he'd make available a special purchasing option. At weapon shops around the game world you can spend the diamonds earned through quest completion on new armaments, vehicle manuals (which allow for more effective vehicle repair), weapon capacity and reliability upgrades (so they don't jam as often), and other things. The weapons you buy here can be stored in crates at a weapons warehouse (located right next to any shop), where they can be accessed from any other warehouse in the game world. Weapon types are divided into primary (M16, Dragunov, MGL-140, USAS12, G3KA4, AS50), secondary (Desert Eagle, Flare Gun, Mac-10, Makarov, 6P9), and special (dart rifle, mortar, RPG-7, M249) types, and you can carry one of each at a time.

The mortar seems like a particularly interesting weapon, particularly when used from cover. Ubisoft told us that once set up it's possible to fire a smoke round to test range before loading in a live shot.



Beyond what's available for purchase there are 10 guns hidden throughout the game world, which according to Ubisoft are more powerful versions of existing weapon types. To further encourage exploration, cases of diamonds are scattered around as well, which seem to be generally worth pursuing as they'll allow you to buy better weapons. Finding them is made somewhat easier with a green light on vehicles' electronic map readouts, which blinks with increased frequency when diamonds are nearby.

And beyond that you can simply roam the game world, find ammo and syrette boxes at enemy camps, shoot zebras in the fields, run over small animals in your jeep, find radio towers and perform tasks for mysterious NPCs on the other end of the transmission, and take as long as you want to eventually track down the The Jackal, your nebulous nemesis. The game's got a statistics menu that displays things like diamonds found, diamonds spent, total time, total distance traveled, buddies rescued, betrayed, killed, and unlocked, as well as favorite primary, secondary, and special weapon, accuracy, health kits bought, bandoliers bought, and more for players who like to know those kinds of things.

Ubisoft Montreal is currently in the process of hammering out bugs and making sure all the game's components are functioning properly. Far Cry 2 should be ready to ship sometime this fall on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC platforms.