I went to the Ubisoft demo room to look at Far Cry 2 and I had one big concern about the game. When I'd first heard about the game in some gaming magazine it was mentioned that you would be battling malaria. "Malaria?" I thought, "Dealing with disease isn't fun." What I found, however, was that Far Cry 2 is fun, and the malaria bit is actually something that adds to the feel of the game.

Let's get to the background first. While this game would appear to be a sequel to the original "Far Cry", it's got its own setting and characters. No mutants (at least, as far as revealed until now), different main character, the only consistent part is the wide open world. In Far Cry 2, the world is even more your sandbox - as much as that term is overused - to play in.

You play a mercenary. At the beginning of the game you pick your merc from various ones included with the game. The other mercs will still be there as part of the story, it will just follow you as the main character. You've been sent to Africa, where two sides are fighting, both supported with arms from a mysterious arms dealer known as "The Jackal".

I wasn't certain if The Jackal was one person (like the legendary terrorist) or was a group of arms dealers. Either way, your goal is to work with both sides, and the other mercs (if you wanted), to find a way to take down The Jackal. You can try to work with the other mercs or you can go your own way.

But that's part of the point of the malaria and the game in general. Unlike a lot of first person shooters, you can't always just go your own way and be a lone wolf. Even in darkest Africa you're part of a society, and in this case, part of the thing that keeps you integrated into society is your need for occasional anti-malarial pills. This leads to some interesting moral choices and even a bit of roleplaying in the shooter.

Speaking of shooting: it's not just "whatever weapons you find on dead corpses". When you start off a mission you have your choice of one of six load-outs, each with its own name. Want to go subtle? Take the one with a silenced MP5 and a dart rifle. You want to roll like the SeanMike did when I played? Grab the All American - a .50 caliber sniper rifle, an M249 squad automatic weapon, and an M79 grenade launcher.

I began playing the demo on the PS3 but soon moved to my platform of choice, the Xbox 360 (the graphics were identical, as far as I could tell - the 360 seems to be Ubisoft's development platform for both this game and Prince of Persia, and then they port it to PS3). I walked over to a safe house where I was given a mission to plant some bombs on a pipeline. From there, it was up to me on how to accomplish that goal.

You've seen my kit so you can guess that I didn't use the "subtle" approach. I drove a car that I found down near the camp. Three rapid long range shots took out a sniper and two guards. Pulling back, the guards started hunting me down, so two of them jumped in a jeep to drive around on the search. I took them out with the M249 then moved forward to wipe out most of the remainder of the enemies with a combination of grenades, M249 fire, and sniper rounds. I did run out of grenades and that was where I learned that weapons all have their own "slot" - so I couldn't swap the M79 for an assault rifle and had to be content with what appeared to be a Colt .45 ACP.

Dispatching the one or two that I'd missed, I ran up and planted the bomb, then pulled back and watched the fireworks. That having been accomplished, the developer next to me showed me where to go to find a boat and how to heal myself. That was one other surprise - you have a health bar, unlike a lot of current first person shooters. You will heal up a "partial" bubble, but need to use an injection to heal past that.

The water was beautifully rendered and soon I reached the end of the river, as it was the dry season and the river was, well, dried out. Walking to the top of a hill, the dev showed me how to switch to molotov cocktails and suggested that I set the grass on fire to see how fire propogates.

Easier said than done. I threw a molotov cocktail and it hit what appeared to be a gas station. Ka-boom! That seemed to upset the guys who were there (and who had survived), so they jumped into a jeep and came gunning for me. Yikes! I ran away, dodging into the rocks near the river to force them to stop, then put a .50 caliber round through the gunner and took out the driver. Back to the gas station.

At the gas station we experimented with the molotov cocktails some more. There was a great effect where the gas line was shooting a flamethrower-esque jet into the air and the charred body of at least one bad guy. Watching the fire push across the plain and up the trees, I grabbed a jeep and headed down to my next point.

Soon I was at a camp with about 20 mercenaries. By myself, that's definitely not one fight I'd want to just jump into. Counter-sniping a guy or two in a tower and a few guys guarding, I put rounds into various propane tanks and other explosive devices to help burn out the enemies. The dev pointed out to me that my sniper rifle was too powerful, in fact - the tanks just exploded while a smaller round would've let me shoot flames out of the tank towards hapless enemies.

I managed to pretty much clear the encampment via the sniper fire and explosions so I moved down into it. Spotting a mounted machine gun, I was eager to man it and gun down the couple of guys I saw moving around a campfire. That tunnel vision kept me from seeing that there was a dude, and he had a rocket launcher, and said rocket launcher was aimed at me. Thus I got to discover what the death penalty is in Far Cry 2.

And what it is - is that you need friends. One of my fellow mercs, who I was friends with, showed up as I was blacked out and pulled me to safety, shooting back at the enemies. As I slowly recovered he gave me a pistol - my other weapons were gone - and soon I was back on my feet. I grabbed a broken down AK-47 - weapons all have conditions and that means my AK, heavily used, would be more likely to jam - and went back to the fight.

From there out it was fairly straight-forward. Warren, my merc buddy, kept some surpressive fire up while I flanked around and took out the last few bad guys. I grabbed a buggy and drove up to the transmission tower I was supposed to blow up, found some IEDs, and proceeded to do just that. For the demo, they'd left a hang glider there, so I grabbed it and flew around checking the world. There are no loads or zones in Far Cry 2 - you can just keep going, and going, and going...

I was honestly impressed with Far Cry 2. I can't wait to give it a shot, see how I do. If I'd wanted to go subtle, I could've used the bed in the safe house and had time progress to whenever I wanted it to; that kind of progress really gives a lot of flexibility to players. Far Cry 2 is coming out on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.