Far Cry 2 release date revealed

Posted at: 2:48pm 5th September 2008 by Ben Hardwidge

Ubisoft’s official Far Cry sequel will be out in time for Christmas, and a Collectors’ Edition will also be available

Despite losing the Crytek development team to EA, Ubisoft has still ploughed on with the official sequel to Far Cry, and the developer has now revealed that the game will be out in just a few weeks. The official launch date is 24 October, and the game will launch simultaneously on the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, so we won’t have to wait several months for the PC version.

As well as the usual edition of the game, Ubisoft has also announced that a Collectors’ Edition will be available for those who are big on cash and short on levelheadedness. The Collectors’ Edition (pictured) will include an exclusive wooden box, two Far Cry 2 t-shirts, an ‘Art of Far Cry’ book, a making-of DVD and a map.

Unlike Crysis, which is set on a Philippine Island, Far Cry 2 will be set in Africa. Ubisoft’s European marketing director, John Parkes, describes the game as ‘an amazing journey that will take you to the darkest places of Africa where each player will choose how they play.’ He also added, that ‘this will provide gamers with an unprecedented experience in the FPS genre.’

More importantly to CPC readers, Far Cry 2 makes heavy use of multi-threading, with both the AI and the Havok physics engine running as separate threads on the CPU. As such, owners of dual-core and quad-core chips should get a performance boost from the game, and may be able to enable more effects. According to the game’s official minimum system requirements, a 2.66GHz Pentium D will perform similarly to a 3.2GHz Pentium 4, so it looks like it properly takes advantage of multi-core CPUs.

You can check out our sneak preview of the game from the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) here, where we saw animals in the game reacting differently according to varying threats and changes in the environment. The physics engine was also mightily impressive, with explosions making chaotic work of the game world.

Will Far Cry 2 make it to your Christmas list? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.