I am basically a PC gamer. I tolerate consoles, especially now that most developers are releasing their best titles on them, but in my mind the mouse and keyboard setup cannot be replaced by a controller, no matter how well configured it is and how much motion tracking it incorporates. So I usually dread playing shooters on consoles, mainly because I am entirely dependent on aiming assist to get the enemies I am facing. After getting head shots using a mouse this can make one feel a bit helpless, a feeling surely no one loves.

For Far Cry 2, Ubisoft's big shooter for the holidays, I have decided not to allow myself near the PC version in order to see how the Xbox 360 game would feel without having to make any disparaging comparisons. Here's how it went.

I managed to sit through the opening section, which had the main character driven to a hotel, even though it looked a lot like the opening of Call of Duty 4 (without the executions). Then, in a brief firefight, I discovered that I failed to aim well enough to score a kill. Well, at least I could strafe.

The redeeming factor was that enemies were mostly clueless. Surely jeeps with two-man crews would sometimes pop out of the woods to give chase, but they were easily dispatched on the Normal difficulty level. Those combatants that you could find blocking the road could be approached covertly, attacked quickly and their buddies sometimes missed the assault completely.

I walked right up to a guy armed with a shotgun, after taking out all his friends and he failed to notice me until I unloaded in his back. I must mention that I was not silent and that I shot more than 30 bullets into the rest of the people around him. Generally, bad aiming comes into play if you happen to be caught out in the open without any jeep with a mounted machine gun. I died once because of the fact that I took too long to get the machine gunner in my sight.