Something happened to me with Far Cry 2 that has never happened to me before with a PC game. After about 15 minutes into a play session, I went to save my game. I chose the file to save on, and instead of saving, the game crashed back to my desktop.

I got irritated, as this was now about the fourth time Far Cry 2 had done this since I started playing it. I loaded the game up again, got to the main menu, clicked on ‘Continue Story’ to reboot my last save, and got a ‘Load Failed’ error message.

So I went into the ‘Load Game’ option to manually boot my save from there, only to find that my save was gone. Completely vanished. To confirm, I went into my Steam folder where the files for my saved games are stored – and sure enough, my saved game was there, but it was an empty file. There was nothing on it.

I just stared at my screen unbelieving. Wait, so my game not only crashed, but also deleted/corrupted my save file? Seriously? How? Why?

And yes, I was using multiple save files. However, I was using only one save file for most of the game. The next closest save file I had was hours behind where I was. Not that it mattered because the game erased that save file too. I was 50% through the game. The next closest save file I still had that the game didn’t delete was at 4% completion.

Unbelievable. The last time I had a game do this to me was when I was a kid playing my NES when I had my Legend of Zelda game erased more than once with that battery save function the game used. BUT THAT WAS BACK IN THE LATE ‘80s! PC GAMES AREN’T SUPPOSED TO RANDOMLY DELETE/CORRUPT YOUR SAVE FILES!

Wow, Ubisoft. There’s no excuse for this. I really like Far Cry 2, but you’re not making it easy.

My first impulse was to give up and move on to another game, but the stubborn part of me wouldn’t let me do it. I couldn’t let the game defeat me like that. So I decided to start the game completely over. I can’t believe I’m doing this, but even more, I can’t believe that a game released in 2008 from a developer as accomplished as Ubisoft deleted my save file for absolutely no reason.

I looked online to see if anyone else has had this problem, and sure enough, other gamers had this exact issue with Far Cry 2 months after it released. Ubisoft released a patch that was supposed to fix it, but apparently, it doesn’t fix it for everyone.

During the first few hours of my second playthrough, I had my game crash on me again. Thankfully, there were no deleted save files this time, but I’m starting to fear Far Cry 2 is a technically broken game, which would be unfortunate, because I’m enjoying playing through it, even on a forced second playthrough.

This is the last time I ever primarily use one save file for a game. For this second trek through Far Cry 2, I’m using 10-15 different save files at least. If the game can erase all those, then I’ll accept the game is broken and move on. Until then, I have lots of mercs to liquidate.

So to anyone that is playing Far Cry 2, be warned. Far Cry 2 is a good game, but use multiple save files. For your own sanity.