As our much-anticipated Far Cry 2 hands-on begins, you’re nestled in a safehouse in the middle of the African Savannah when you get a fateful call from a cohort. Well, this “safehouse” looks more like a dilapidated shack with a cot, but nevertheless, your caller has a mission objective that promptly appears on your pull-up pocket map with a big red X. But how you get to that big red X is entirely up to you. Do you take the dingy red Datsun-looking car down the gravelly dirt roads to reach your destination? Or do you hoof it?

Either way, that X marks the spot that just happens to be at the beating heart of an enemy camp teeming with dudes ready to blow your head off. So, do you drive into the center of the camp, strap some C4 to the engine, and blow everything sky-high? Or do you hop out quietly before you even see the gates, then stealthily pick off scumbags to even the odds? These are just two of a handful of options you’ll have. Hey, maybe there’s a way to sneak all the way through the camp without spilling any blood whatsoever — ever thought of that? Far Cry 2 lets you call those shots.

But one thing’s for sure — in our several attempts to take the camp, enemy behavior continued to surprise us. One time a bad guy drove his car straight through the entrance, crashing into a gaggle of bushes, only to hop out and spot us lurking just outside. On another attempt, the enemies were completely unaware, milling around with their heads in the clouds (and our sights). And yet another time, we watched as guys actively flanked our entry. While the enemy A.I. in this early build might not have been staffed with a bunch of Ph.D. candidates — they tended to play the bold-and-brazen card, rather than be strategic — they certainly were anything but predictable.

And if you choose to take the Lethal Weapon, guns-blazing approach to eliminating the camp’s water supply, a firefight of epic proportions awaits. A good mix of grenade tossing and shooting goes far enough to let you get inside the gates, but you’ll also have to keep up your malaria-infected strength by injecting vials of suppressant serum in your arm when needed. Taking out snipers in watchtowers, keeping an eye out for stationary turrets, and then ultimately blowing the water-supply pipeline — all in a day’s work, really. But ultimately, it’s not the firefights — as intense and crammed full of loony enemies as they are — that really define Far Cry 2. It’s what you do in between them.

The action really starts to cook when you hit the open road (or as open as a jungle road can really be) on foot or, more wisely, in a car or truck. During daytime hours, bad guys can visually spot you as you sputter through the undergrowth or approach the multitude of crossroads that pepper the game’s massive map. But at night, you’ll have to select your mode of transport smartly. With noise playing a larger role when things go dark — though the nighttime starry skies keep things realistically brightened — you’ll have to cut your headlights or simply walk to keep from alerting enemies, unless you like living dangerously. To maximize the surprise factor, sneak into a threat-filled camp using the underbrush as your stealthy shield — or even better, misdirect their attention by tossing grenades at gas lines to set the entire camp ablaze. On that note, you’d be smart to remember that nearly everything in Far Cry 2’s grassy environs is painfully flammable.

But don’t think that staying in your car will keep you safe. Enemies will give chase in vehicles of their own — to the bitter end. In one instance, we were hounded by a commando in a truck fitted with a mounted turret. As far as we thought we had driven, he remained in our rear-view mirror only to run us off the road in the middle of a sandy, desert-like area, giving him ample time to hop out and man the turret, filling us and our poor little Datsun full of lead until the Game Over screen appeared. Sob.

Fortunately, Ubisoft has ditched the Jack Carver–led, Island of Dr. Moreau–themed hijinks of Crytek’s first Far Cry. But we’re glad they’ve kept the delirious number of surprises and crazy possibilities that put the franchise on the map.