Review: Just Cause 2

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I did a lot of things playing Just Cause 2 so many things that I couldn’t put them in words, which is why I made this video, which barely has any words at all.

Just Cause 2 is insane. If you didn’t watch that video or watched it and simply refused to believe it, then yes, that was me surfing a jet then grappling to airliner mid flight. That was also me quad biking off an exploding crane, driving an ice cream van off a mountain, gracefully base jumping off a skyscraper and down a water fall, jumping onto the roof of my moving truck to clear a road block with a grenade launcher and last but not least, attaching a sports car to an air liner and driving/taking off into the sunset.

Just Cause 2 takes place on the “small” Islands of Panau which has recently been taken over by Baby Panay, a dictator with a rotten regime. You play Agent Rico Rodriguez, stuntman turned agent, who is dropped into Panau to aid three revolutionary groups, the Roaches, the Reapers and the Ular Boys, break the chains of oppression. But absolutely none of that matters. What matters is that Panau is a 400 sq kilometre playground complete with snowy mountains, tropical jungles, sunny beaches, a desert, cites, villages and explosions. Its also possible to fly about 4 kilometres up and skydive down. Rico supports an arsenal of the usual assault rifles, pistols and grenades which he can have delivered to him along with vehicles at any location. His ace in the hole comes in the form of an infinite parachute and infinite grappling hook. Let me explain… Opened your parachute too early? Cut it loose fall a couple of hundred metres then open it again, simple! Need to climb that cliff face? Just keep firing that grappling hook and shoot straight to the top. Need a quick way to get around? Why not combine both and use the grappling hook to slingshot yourself through the air while hanging from the parachute. Of course where would the point of having a grappling hook be of you couldn’t fire the other end out and attach two things together. Just like the aforementioned car to a plane, a guard to a gas canister (which then blasts into the air, human in tow) or even just a fast moving government vehicle to a passing tree. Rico also supports super human balance and can easily jump out of any moving vehicle, stand on the roof and return fire. In fact he can even somehow steer the vehicle while standing on the roof through… um… his feet?

This insane mix of fantasy action hero tactics allow for some of the most mind blowing fights ever seen in video game land. Vehicle battle are particularly fun, often times you’ll be hanging onto the bonnet of a moving enemy car, poking your head around the corner to fire at a passenger who’s leaning out an open door to try and remove you. In fact often times you’ll be grappling from this position onto an attacking helicopter to do pretty much the same thing. In order to unlock missions from the gangs and main story missions from the agency Rico works for, Rico must cause Chaos. Chaos is a score which basically gets higher when stuff blows up. Every oil drum, radar dish, crane, power transformer, communication tower and many more all score chaos points when destroyed.

Its physics on steroids from start to finish… or rather it would be if you didn’t have to play the game. Just Cause 2′s only real problem is a big one, almost all missions require non of the above to complete. It’s possible to play through the entire game as a boring, repetitive run of the mill shooter, in fact the mission types seem to encourage this. For example, lets say a mission asks me to destroy a truck that’s driving about somewhere. The easiest thing to do is to nab a readily available attack helicopter and fire off a few rockets. Done. Far more fun though would be to jump out of the helicopter, land on motorbike behind van, grapple to the van’s roof, remove driver, drive van off cliff, jump out, open parachute and watch as van explodes on impact. Done… but with more explosion. The standard faction mission allow for a bit of creative freedom but the main story mission, which should be what a player looks forward to, are nothing but obstacles in the way of the fun. Almost all of them require a silly amount of really boring gun play, which is easily the games weakest point. Auto aim is constantly on which is great when you’re firing from a moving jet but not so much from behind a wall. That said a few missions really hit the mark, the opening attack on a military base, an assault on a nightclub suspended from two blimps 1000 metres above the ground and an awesome tribute to LOST in the form of a plane crash on a freaky island come to mind.

As a game I can give Just Cause2 a respectable 8/10 but if you’re creative enough to make your own fun in a world of endless possibilities then it’s easily one of the best games in years and one that I’ll be revisiting for years to come.

Just Cause 2 is available on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC. PC users can get it through Steam from here.

ps. www.chronicreload.com cough cough