Just Cause 2

The Good
Just Cause 2 is not going to lie to you. It knows what you bought the game for, and it's not going to pretend that you're there for anything else. You're there to blow up things all across an island country, and that is precisely what the game has to offer.

The game offers far fewer combat options than older games in the same genre, but Avalanche was right to play up the importance of the grappling hook. The snap of grappling a building roof, opening your parachute, and using the momentum to fly over an entire town feels fantastic. There's also a variety of asshole physics tricks you can do with the hook to satisfy your asshole physics itch, but that's all they'll do. Your guns are always more effective than anything you can do with the hook.

The Bad
Perfection is not when you can add nothing more. Perfection is when you can't subtract anything else. Just Cause 2 takes place in an island country that is miles and miles wide, and there is no reason for it. After the first time you see the full island sprawled out below while you fly over it (which is honestly pretty great) the size of the island becomes meaningless outside some of the races. With exactly one exception (the best mission in the game) all the missions and objectives take place in single bases or cities. Two thirds of the island could sink into the ocean and nothing about the game would have to be changed.

I was unimpressed by the scale of the island and the cut-and-paste towns, both of which are big parts of the game. I was doubly unimpressed by how limited actually playing the game is. A game as simple as Just Cause 2 really needed co-op, or at least building destruction or airstrikes like the Mercenaries series. As soon as you trigger an alarm enemies swarm you endlessly, crawling out of the cracks all around you like a swarm of rats. About half-way through the game helicopters get added to the mix, turning alerts into a constant repetition of hijacking helicopters, getting shot down by the next helicopter wave, and hijacking a new helicopter.

On this next point I'm still not sure if I want to call this a positive or a negative, but Just Cause 2 is a thematically consistent game about American foreign policy, by which I mean it's absolutely vile. Your goal in the game is to kill a puppet dictator who decided to cut ties with the US. The method by which you do this is to cause Chaos (an actual stat in the game) by destabilizing the country through attacks against both military and civilian targets. As the country destabilizes the three revolutionary forces Rico allies himself with, all of which range from untrustworthy to criminal, expand their influence and fight the army on the streets (though not often enough to break up the monotony of traveling, sadly).

Rico is indisputably a force of evil, his contact Sheldon is a living personification of American Jingoism, and every other character in the game is so insignificant that they might as well not exist. The game only seems to have these characters at all because someone involved in the game was under the extremely incorrect assumption that anyone who played the first Just Cause cared for its story in the slightest. At least in that game you were blowing up military outposts to turn them into resort hotels, as ludicrous a concept as that is. In this game you convince the general populace to revolt by blowing up water towers in the desert and transformers in isolated mountain towns.

The Bottom Line
Almost all games, no matter how depraved their protagonists or their setting, at least try to paint the player's actions in some kind of heroic light. I'd give Just Cause 2 credit for bucking that trend, but, unlike Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, I don't think that it was intentional. Just Cause 2 raises unanswered questions only because the developers didn't realise they were being raised in the first place, and that Avalanche couldn't devote the development time to answering even if they had realised. Every part of the game is similarly under-developed; sabotaged by the requirement of scale. A sand box one square mile in size will seem exciting right up until you realise it hasn't got any sand in it.

The Good
First of all, I like that you can eventually mess around in the Panau by sabotaging militarian property, like fuel depots, radars, generators and silos. As the game comes down in the graphics, they look gorgeous, despite that they are not ground-breaking, since other games have better graphics. Music is also entertaining for the most part, while I could prefer orchestrated music. View distance is pretty impressive, since you can see anything from far away! Do you want to go to the Offshore Rig instead to the militarian harbor? You will decide it!

The Bad
There are some glitches littered here and there, and frame rate may also suffer sometimes, so that game is somewhat demanding, especially on complex areas. Voice acting is not the best thing that I have heard in this game, since it is pretty much Hit or Miss.

Some of the missions are particularly frustrating, since you don't encounter checkpoints too often, which can be a nuisance if you have managed to get so far in that mission and soon you realize that you have been killed and you need to start from last checkpoint or even worse, from the beginning!

The Bottom Line
This is a game that you should play it once, even if you are not fond of the Action games in the general, since you will eventually get sucked in and will force you to play this game to the end!

With tons of stuff to do, it has really high replay value, but you can always start a new game if you need new challenges.

The Good
Just Cause 2 takes the US agent Rico Rodriguez to Panau, a fictitious small country controlled by "Baby" Panay, the dictator controlling the local armed forces. Guess what? You are here to take him down...

Just Cause 2 is a blaze of action and destruction. You will love to play it and to let it amaze you with its serious action and beautiful graphics. You are controlling the actions of Rico but make no mistake, the stunning vista of Panau is the star in this game!

Its hair-raising action starts right after the first ingame cutscene (the cutscenes by the way will certainly not thrill anybody these days). As you jump out of a helicopter to go after a dead body falling to the ground, you will not know where to look at at first. The vista is simply amazing and the good thing is - it doesn't get old. Even after several hours of gameplay the graphic engine still knows how to impress. Back to the action: There are a lot of ways to travel throughout Panau - 104 to be exact. Bikes, cars, helicopters and planes can all be controlled, hijacked and - of course - crashed. Spending your time in a helicopter or jet is not only the most fun but also the most efficient way to travel between missions, mission waypoints or simply roaming throughout the island.

Rico's most important tool is the grappling hook. With the push of a button, the grappling hook snaps out to enemies or object to interact with it. Grabbing an enemy will pull it towards you, so one might try it with enemies on a tower or such. Grabbing an object will make Rico get to the object while the grappling hook retracts itself. With these basics Rico is able to capture and hijack vehicles and take out some enemies. The real fun starts when combining objects with the grappling hook. For example: Rico can attach a barrel to a truck or a helicopter by pointing to the object and using the grappling hook on the vehicle, or vice versa. Getting into the vehicle will now cause some more chaos around Rico!

Talking about Chaos: If you want, Chaos is the type of currency to unlock the main story missions as well as missions for the three local gangs you can (or more like HAVE to, refer to the "dislike" for that) work for. Destroying objects of "Baby" Panay's army will earn you chaos, JC2 simply calls it "sabotages". At over 300 locations all over Panau, of which some are military bases, can be "controlled" by executing all sabotages and finding upgrade boxes. These upgrade boxes will boost Rico's stats for weapons, vehicles and his armor. Once you enter a location, the mini map will indicate the completion of this area in percentage. If you manage to destroy all army objects and find all the upgrade boxes, you will gain a 100% completion rate.

Let's wrap up the positive aspects of the game: - stunning visuals - some serious and cool action - great grappling hook as your main tool throughout the game - if you like that type of game, it will keep you busy for 20-30 hours

The Bad
JC2 is not a perfect game or instant classic but I will keep it installed on my 360's HDD for a while. I love playing around in Panau. However, there is a downsite - depending on the kind of games you like they might be devastating or negligible: - dumb storyline and character drawing - as a shooter it is just average - some missions are repetitive - is there any background music at all? - checkpoint system throughout the story missions can be quite frustrating at times - will take some time to collect a 1000 Gamerscore

The Bottom Line
You will certainly have fun with JC2 if you had fun with its predecessor and games like Mercenaries (2). Don't expect a decent storyline or character details but a great game to roam around and bring some serious chaos to a beautiful and stunning open-world scenario.

It will keep you busy for some time if you like this kind and style of game. Going for all the 360 achievements will certainly keep you busy for at least 20 hours. Doing so might get a bit repetitive in terms of story/mission design. However, flying around in a jet just 10 meters above the ground to fire a couple of rockets into the next military base and watch it blow never gets old. And finally, the grappling hook adds a lot of fun and some variety about how you make your way through Panau.