Just Cause 2 (2010)

Without a doubt one of the best open world games ever made and perhaps the best in the series, Just Cause 2 gives players one of the biggest explorable maps ever seen in a video game at the time.

With a humongous open world to dive into, players are tasked with liberating villages and cities in an effort to dismantle an oppressive government regime, all while destroying various forms of propaganda and gunfights with the enemy.

Gameplay wise, you have a vast array of ways to travel the distant lands. Driving cars is the least successful aspect of this game and the mechanical features of that are far from Grand Theft Auto. Given a grappling hook, you can sling across the map seamlessly with your parachute. A personal favorite mode of transportation of mine is the jets, you really get a true feel for the size of the map when you're zooming the skies of this lavish world.

The story, in my opinion, is overshadowed by the shear size of the map, feeling underwhelmingly disproportionate in comparison, with weak story telling and more focus on action rather than substance.

There's a lot of fun to be had here and a ton of things to destroy with James Bond style espionage and explosions. If you love open world freedom of choice with an action packed punch, look no further!

Just Cause 2 makes you feel like you're in the middle of an action movie. You have explosions, stunts, crazy physics, and a really corny story with over-the-top characters to top it all off. It's really fun to play, because the unique grappling hook mechanic allows you to come up with some insane ideas for traversal as well as combat. The main story missions also do a good job of amplifying the action movie aspect, with each mission sending you off to do increasingly ridiculous stuff. The island of Panau is also large and varied, having mountains, beaches, grasslands and even deserts.

Once you get through the initial novelty of the game's mechanics and the obligatory romp around the island, you'd be tempted to settle in and slowly work towards the 100% completion. This is where the problems begin. Faction missions are a mixed bag - some are interesting, while most are uninspired or even repetitive. There are a large number of resource parts to collect, but the resulting upgrades do not feel like they're worth the effort (especially vehicle upgrades). Racing challenges are also present, but these are awkwardly suited to the fast-and-loose physics in the game. These challenges tend to be more of a struggle in getting to the finish line in one piece.

Despite the lack of depth, Just Cause 2 is still a lot of fun to play. The game really does give you a bunch of tools to experiment and go crazy with, and the experience remains fun until you get bored of it.

This game is exactly as it appears to be. The focus is on running around a spacious open-world, blowing up a variety of things in a variety of ways. But the way this game holds your hand for many of the missions, and this constant (almost pathological) focus on blowing things up, can actually get in the way of the whole "open-world" concept. Here is the breakdown of my experiences:

--The Good--

This is definitely an open-world game, which means there is lots of room for emergent gameplay. That simply means that this is a game that you can easily tell "war stories" about later, where you managed to get out of jams using creative solutions, or where incredible things happened to you based totally on luck. There was one mission where I was supposed to fly a helicopter and shoot down another helicopter. After four tries though I found that I just could not shoot the other helicopter down. So for my fifth try I just jumped out of my helicopter, grappled to the other helicopter, punched the pilot in the face, and brought it down that way. Another time I was riding in the back of a vehicle while we were being chased. I was supposed to deal with the soldiers driving up behind us. Rather than shooting the soldiers, or trying to shoot out their tires, I shot grappling hooks into the front of their vehicles and attached them to the bridge supports we were driving by. The soldiers were driving so fast that when the grappling cords tightened their trucks went flying end-over-end into the air, spilling half the soldiers out onto the bridge.

See what I mean?

--The Bad--

The main problem I had with this game is that it is a little too aware of the fact that it is an open-world game like GTA. The designers know that many players get these games just to blow stuff up and do crazy vehicular stunts, so the game focuses almost exclusively on these elements. This in itself is not a bad thing. I did buy this game to blow things up. But the game is so eager to help me see just how many different ways I can blow things up that it grabs my hand at the start and pretty much does not let it go again until the game is over. The people who give me missions chatter at me throughout the entire mission, telling me just how to blow things up and get things done. The things that explode are all marked in red and have giant white stars on them. Objective markers sometimes block out parts of the screen so that you can't see where you are driving, only where the game demands that you go.

While I did enjoy blowing things up as I played, I also found that my enjoyment was lessened by the fact that I was supposed to blow all those things up. The game just kept congratulating me on how well I was blowing things up to the point that it started to feel a little patronizing by the end.

That game design that focused so much on explosions also had some other negative consequences for the game. While the explosions were all very nice, many of the other elements of the game were bland and lacking. The characters in the game were all forgettable. They were each a parody of a parody, and while that could have made them hilarious or at least bizarre enough to be memorable, they tended to feel like only quick sketches of more interesting people you will never meet. The vehicles you can buy and the weapons you can collect were also unremarkable, unlike the weird weapons of Saints Row or the transforming vehicles of Crackdown. And the island itself, which is actually quite large, is mostly the same stuff over and over again.

Games like this call you to explore the game world, but this game gave you no incentive to do that. There was nothing interesting to see, nothing remarkable to uncover. There were literally thousands of power-ups and collectibles you could find, but they were almost pointless because of their sheer numbers and the complete lack of a tangible payoff. I easily beat the game having found only 27 of the 400 armor upgrades. I only spent fifteen of the 900 vehicle parts I could find or earn. So why should I spend my time scouring the island to find more?

--The Verdict--

This game limits itself. It is too focused on explosions while ignoring the aspects of a game that can give it real character. At the same time though it was not an unenjoyable experience. I had fun figuring out the best ways to defeat generals in their bases. Some of the missions really hit a good balance between challenge and mindless gunplay. And by the end of the game I really felt like a bad-ass agency asset. But I also know that in a week or two I will have pretty much forgotten all about this game.

If you are a fan of open-world titles similar to this one I think you will find something to enjoy here. Just wait for a sale though, if you can. It is good for a few fun evenings but it is unlikely you will go back to it after you've finished the main storyline.