Just Cause 4 (2018)

Hands down one of worst games ever made. It was like they took out everything good from the original games and spit it out into a dull lifeless world. Clearly just a rushed cash grabber that backfired.

I read that a fifth installment is in the works and is slatted for a 2025 release, hopefully that will be enough time to make actual game...

This game tries to be Tomb Raider, Indiana Jones and Far Cry all at the same time and the result is a big mess. I find it hard to believe that Square Enix published this game. I decided to try it only because of Avalanche's involvement in Rage 2.

There are a lot of interesting ideas but all are poorly implemented. The gameplay is extremely poor and seems half baked. Controlling some vehicles is difficult and we are not even provided proper instructions, we just have to figure them out.

But you don't get to joyride it during the mission where you liberate the airport, and that's emblematic of one of the biggest problems with this game. They give you all these different weapons and vehicles and tether mods, but leave it entirely up to you to find and try out most of them without incorporating that experimentation into the main game. The side missions (some of which aren't really side missions because you need to do them to take territories to unlock story missions, but they are side missions in the sense that there's, like, 4 types that just repeat over and over with slight variations) don't really encourage experimentation because the goals are so boring and often require tediously searching for small breakers and generators while dealing with endless waves of goons, and the main missions don't encourage experimentation because they're largely on rails (sometimes literally). It would've been nice to have some missions that required some puzzle solving or just throwing specific random crap together so that joyriding or messing around with tether mods actually contributed to the rest of the game. I mean, there are a bunch of transport vehicles, including a ship that can house both a smaller ship and a helicopter, and there is never any reason to use them. Also I don't know how they think I'll have time use manually activated tether features in any sort of strategic way when there's constantly people shooting at me; I just had rockets and balloons on auto for the whole game.

That combined with the paltry story that relied heavily on having played the previous games to be invested (which, ok, I guess that's my bad), the numerous glitches (possibly the worst was when part of a level just didn't load, so none of the buildings had textures or, more importantly, collision, and I just drove the hacker through the floor, and then he got out of the car because he thought he was at his destination, and...yeah, it didn't end well for him), the aforementioned repetitive-but-required "side" missions, and the fact that I was constantly dying from random explosions I couldn't have predicted or just an overwhelming amount of grenades, rockets, and sniper fire all at once—let's just it's weird that the most consistently fun part of this game was just driving, like, a normal car. On the highway. 'Cause that's not really what this game is built around.

I will say, I do actually like Rico Rodriguez as an action hero. He's got more personality than the Geraltites, but is less smarmy than Nathan Drake (the obvious reference point). He's not a great guy but he's also not trying to be, so instead of being all brooding and "complicated" he's just kind of a jerk, with a dry wit (occasionally), doesn't give the teensiest of a crap about the unnamed NPCs but does sort of care for the named ones. At least by the end. Maybe. But yeah, I kinda like him (as a character, as a person he really is a heartless bastard).

So yeah, I don't know, the game was free, it killed some time, there were a few "Hey, that was cool" moments and lot of "Ugh this again" moments so overall just kinda meh.

Intro

I remember really liking JC2. Swinging around like Spider-Man, blowing stuff up, dragging statues down by tethering them to cars - it was a lot of fun. JC4 takes that fun gameplay and turns it into a giant turd.

The good

The core gameplay is still fun. Unlike JC2 you don't have to do tedious stuff to get HP upgrades and drops don't play a cinematic every time. Plus no QTEs. The new stick-a-balloon-to-stuff power is fun too.

The Bad

• The story is dreadful. I don't care for anyone involved.
• There are waaaaay too many escort/protection missions.
• They only recorded a handful of lines of chatter and they get on your nerves real fast.
• Dee strongk aksent of dee àktors geds on your nurves àfter ee while.
• The weather stuff is awful. You walk even slower, you can't see shit and it just doesn't add anything.
• They don't tell you you have to blow up those day of the dead heads, they're not marked on your map and they don't even show when you use your special vision. Good luck finding them all.
• Also good luck finding all the tombs without looking up where they are. Sometimes a bit of dialogue will play but the tomb won't actually be marked on your map.
• I've had at least 3 CTDs in just 29,5 hours of playing.
• No wacky boss battle like in JC2 (on top of ICBMs).
• Chaos is initially hard to get but quickly becomes irrelevant after that. Why is there no use for it beyond unlocking territories?
• There are too many unlock systems. You have different quests for each of the three hook powers, plus chaos, plus stunts, plus region missions plus feats. A single points system would have been far better.
• You can't select an unlockable item to see where you can unlock it.
• Because enemies improve and you barely do you actually feel like you get weaker over the course of the game.
• You can't "disable" you wingsuit and really hurt yourself if you grapple in it and hit the ground. You have to enable and disable your parachute to land which happens constantly so it's a really bad design choice.

The ugly

The worst control system in the history of gaming. Prompts can't be clicked on but only respond to the keyboard? Closing menus is done through backspace? There is no handbrake on cars and the 'standard' button for that in games (Space) instead ejects you with your parachute out? Oh god, and the hook upgrade menu is so bizarre and painful. And the map is opened by pressing 1? Did they randomly generate these controls or something?

Escorted characters get stuck, return along the path and one time even manage to blow up our helicopter by walking against it (wtf). In the same vein objects you have to protect suddenly show up, sometimes have people with RPGs right next to it and can be heavily damaged by (accidental) collissions. Enemies and allies will often collide with you in the air as well. Quests don't take into account warzone blockades leading to even more crashes.

So many missions have timers. The worst ones are those where you have to get vehicles into the water before time runs out. There are others as well and they're never fun. Enemies already add pressure, no need to have this additional nonsense.

The mission to disable the sandstorm is one of the worst i've ever played. You walk slowly, can't see a thing and have to follow poorly placed lights to find the generators you have to blow up. It takes forever and is a pain to play. And that wasn't the only time i was confused about what to do next, it happened a bunch of times. A memorable one was a mission where i had to blow up generators (about 90% of main missions involve that) and i just couldn't find them. Turns out that you have to use a console to open a door to the generators. In the entire game so far consoles always had a prompt and didn't work otherwise. Such dreadful design.

Conclusion

Just Cause 4 was made by completely incompetent idiots. The core gameplay is still fun but almost everything else is awful.

Where did Avalanche go wrong here?

As a long-time fan of the franchise since Just Cause 2, I think I can agree with the majority that the latest output has taken a left turn unlike the two previous games. A left turn that actually steers you off the road... down the cliff... parachute barely working... crashing down and tumbling until your ragdoll settles down.

Don't get me wrong, JC4 didn't end up as a horrible sequel; it still holds up graphics-wise and most of the gameplay functions, as well. It's still doing its tropes in spectacular ways and while there are some new bugs that are spectacular or funny, the game feels less rewarding overall and I question myself why I waste my time on this sometimes.

The letdowns are big and small but my main issue with it is that the chaos system has been stripped down and redesigned so I'm afraid to say that it feels less satisfying than I tended to feel from permanently destroying enemy structures in specific territories. They respawn as if nothing happened, only you keep the chaos points earned for progressing the Chaos Army occupation.

What keeps me around for the longest time are the new and enhanced combat/utility features provided for our protagonist Rico. The grapple hook modding has been overhauled and grants many options to suit your preferences to affect the surrounding objects and enemies. The new balloon system is passable but I enjoyed tying enemies with vehicles together and send them spinning into the air with the thruster pads, knowing how much I love fighting by the means of physics. The weather systems are also a welcome feature; the tornado has been a source of dreamy, adrenaline fun when the army is involved. I hope the team take notes and find ways to take weather effects to further lengths.

Nevertheless, there have been sacrifices made for the sake of new gameplay functions and I must say that some important elements have been misguided in terms of rewarding gameplay experiences. Sorry, Avalanche, but the concept of progress and mission dynamics are getting stale early on. You score well in the world building and high-tension gameplay but the rewards aren't as gratifying in general as your previous works. See where things went right with Just Cause 2 & 3 (besides the bugs) and use them to redeem yourself in the next Just Cause sequel.

This is a bad game. A third-person low-budget Far Cry. There's potential in the chaos you can cause with the tether and that can be fun, and is cool to have a mostly latino cast with latin music playing in the radio while driving through cities and rural towns that actually look like south american cities.

But... still bad. And runs horribly on a non-pro PS4.

If you wanna read my full review (in spanish), you can do it here:

https://gamerfocus.co/juegos/just-cause-4-resena/