Developer: Avalanche Studios
Publisher: Eidos/Square Enix
Release Date: Out Now
Players: One
Words By:
Four years ago Rico Rodriguez helped out the people of a fictional Caribbean tropical island called San Esperito; now “the Agency's most powerful weapon” is sent to liberate the equally fictional South East Asian country of Panau from its despotic military regime. The game uses a genre-typical alert system (like GTA’s ‘wanted’ level) so the more havoc you cause to government installations and the country’s infrastructure the more money you earn, but you’ll also attract more enemy soldiers, jeeps , gunboats and attack choppers. This alert level can only be dropped by killing every single enemy in the area or by retreating and staying out of sight for a while. The fact that Panau seems to spend more on its military budget than the US or Saddam ever did gives you an all-action game with innumerable enemies.
Just Cause 2 uses a massively upgraded version of the original Just Cause game engine, and features a similarly upgraded ‘grapple and parachute’ combination with which to move Rico around. Just Cause wasn’t a bad looking game but Rico, and all the vehicles had a rather cartoony appearance, and the scenery of San Esperito was rather samey wherever you went throughout the huge landscape. Originally Rico’s grapple (it works a bit like Batman’s grapple hook, only it’s permanently attached to Rico’s left arm) would only latch onto vehicles, giving him the rather-too-fiddly-for-most ability to parasail around whilst being towed, but obviously never too far from roads. It was one of those gadgets that was nearly a great idea, but not quite. Now Rico’s grapple will latch onto almost any surface within 70 metres or so, meaning he can use it to climb buildings and mountains or, well… anything. This means you can grapple passing vehicles (even planes in flight), hijack helicopters or ascend to and base jump from some truly spectacular places dotted around the massive play area. This beautiful new ‘sandbox’ is made up of a group of islands spread over 400 square miles of varied landscape including desert, wetlands, jungle and a towering mountain range that dominates the views of Panau, which are extremely impressive as the draw distance is so long. To give you some idea, Panau makes GTA IV’s Liberty City seem small in comparison and is so huge that it’ll take you 10 minutes to fly from one side to the other in a jet plane!
One of the main things that struck me whilst playing Just Cause 2 is how so many people watch you playing it and think it’s daft. Perhaps it’s my own personal way of being able to suspend disbelief, logic and the knowledge of real life physics when playing a video game (and I’m clearly not alone as so many people seem to be enjoying JC2 as much as me) but the sheer daftness and unfeasibility of Rico’s grapple-chute method of traversing Panau hasn’t bothered me one bit. Yes, it would have been more “sense” if the guy was a superhero, who could fly and sling webs Spider-Man style, or even a secret agent who just happened to have a jet pack to hover around with, but are you really going to let the impossibilities of Rico’s grapple and never-ending supply of parachutes stop you from enjoying this gorgeous-looking and explosive sandbox game? No? Good. (If the answer was ‘Yes’ then you should probably stop playing video games right now, buy yourself a Gordon Brown poster for your bedroom ceiling and get into Politics or Economics or something). The fact is that you could probably get by in JC2 without using the grapple-chute too much and sticking to traditional weapons and vehicles, but you’d truly be missing out on a lot of fun, and the weirdest yet most satisfying and strangely relaxing travel-mechanic to grace a videogame, ever.
How does all this grappling and parachuting business work? Well, from the start (the grapple was an upgrade weapon in Just Cause 1) you can fire (press ‘LB’) Rico’s grapple at any distant object or bit of landscape, and as long as it’s heavier than Rico at this point it’ll automatically reel you to it, meaning you can zoom around at great speed making yourself hard to shoot. It also of course means you can use the grapple to climb trees, radio antennas, buildings and even mountains. You can grapple to any vehicle within range and even stand on top of a speeding vehicle before you decide what to do next; this could be to manoeuvre around hanging from the front or back of it, or just enter it, hurl the driver/pilot out and take control. At any time you can leave the controls of a vehicle to enter the ‘stunt jump’ position again, or leap from the speeding vehicle and use it as a missile, or just pull your chute and use the vehicle’s speed to get airborne.
When you use the grapple (press ‘LB’) in combo with the chute (press ‘A’ as it’s reeling in) you can get airborne quickly, pull the left stick back to gain altitude and repeatedly use the grapple to ‘tow’ yourself around, keeping the chute’s airspeed up (it does have vaguely realistic aerodynamics, and can “stall” out) and even gain great altitude if you have a convenient hill or building to grapple to. You can use it to float silently around and stealthily recon a base before attacking it, or get some speed up and do strafing runs, firing your weapons and throwing grenades. On foot the grapple can also be used to yank enemies off their feet (this is particularly satisfying when they fall to their death!), or even use it to tether one object to another. You do this by aiming at one object, holding ‘LB’, aiming at another and letting ‘LB’ go—hey presto! Using this method you can make it into a tow rope, or tether an enemy to an exploding gas cylinder or petrol drum, or a passing vehicle (boy do they sound surprised!), or even just hang them from a wall or tree and shoot them while they struggle to escape. Early in the game there’s an action sequence in which you find that you can even fire the grapple at chasing vehicles and use it to anchor them to the road, meaning they stop DEAD—a very spectacular way of disposing of pursuing vehicles.
Ah yes, the vehicles. There are over a hundred vehicles of various types in JC2; Cars, Vans, Trucks, Armoured Vehicles, Bikes, Quads, Boats, Choppers and Planes. In the original Just Cause the vehicles were a hideous bunch of ’50s and ’60s junkers and the handling was rather suspect, and although the physics and handling have been improved for the sequel, the steering is still rather twitchy, and is best described as “pointy”— this frequently results in zigzagging as you overcorrect or try to control the inevitable slide that you got into because of the overly sensitive steering. I did get used to it eventually but races in the faster cars are always dangerously twitchy affairs. Although the vehicles just don’t feel as instinctive to drive as say, GTA IV’s, the helicopters are a lot more fun to use than they were in Rockstar’s game; they handle predictably, turn well and the weapons are easier to aim. Continuing with other people’s games as reference points, I thought Saints Row 2 nailed aircraft handling and controls perfectly so why Just Cause 2 didn’t use a similar system I don’t know. One stick (the left one) controls all the plane’s attitude and yaw controls—a rudder control (on LB and RB) would have made them much more realistic to fly. There’s also a bit of a disappointment coming aircraft-wise when you discover a plane called a Leopard that looks just like a Harrier jump jet (including vectoring nozzles), but doesn’t blinkin’ well hover! Surely it would have made sense and been easy enough to make it control just like a very fast helicopter?
Although there are an infinite number of ways to complete the various missions there aren’t all that many to keep you busy; if you ignore the side missions the main Agency missions that make up the story could be over in half a dozen hours or so. Side missions for three different factions have you destroying bases, oil rigs, statues, saving prisoners, blowing up pipelines, stealing vehicles and allsorts. Completing these faction missions and the inevitable exploration that they encourage make up the main body of the game but also unlock strongholds (that act as localised restart points) as well as further missions, weapons, races and challenges. It’s worth mentioning too that Avalanche have been very clever in the use of the beautiful and varied terrain in races and challenges, making every new race a different experience, and most of them a lot of fun. The only problem with these is that should you fail to make a checkpoint in time you have to make your way back to the start point as there’s no ‘retry race’ option, and some of the races send you miles and miles away from the start.
Ever since good old GTA III’s hidden packages, a sandbox game wouldn’t be complete without hidden collectibles and Just Cause 2 has literally hundreds—so many, in fact, that a lot of them are marked on the map! This doesn’t mean they’re all that easy to find though; some are in the mountains, some in the jungle, some in the desert, some in the open and some quite well tucked away, and collecting them all will take you hours upon hours. There are even “black boxes” (presumably from crashed planes), some of which are under water and will require some boat travel and underwater diving to collect. A helicopter or seaplane with floats would have been really handy here, but there are some very speedy boats available. There are also equipment cases that allow you to upgrade your health bar, weapons and vehicles which can be tracked down via a scanner. This scanner is positioned in the top left corner of the HUD and works a bit like “hot & cold” as a meter fills as you near a case, with a bright light blinking as you get close and a white arrow pointing you in the direction of your new find. You can then spend your hard-earned on ordering up weapons, vehicles or just an extraction to a new location from your new black market dealer buddy Sheldon, but this sends the game into a set sequence that sees him arrive in his chopper, say the same darned thing every flippin’ time, and he’s also rather slow to appear and it’s quite slow to load in the new location, which is at complete odds with the rest of the game, which spools the massive landscape without any loading screens at all. So the essential Sheldon can be annoying, but not as annoying as his prices, which are more like ‘highway robbery’ than ‘black market’.
The weapons are much more fun to use than in Just Cause 1, and with a bit of aim assist and a roll-evade move Rico can get mixed up in some thrilling shootouts against numerous enemies that will hide and cover. You’ll soon get the hang of using the grapple-chute to escape enemy fire when too badly outnumbered or damaged, and even occupied and attacking enemy vehicles (including planes and helicopters) can be grappled to and then commandeered via a three-button-press ‘struggle sequence’ similar to Mercenaries 2’s.
As massive as the landscape is Avalanche haven’t forgotten the little touches like waves lapping at the seashore, birds soaring in the skies, fish in the sea and lakes, scorpions in the desert, realistic clouds, dynamic weather and a day/night cycle. JC2 never takes itself too seriously and after you perform your latest act of freedom fighting the Government Radio transmissions will amuse you as they claim another fictitious propaganda “victory” over rebel forces. As in Mercenaries 2, fire and explosions play a huge part in the gameplay and are particularly well done, even the checkpoint gates that appear during races are made of flames and explode as you pass through them—nothing in JC2 is done quietly or with any subtlety.
Just Cause 2 is a massive, spectacular game that is without doubt one of the highlights of the year so far, but it has plenty of flaws too. These include psychic enemies that spot you regardless of how stealthy you are, and whilst JC2 isn’t really about stealthy attacks and is more about big explosions, dramatic action and impossible stunts the sheer fact that you can sneak up behind a guard, kill him without him knowing you’re there and yet still the entire Panau army will immediately zero in on you and start firing in your direction (and always with ridiculous accuracy) is rather weak, and rather silly, and rather disappointing.
The fiddly nature of Rico’s movement clambering around on vehicles and entering different gunnery positions can be cause for unintentional hilarity, but the sluggish “crouch” action is just plain annoying as you can’t move whilst ‘crouched’ so you can’t duck under many obstacles that look like it should be possible to, or even fire a weapon or grapple from this position (Rico stands if you fire while crouched to act as a sort-of cover mechanic, but it doesn’t work very well). This is never too much of an issue but in a game that plays so well for the most part any clunky actions or controls really stand out. Rico can’t even climb over an object more than five feet high and has to grapple over any obstacles. This can get annoying because the grapple won’t fire at an object that’s too close, and also doesn’t always go where you aimed it. Just finding your way onto some walkways or even the railed-in deck of a house to pick up a equipment case can be an annoyingly fiddly business because of this, and due to some clipping issues it’s also possible to get Rico stuck in some very strange places, at least one of which meant I had to reload a previous save as extricating him by jumping out or grappling to a distant object was impossible. To play as a hero who can ride atop a speeding jet plane or jump from an 80ft bell tower without a scratch, and yet is unable to clamber over a rickety wooden fence or a stone wall is daft in the extreme.
Just to round off the gripes department; while the draw distance is extremely impressive, vehicles do pop up quite close as you approach them, particularly vehicles that always spawn in the same spot, and there’s a strange effect as you approach a structure that you have previously destroyed, as the game first draws the intact structure before remembering that you’ve destroyed it and drawing in the damaged one. Disappearing vehicles have been an annoyance in sandbox games ever since GTA III, and it’s still a problem in JC2—yes I accept traffic jams need to be cleared away so the AI can return to some sort of pattern but you don’t have to go far for a passing vehicle to have vanished behind you, or stray far from your own vehicles before they get cleared up by forces unknown. I’d like to blame the NPCs or enemies in the game for the disappearances, but for the most part it’s the sandbox game genre’s age old problem. I should say though that the AI soldiers are intelligent enough to use your vehicles against you. On one occasion I had landed on a rooftop to pick up an equipment crate, only to get spotted by a passing patrol chopper who naturally attacked, I grappled to it and boarded it, hurling the pilot to what I presumed would be his death, only to find that he’d landed on the rooftop and survived, and after peppering me with his sidearm he leapt into my old chopper and took off to attack me! It’s this kind of active AI that makes JC2 interesting, and will keep enemies following you all over the map if you don’t put enough distance between you or at least break their line of sight to you. And yet sometimes these normally active and intelligent enemies will just stand in a corner waiting for you to shoot them, and enemies that spawn from nowhere will also test your patience, so beware if any of these gaming no-nos are on your list of pet hates.
Most importantly of all, even playing it through on the ‘Hardcore’ difficulty setting I found the game to be fun, with loads to do. Unlike many who seem to think there’s an annoying lack of ammo and the enemies are too bullet-resistant, I thought playing on Hardcore actually made me think a bit more and added some variation to what could otherwise have easily become predictable and repetitive gameplay. In these days of games that give up all they have to give in five or six hours even with the story complete JC2 has still got me going back to it with 100+ hours on the game clock! For those of you looking for another story-driven sandbox game in the mould of GTA or The Saboteur Just Cause 2 may be a bit too ‘out there’, but although it’s as mad as a box of cats, it never takes itself too seriously and seems to supply fun and excitement every time I play it, and there aren’t many games that can make that claim.
Best Bits
- Huge, visually stunning landscape - Fun physics and grapple-chute mechanic - Over a hundred cars, bikes, trucks, APCs, choppers, boats and planes - Loads to see and do provides days/weeks of gameplay
Worst Bits
- Psychic enemies that spawn out of thin air - Occasional glitches - Aiming issues - Intrusive 'Sheldon' loading times - Rico can’t climb
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