Okay Geek Farm
PS3 Review: Just Cause 2
Alex Tretrop
Ask yourself why you play video games. Is it the epic and weaving tales of a great RPG? Or is it to shoot up some aliens in an FPS? Just Cause 2 makes one crucial fact very clear from the get go, and that is that it’s flawed. However, despite its screw ups it’s still one of the year’s best games.
Story
A very close candidate for worst story of the year, Just Cause 2 sees Rico Rodriguez, an Agency super spy, heading to the island of Panau, where he is trying to… well, to be honest I have basically no idea what took place throughout the game. You’re trying to find some corrupt government agent and kill him - something like that - and to be able to Rico has to infiltrate the gangs on the island and gain their loyalty as he learns more information on the agent’s whereabouts.
Like everything in this game, the story is over the top, cheesy, and just out right horrible with some so-bad-it’s-good voice acting and some very, very unmemorable characters. Just Cause 2’s story fails in every way imaginable but I almost can’t help but think that it adds to the absolute ridiculous nature of the game. It may be one of the only games I’ve ever felt that deserved a terrible story, which stated critically, sounds like the weirdest thing ever.
Gameplay
If I could sum up this particular section up in a few words it would have to be “Over the top, insane, and absolutely crazy all at the same time.” Just Cause 2 is some of the best sandbox gameplay I’ve ever experienced with the developers giving you every tool necessary to have the craziest amounts of fun.
The two gameplay mechanics used the most are the grapple hook and the parachute. Keeping with the game’s absurd nature, the grapple hook allows you to grab anything, whether be it a car, a house, a helicopter, or an enemy, and do various hilarious things with it like taking the first half of the wire and attaching an enemy to a car, which you will inevitably drive around “just cause.” Or perhaps you’ll hijack a limousine, jump off a cliff, and while you’re flying away from the wreck safely with your parachute, hijack a helicopter… just cause (I’ll stop now). It’s all of these insane mechanics that combine together to make this title so enjoyable.
When you’re not fooling around in Just Cause 2’s massive world, you can also take part in missions given to you by the various factions on the island. While many of them are the exact same thing (capture this base or protect NPC character X from enemy Y) between the three factions, when you unlock “Agency Missions”, which progress the story, the real creativity shows in the missions with huge set pieces and even zanier missions. And speaking of missions, the way you unlock everything in this game is brilliant; To unlock anything from new weapons, vehicles and planes, you have to cause Chaos. This can be achieved by completing missions or, more importantly, blowing stuff up. Considering this is Just Cause 2’s best feature, the game rewards you immensely for just discovering new places and blowing them sky high!
From the sound of the gameplay so far you’d think this would be the perfect game, however, there are a few issues that slow it down. It relies very heavily on the “make your own fun” factor of open world games. While this isn’t a problem it may affect some people’s buying decision, because if you don’t like making huge explosive set pieces and crazy action scenes of your own, then you won’t have much fun with this game. Contrary to games like Red Faction and GTA IV, Just Cause 2 has a lot of repetition in its mission structure and gets repetitive and monotonous very fast. There are also some weird inconsistencies, like your inability to shoot people out of a helicopter, when you can do the exact same thing in a car. It feels a little weird in spots as well with some of the weapons feeling weak and underpowered compared to others.
But the biggest and most glaring flaw in the game is its health system; Just Cause 2 decides to take the dumbest choice for its health mechanic, regenerating health. Here’s how it works: when you get shot or injured your health goes down, but if you don’t get hit for a while it regenerates a small portion of the bar, and filling it back up again requires you to find and use a health kit somewhere in the world. Considering that you’ll take quite a bit of damage in this game, it really sucks when you have to run away from a fight and find a health kit, which never seems to be anywhere near your location, just to survive. It would have worked much better if the developers had chosen to give you portable health kits that you can choose to use whenever you want, keeping you in the action at all times.
Visuals/Audio
The looks are very impressive from afar. The island is gigantic, and when you get your first jet or helicopter and fly up to a massive mountain you feel really small compared to the span of the world. They show you this in one of the game’s mandatory opening missions that has you scaling an enormous casino with only your grapple hook and it never really stops impressing you from there.
Where the game starts to fall apart visually is when things get up close; some of the character models look pretty terrible when you’re up in their face and many of the enemies look like copies of each others with the same face, and everyone has that weird “uncanny valley” feel to them. It’s a good thing that since you’re usually going very fast in this game, with you spending quite a bit of time in a vehicle of some kind, that you’ll never really stop and notice this very often. Also, like many open world games, the explosions all look excellent and it’s very satisfying when you blow up an entire base by lighting just a little too much propane. In many of the “better” missions, when you usually blow up something huge, the game is smart enough to give a very nice cinematic angle to it all and gives you a nice sense of accomplishment at the same time.
On the other hand, audio is an entirely different beast. This could, like the story, be the worst thing ever made but it all adds to the absurdity and you almost take it for granted with the game. I know, I know, critically that sounds crazy but as you’re base jumping, sky diving from planes, attaching people to cars to drag them around, etc. it all makes sense. And as for the voice acting, it all makes sense that Just Cause 2 would deserves that B-Movie quality acting feel to it. From characters having some of the weirdest and strangest accents I’ve ever heard, to some hilariously bad one-liners, this game does everything it can to get you to hate the audio and for some reason it adds to the game’s quirkiness as a whole.
Final Thoughts
Within a minute of starting Just Cause 2 you can very, very easily tell that this game is absolutely bananas. It’s flat out insane. That being said, the open world destruction is all the more welcomed in this excellent sandbox game; the tools are all there for you to build your own fun house, and from the insane base jumps to the crazy explosions you can set up, Just Cause 2 succeeds on the single fact that it’s fun. Not everyone will feel that way, but like I mentioned previously it all depends on how imaginative you are in the open world.
Even with some issues like a lame health system, horrible story and crappy audio, Just Cause 2 kept my attention for a very long time with its excellent and over the top gameplay, extremely expansive world, and just the fact that, despite all its flaws, the game just wants you to enjoy it. And it sure succeeds in that respect.
If you enjoy open world games with an emphasis on over the top gameplay and great explosions, you can’t go wrong with Just Cause 2. Even the lackluster parts (the story and audio) almost feel purposely bad and, strangely enough, just add to the ridiculousness of this game. Go out and pick it up, you won’t be disappointed!
