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Just Cause 2 Review

The game offers open-world fun, but unfortunately cannot sustain it long enough to keep the player's attention

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Just Cause 2 takes place on a huge island of Panau, where the player is free to explore and do anything they can think of. The original game had a similar setting, but one of the main problems was the lack of things to do in this huge world. Just Cause 2 looked to address these issues from the start. Rico’s trademark tool, the grappling hook, is now much more far-reaching which allows for quicker travel and much better mobility. The island is also much more populated with small villages, cities, towns, military bases and various outposts. This may sound like a huge improvement, and yet the game still manages to have a lot of downtime, just travelling between locations in order to get to the next mission. That’s not to say that there is a lack of things to blow up – all outposts contain brightly colored objects such as water towers, fuel tanks and guard towers. Each town also has a “liberation” percent rating, meaning the town will become free of military oppression once Rico finds every hidden crate and blows up every military object in the area. But there is usually so much to destroy and so many objects to find, it becomes a chore. After you’ve blown up your hundredth water tower and blew up yet another military radar, things become stale quickly. Things will have to blow up tough, as it earns players “Chaos points”, which are required to unlock the next mission and progress the game.
 
screenshot
A painfully familiar view
 
The game’s focus on destruction seems like a missed opportunity. Instead of putting some actual design into the world’s open-ended nature, and engaging the player in various stunt challenges or similar exploits, the game only offers the player an open world and a ton of the same objects to explode. What happens next is up to the individual gamers. This may sound great to some, who would love nothing more than a big sandbox to play around. However, most players will quickly grow tired of zipping around and blowing stuff up or performing stunts for no reason other than to earn points or to see what could happen. After a while, the players will get enough of random exploration and expect Just Cause 2 to become a little more focused so they may actually make some progress and have a reason to explore all corners of the world. Here is when players will discover that the game doesn’t have much to offer in regards to actual gameplay that helps players actually focus their creativity on something specific. There are wildly frustrating chase missions, eliminations, escorting jobs and of course demolition. The variety isn’t great, and it feels as though none of the mission types actually take advantage of the open world and the freedom it offers. Short of picking the way you get to and enter the location (via air, ground, etc), Just Cause 2 begins to feel rather generic.
 
Many open world titles have gameplay annoyances that relate to the nature of the genre. Just Cause 2 has often been compared to GTA4, which isn’t entirely accurate, but the games do make for good comparisons. For instance, there are many players who feel that GTA4 needs a better mission system – if you fail, players have to reach the mission starting point once again and repeat the whole sequence. Those players will be happy to know that Just Cause 2 features a checkpoint system, so that if you die half way through, you will continue at the nearest checkpoint in the mission. There are also bad news however, and it is regarding how games treat the open world scenario. In GTA4, if players die or fail a mission, they re-spawn at the nearest hospital, with a nice taxi cab waiting to take them back to the starting point. Even if not taking the cab, hospitals are conveniently located throughout the world. Now, in Just Cause 2, things are a lot worse. The design of the game seems to place missions as far away from the acquisition location as possible, as to enforce the open world sandbox to the player and make them travel insanely long distances to the destination. It makes sense on paper – let the player have all the fun they want while getting to the mission. However, the extremely annoying problem is that if you die on your way to the mission – be it 10km away or 5 meters away – you are right back to the starting point. Sure, all the cash you’ve earned and world havoc caused will remain in tact, but you are back to the starting point, which is likely over 20km away from your destination. After a few such re-spawns, you realize that the game actually punishes the player for having any kind of fun if they hope to get somewhere. Players are forced to take no chances while travelling to the next mission location, otherwise it’s a long trip that has to be repeated over and over.

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#4 Apr 19, 2010 20:23:48 (Apr 19, 2010 20:23)

with_teeth26
 @Phatcat1987 - yea Saints Row 2 does, but it is a better game overall than GTA IV in my opinion. It embraces its silly sandbox nature much more that GTA IV, and is simply more fun to play. It doesn't look that good, but its a total blast to play and very well designed, unlike GTA IV (again, in my opinion). Volition is currently one of my favorite companies because they design their games to be fun and challenging, but never frustrating, something i wish more developers would do. 
#3 Apr 19, 2010 19:26:16 (Apr 19, 2010 19:26)

SpectralShock
As I mentioned a few times in the review, it completely depends on the type of experience you are looking for. If you're happy with endless open-ended chaos that you have to design and execute, then have a blast!
#2 Apr 19, 2010 19:06:06 (Apr 19, 2010 19:06)

Phatcat1987
 I appreciate an honest review, but none the less I will still give this a shot.  Maybe I'll invest in Gamefly to see how it is.
 
with_teeth26,
 
In all fairness, didn't Saints Row rip a lot of their content from GTA?  I've never played one of their games, but I've always read that the game was somewhat notorious for that.
#1 Apr 19, 2010 12:55:03 (Apr 19, 2010 12:55)

with_teeth26
 i've only played for 5 hours and already i'm beginning to tire of either doing races or missions. Some of the missions are fun, and i like how they ripped the mission design straight out of Saints Row 2, it just needs more side missions/mini games to keep the player focused, since as you said random destruction becomes pretty dull after a point. 
Just Cause 2
Just Cause 2 box art Platform:
PC
Our Review of Just Cause 2
76%
Good
The Verdict:
Game Ranking
Just Cause 2 is ranked #726 out of 1957 total reviewed games. It is ranked #57 out of 103 games reviewed in 2010.
725. Tunic
PC
726. Just Cause 2
727. Dead Rising 2
PC
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Just Cause 2
16 images added Apr 19, 2010 01:28
Videos
Just Cause 2 trailer
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