I held off on getting Just Cause 2 for a while after it came out due to a flagging interest in the sandbox action genre. In this writer's humble opinion, there has not been a game that fully utilized the wondrous and chaotic potential of open world gameplay since Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Whether this is true or simply a sign of my gradual descent into gamer obsolescence, constantly longing for the good ol' days of 8 years ago, I will leave for you to decide. As I mentioned in my Limbo review, however, I have had fuck-all to grab my attention for months, and simply to go against the flow of people jumping up and down over Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar's latest rehash of the same tired bullshit in a slightly different setting, I decided to see how well Just Cause 2 would hold my interest.
And hold my interest it did! I mentioned above that Vice City was the last truly great sandbox game and I am sure that many will be quick to twist their panties into a knot telling me that GTA: San andreas and IV were "OMFG so much better!!!!!!111oneoneone" I will submit that while not bad games, they totally missed the point. While they did have lots of things to do, half of it was obnoxious and requisite grinding. Not once in Vice City did I think to myself "this is great, but I wish my character needed to eat, exercise, and make sure his friends feel included enough by taking them out for drinks. Also, I should have to pay bridge tolls." Rather than expand on the wackiness of Vice City and its predecessor, Rockstar decided to expand down the road of gritty realism, and gradually the sandbox was populated with lamer and lamer toys. But I digress... significantly.
Seriously though, those were the days, amirite?
Just Cause 2 is a game that absolutely gets what I want out of a sandbox: sheer and unadulterated potential for chaos. In fact, the game literally progresses based off of how much havoc you wreak. You play as Rico Rodriguez, parachute shitting secret agent living in continual defiance of the laws of gravity. Rico is sent in to North Kor... "Panau" to unseat their dictator and apparently convert the remainder of the nation's infrastructure to a smoking pile of rubble. You do missions for anti-government criminal factions along the way, but the missions only exist to add some structure to the overarching theme of "blowing shit up"
And there is a lot of that to do. This game is absolutely enormous. The area in the playable demo is about the same size as the entire map of GTA: San Andreas (need I remind you how huge that is?) and that is only about 1/4 of what is available in the full game. It actually seems a little too big in my opinion, but a fast travel mechanic keeps it from feeling too arduous. If anything, much of the map feels redundant and cloned, but never truly detracts from the core gameplay. This would be the havoc wreaked with your magic hookshot and infinite parachutes. Rico can grapple on to any surface or vehicle before launching a parachute to rain down death from above on the hapless Panauans, living their pitiful mortal and earthbound lives. Or if that isn't your flavor, tether a soldier to a moving vehicle and watch his ass get hate-crimed down the highway. Or steal a helicopter from the ground, point it at a gas station, bail, and watch the fireworks. It may be a cliche to say that the possibilities seem limitless, but at times they damn near do.
In what universe would this not be described as "bitchin"?
Like any game, especially a sequel to a 4+ year old flop that no one played, this game definitely has its flaws. The voice acting is ear-bleedingly bad, and while it is certainly developer intent at self parody, we must always remember that intentionally bad is still bad. The enemies have the self preservation instincts of a retarded two year old, the missions themselves are all along the lines of "go from point A to B, sometimes protect something from A to B, but always kill everything at B, and the vehicles handle like you are steering with your elbows. There are also upgrade mcguffins and random collectibles god damned everywhere and collecting them is a somewhat tiresome chore, though never required, and enough upgrades are stumbled upon within the missions that you could certainly manage without too much side searching. Lastly, the market system's implementation is infuriatingly badly designed. You can only buy one kind of item at a time, and for each delivery (weapon or vehicle) you have to watch two cut scenes. It gets old fast. These flaws, for the most part, fall by the wayside when compared to the awesomeness of tethering a car to a helicopter, then ghost-riding that shit into a guard tower with said chopper in tow.
JC 2 is a game that certainly has no pretenses about what it wants to deliver to its audience. It is certainly not trying to be an auteur type of game or even a particularly difficult game. It simply structures itself around very flexible and for the most part intuitive play mechanics, in a very large environment with tons of toys and tasks and tells us to have a blast. I certainly believe that games can be art, but just as everything that appears in the theaters isn't the caliber of Tarkovsky, so too is it that every game isn't Silent Hill 2 (I've been kissing that game's ass a lot lately). But this doesn't mean that if it isn't artistic it's bad. Sometimes I simply want to be entertained, sit down, and watch Army of Darkness and have a damn fine time doing so. So if you want to turn your brain off and unleash your inner sociopath on a huge box of "what if", then I highly recommend giving this title a spin.
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