For me, the mission structure serves to kick me right out of the game, un-suspending my disbelief. It's not the only thing. While
Just Cause 2 clearly has its tongue firmly in its cheek, there are some elements of the game that just jar. I can get on board with the hokey government broadcasts, the bizarre mish-mash of in-game accents and the fact that Rico's antics make Steven Seagal look like that guy who does your Mum's dog's nails. The fact that there's an airborne brothel held aloft by two blimps above an otherwise fairly realistic island, however, is pushing it a bit. So is the fact that I managed to jump off it, not bothering to pop my parachute, and survive. And really, I don't care if an enemy soldier's wearing body armour – surely three shots to his uncovered head should put his brains on the wall behind him.
The missions themselves offer up a decent enough variety. There aren't as many of them as you'd perhaps like, but the assorted base captures, hijacks, race-against-time missions and everything else stops things from getting boring. They also offer up some good set piece play. Riding a bike straight off a cliff so you can parachute onto a limo, take control of it then drive it straight through several roadblocks is
very cool.
One thing that does get tedious, however, is the 'stronghold takeover'. This is a bigger, badder kind of mission in which you help one of the criminal factions take control of a military base. You invariably have to keep some techy guy or other alive as you break in. You approach the gate, fight some soldiers, get inside to open the gate for everyone else, do some more shooting (usually taking out some snipers), take over a gun emplacement, use the mounted weapon to take down enemy soldiers (including precisely two military cars), then shoot down an enemy helicopter. That's pretty much every single stronghold takeover.
Rounding out the list of things you can do in
Just Cause 2 are the race challenges. These involve taking one of the game's many vehicles through a series of checkpoints as quickly as possible. They're entirely optional, as they don't earn you chaos. You just get cash, which is nearly pointless as you can just steal anything you might want to buy.
The island itself is a great accomplishment on developer Avalanche's part. It's massive, with terrain ranging from snowy mountains to thick forest to desert to beaches to heavily-developed cities. It looks great (apart from some mountainsides you apparently weren't meant to go on, as they break into huge great pixels on closer inspection) and there is plenty of it. In places, it's spectacular.
Unfortunately, getting around it can be a pain in the arse. After an early mission I accidentally drove a truck off the mountain I was on. I went all the way down in the space of 30 seconds, probably losing a good kilometre or so of vertical gain and, miraculously, walking away unscratched. Result! Except that now, instead of having a couple of minutes drive time between missions, the road system meant I had to drive right around
the entire island. After around 20 minutes of this I decided to give it a miss and kill myself so I could re-spawn elsewhere.
An extraction service provided by your local black market dealer helps sometimes, but he'll only drop you off in locations you've already visited, so it's not always that much use. A lot of military bases have helicopters that you can nick from with, but you can still end up doing nothing but pointing a chopper in one direction for five minutes or more.
Just Cause 2 is the only game I can play while simultaneously reading Twitter.
I know that's a lot of quibbles. I'm really not trying to tell you that this is a
bad game. It has some great elements to it – they're just undermined by too many faults for the whole game to be called 'great'.
Conclusion
Just Cause 2 is decent enough, but that's about the extent of what you can say for it. The grapple and parachute are fun, but they don't bring as much to combat as they should. Elsewhere in the game a floppy narrative and structure interfere with what's nearly a really good game. Avalanche definitely gets points for effort, but the delivery isn't quite there.
SPOnG Score: 73%
