izigame.me

Going into this, I thought it would be fun and an overall improvement from the enjoyable experience of its previous installment, based on many testimonials, including from my friends... but it was anything but.
Alright, the truth of the matter is that if you’re looking for an action-packed experience filled to the brim with explosions and grapple-fueled mischief, then this is your game. If you’re a normal person who just plays the story and some of the side missions, without a doubt, this will be an enjoyable experience for you. Stop reading. Go have fun. Bye.
The thing is, it was for me at the start as well, but I’m not a normal person. I have this disease others like to refer to as an “achievement hunter”, which requires me to experience most, if not all, a game has to offer within the means of the game’s established achievements. Therefore, I get a front row seat to slight imperfections and glitches that compound throughout my experience that only result in my frustration and suffering. This game is no stranger to those and, as a result, it has caused me not to recommend this game. It lacks the polish of its predecessor, of which I prefer. If it interests you, here is a slight taste in the buggy mess of a game this is:
- I have fallen through the map on a few occasions
- ALL VEHICLES blow up if they are unmanned and touch land before they come to a complete stop. Jump out of a heli a millimeter off the ground? BOOM. Jump out of a sports car going over a rock? BOOM.
- The wingsuit, while being awesome, is janky. The responsiveness from switching from the wingsuit -> the parachute -> pulling your weapon out, is such a massive delay that it might cost you on some challenges (this is from experience).
- The civilians in this game are idiots. Their pathfinding and awareness is abysmal and can lead to frustrating scenarios. I frequently had civilians walking in front of my car or driving into my car during races. Furthermore, sometimes they just get themselves killed on their own, which can lead to frustration when completing “encounters”. “Encounters” are pop-up missions that occur throughout the world. However, one of the binding requirements in a successful completion of an “encounter” is not having a single civilian hurt. See where I’m going with this? You could be flying a helicopter to a drop site and some moronic civilian in the town rendered below can get love-tapped by a car, and you’ve failed the encounter.
- There are many spots on the map with poor or terrible clipping. I’ve seen mismatched layering of textures to outright phantom walls due to incorrect clip brushes. For example, the clip brushes of pine trees are stricter than those of deciduous trees. While in the wingsuit you can fly through deciduous trees, no problem. But a conifer? If that as much as touches your shoelace that sucker is going to bring you back to Earth. Another such example: There’s a spot on the map where trains bank a corner on a bridge. The thing is the train’s default speed is too fast for the corner! So, they will always derail, breaking apart taking the bridge with them down below which would be especially frustrating if a certain challenge race would take place underneath…
- Sometimes the physics engine just gives out and you have stuff just flung around or spin out
- All bikes handle like absolute garbage. Their cornering is atrocious
- All vehicles handle well on any “road”, asphalt or dirt, but the second a vehicle touches grass then the physics engine takes the wheel-- spinning or juking your vehicle every which way.
- I’ve encountered a unique bug in which if you land on a structure, such the top of a building or a boat dock, with your upper body flat on top and your legs dangling off the edge, Rico will be unable to pull himself up resulting in you being perma-stuck unless you fast travel out.
- The game is unoptimized in some sections, especially during rain.
- The most infamous and troubling challenge of all: LAGUNA BLAST. I shiver in my boots as I type the name. There are these challenges which require you to drive a car strapped with a bomb to a group of military vehicles and pop out before it detonates. They are, for all intents and purposes, not too terribly difficult, except for this one. Some asshat over at Avalanche clearly didn’t Quality Assure every challenge (what sane person would, am I right?) and, as result of the lack of prudence, caused 1.) the score of the challenge to be a tad too high and 2.) the radius in which the car would detonate to be a tad out of reach. See, the thing is with these challenges is that you might start losing some points as you approach your objective, but that’s no biggie. You can make up the points with every vehicle you destroy. NOT WITH THIS CHALLENGE. The car detonates prematurely causing you to take the loss, leaving you at 4.5 points out of 5. Which, in your frustration and achievement-hunting delirium, turn to the internet to find mad genius learned to hit this stone at the right angle causing the vehicle to flip in range of the target netting you a detonation worthy of 5 points.
This last section of my review would be dedicated to my dissatisfaction which Avalanche’s decision to wall-off some fun and enjoyable mechanics, of which some were previously available from the start of the game in the previous title, behind these dumb challenges. Yes, they introduced an interface called the MOD system in which you can pick and choose what mechanics you want enabled or not. On face value, this is genius because I have noticed some games have introduced some mechanics as “upgrades” while me, as the player, may deem them to be hindrances. The only problem with this is that a good chunk of the fun ones are walled behind challenge point thresholds in which the average player will not complete causing them to lose out of enjoyable mechanics and content. Furthermore, most of these challenges can’t be completed until the ending phase of the game in which… what’s the point??!? There’s nothing to destroy now. If you thought, “that’s okay, I’m a pro MLG gamer and I can get through these challenges no sweat” WRONG. Some of these challenges can only be 5/5 via unlocking some of the later abilities. Thus, requiring you to unilaterally complete all challenges with like a 3/5 and having to return to them again when you have the “double boost” or whatever unlocked. One last gripe on the challenges. Is it too much to ask for a quick restart button? See, games that are used to designing challenges such as these have a quick restart button since they anticipate the repeated failure of their players and it provides some QoL. However, as we have established before in this review, you have clearly skipped some steps in your quality control process. It is quite frustrating if a player that has failed a challenge for the 69th time to have to either pause and hit restart or, if they complete the challenge, have to wait through videos of upcoming upgrades before presented with the opportunity to restart. I lied, this is my last gripe. I’ll make it quick. Why is “Precision aim” (ADS) locked behind challenges? Bruh. Furthermore, are you aware it (hopefully unintentionally) deactivates lock-on for all missiles which can only be fixed by toggling off and restarting the game? Great QA testing. Phenomenal.
Now I can’t go leaving a review without dropping some good/improvements. Besides what I mentioned at the beginning, I’ll just list off some things:
Rebel drop system -> awesome, much needed
Wingsuit, minus the gripes, is a blast and honestly makes this game. The DLC upgrades just multiply the fun
It’s not Just Cause without the grapple, and the new and improved version, once fully upgraded, is fantastic.
The story was alright, I found it a bit short. The villain was interesting, but the lore from the audio logs made it much more enjoyable
The DLCs are fun, and they add fun new toys to your carnage arsenal.