Just Cause 2 Review (ARCWüLF)
A tropical tour of destruction!
This game is ancient by today's standards, but it's still a good time if you have a certain mindset. The basic gameplay loop is that you're a super-spy that's sewing chaos in a tropical paradise that has been taken over by a mad dictator who has set up military bases all across the island, and your job is to eliminate military infrastructure, acquire resources to upgrade your tech, and to gain the favor of or oppose the various (usually nefarious) factions vying for control of the territory.
You play Rico Rodriguez, whose heavy-accented English is less of a Latino stereotype and more of a semi-humorous pastiche of Al Pacino reprising his role from the movie “Scarface,” and that’s a good thing! His supporting cast is likewise comprised of people doing character voices of famous celebrities, and that cheesiness is much appreciated in a game that could otherwise take itself way too seriously.
Your primary tools, of course, are your guns, but this is significantly supplemented by your Spider-man web shooter-like grappling hook and your endless supply of parachutes, which when used in tandem can get you around the complex environments rather quickly. Of course, you could always steal vehicles (like most other open-world games), but during my playthroughs I often find myself just zipping and gliding through the treetops on my way to the next waypoint.
The graphics, while showing their age in the character models and some of the ragdoll physics can still shine at all sorts of systems. Even the Xbox 360 version of this game looks pretty good all things considered, and with a modern gaming computer with the details cranked up the old graphics can still look downright impressive at a decent framerate.
The real star of this game is the environment, which the developers have taken the time to create a number of biomes to explore, including lots of water, wintery mountaintops, thick jungles, grassy steppes, ancient ruins, and modern cities. While exploring, you may even find a giant radar dish or two!
Unfortunately, the game does have some flaws that lay outside of its age. The actual gameplay, while tight in the action, feels a bit contrived and of another time. You’ll find yourself going to a lot of locations, but those locations are for the most part handled the same way: Blow up some military equipment, find some crates, and maybe eliminate a targeted super-soldier, and very little else. While there are story beats sprinkled throughout that propel the game forward with interesting scenarios, the space in-between the story missions can feel a bit repetitive and dull, especially if you’re trying to upgrade your toolkit before the next big sortie. This sort of thing was par for the course back when it was released in 2010, but feels just a tad dated by the way some modern open-world games balance these things today.
Still, it can be a one helluva ride, so don’t be afraid to check it out!