Just Cause 3 Review (Wildt)
Playing JC3 right after finishing Far Cry 6 made it clear just how many similarities the two titles have. This is like a faster-paced arcade version of Far Cry with broken physics and a forkload of big explosions.
Halfway through, I was a happy camper and would have rated the game 80%, and planned to liberate all the regions. Then a couple of broken game mechanics came into focus and changed my mind.
As you get better at controlling the crazy movements you can accomplish with the grappling hook combined with the wingsuit, you become a target that's very hard to corner and hit for your enemies. As you progress through the game, the difficulty is obviously supposed to escalate. The devs apparently didn't have the brains to come up with anything better than giving your enemies 100% aimbot aim from any distance, regardless of what weapon they wield, along with an absolutely ridiculous spawn algorithm.
For instance, the split second you enter their awareness sphere, they can hit you from miles away with anti-aircraft guns, even though you're whizzing through the air in your wingsuit. You can run through a town fighting enemies on foot, but the instant there's a line of sight to an enemy warship a mile out at sea, it WILL hit you with a cannon.
But the overshadowing problem for me is the super-aggressive enemy spawn algorithm. Enemy soldiers and vehicles will spawn as close as 10 meters from you anywhere outside of your field of view where there is no obstructing object. You can be all alone, with nothing in your proximity apart from one soldier. As soon as he becomes aware of your presence, you'll get five aimbot soldiers right behind you, filling you with lead. You can look up to spot a chopper, and as you look back down to the ground, there are suddenly two jeeps and a tank full of soldiers right in front of you. I mean... COME. ON.!
One of the key elements for me in an FPS is having situational awareness - knowing where your enemies are and responding accordingly. That's absolutely worthless here! You end up hardly bothering to engage in gunfights and instead solely focus on quickly grappling yourself around the enemy bases and destroying the target buildings to accomplish the liberation objective. The gameplay loop became frustrating and unsatisfying for me.
Having lost enjoyment of the base liberation objectives, I took the straight route to finish the story campaign. What an underwhelming boss fight.
My overall verdict is 65% - I did get something like 10-15 very enjoyable hours of gaming here, but the second half of the playthrough was a chore.