Video Game Review: Explosive Good Time With ‘Just Cause 2’

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CHICAGO – With elements of “Grand Theft Auto IV,” “Far Cry 2,” and “Red Faction Guerilla,” the excellent “Just Cause 2” delivers for gamers looking for an extensive, explosive open world experience. Incredibly detailed and filled with a variety of mission types, “Just Cause 2” consistently entertains despite a few notable flaws.

Video Game Rating: 4.0/5.0

The plot of “Just Cause 2” is mostly an excuse for rampant mayhem and chaos, which is the actual in-game word used for one of your primary goals. Yes kids, it’s an open-world game in which creating “Chaos” is key to your success. Let your destructive freak flag fly. If you’ve ever wondered why you couldn’t cause more destruction to the environments and buildings in your favorite title, wonder no more as you demolish, blow up, and generally destroy the gigantic island of Panau in “Just Cause 2”.

Just Cause 2
Photo credit: Eidos Interactive

Players take on the incredibly dangerous role of Rico Rodriguez (who becomes known as “The Scorpion”), a man who works for a shadowy agency called, well, The Agency, and is searching for someone on the tropical land mass known as Panau, which happens to be a hotbed of violent activity. Through a series of story missions, you’ll work your way into the good graces of several rival warring factions of the island, along with facing constant opposition from the military itself. As you progress through the faction missions and support them in their attempts to take over the island, not only will you open new side missions but so the Agency missions will continue, furthering the “A story” in a game filled with numerous subplots.

Just Cause 2 Photo credit: Eidos Interactive

The first thing you’ll notice about “Just Cause 2” is its size. You could literally spend hours driving around Panau, one of the largest environments ever created for an open-world game at reportedly over 400 square miles of land to cover. From snowy mountains to vast bodies of water to the hundreds of vehicles traveling the major roads, “Just Cause 2” is simply enormous. The landscape of this world is spotted with villages, military bases, and cities just waiting for you to make things go “boom”.

And the variety of “boom” is amazing. What’s so effective about “Just Cause 2” - and don’t be surprised if it doesn’t take a couple hours of play to get familiar with the controls and depth of the game to realize this - is the title’s variety and depth. There’s rarely one answer to a problem. It got to the point, where I started to try to think of unique ways to finish a mission. From the way you get around - through extraction by a helicopter, driving, or just running - to the variety of weapons and explosives, I honestly believe no two players will have the same “Just Cause 2” experience. It’s customizable destruction that’s wildly entertaining.

Most games as time consuming as “Just Cause 2” get repetitive awful quickly. A majority suffer from “travel fatigue,” where the player spends way too much time merely getting from mission to mission and a lot of titles like this one pad their game with side missions that don’t really matter to the overall plot. One of the more notable elements to the “Just Cause 2” experience is that you never feel like you’re wasting your time. Not only are there a wide variety (as in HUNDREDS) of collectibles - cash, armor, vehicle and weapon parts used for upgrade - spread around the island but destruction (or “Chaos”) progresses the game. You don’t merely finish a mission and travel to the next one. You blow sh*t up along the way.

Just Cause 2 Photo credit: Eidos Interactive

The majority of the game is spent using a grappling hook strapped to your left arm and the weapon in your right hand (although grenades will often make it into the repertoire and you’ll want to dual wield your machine guns every once in awhile just for fun.) The scope of destructive devices goes all the way from your handy pistol to a jet fighter complete with rockets to take down a satellite. If you can dream up a way to destroy something or kill an enemy, it’s probably in “Just Cause 2”.

Now, the game’s not perfect. The backgrounds look beautiful but some of the character animation is flawed and downright glitchy at times. The flying machines are also oddly unrefined with plane controls hard to manage and even helicopters not quite working like you expect them to. The game also takes awhile to get used to with some unexpected controls for what is basically a shooter and the in-mission checkpoints are too infrequent for a game that encourages as much as try-and-die as this title does. Finally, the dialogue, writing, and line reading in the cut scenes can be a bit eye-rolling. But no one really plays “Just Cause 2” for the plot. They play it for the destructive ingenuity on display through the vast majority of this clever, surprisingly good game.

Before you plan your trip to Panau, check out this great preview:

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com