Explosions are the name of the game with Just Cause 2. Players resume the role of Rico Rodriguez as he completes missions to uncover a plot that surrounds the island nation of Panau. Mostly though, it's a third-person shooter about a guy with a grappling hook and a penchant for destruction.
Just Cause 2 is a sandbox game in the best sense. Players have about 1,000 sq km where they can let loose and can arm themselves with everything from pistols to fighter jets. This is Grand Theft Auto on crack. Not just regular, everyday crack, either. It's a crack cocktail handcrafted by monks in the Himalayas and served with a side of steroids.
Explosive barrels, oil silos, oxygen tanks, and tons of other volatile goodies that might as well have "shoot me!" written on them are scattered all across the landscape. This game makes the player feel like a kid in a candy store; that is, if "kid" meant "psychotic pyromaniac" and "candy store" meant "dynamite factory."
The key to this game is your arm-mounted grappling hook. This thing makes Scorpion's (from Mortal Kombat) look like a balloon animal. It can pull you to any surface, pull lighter objects and people to you, and even attach one target to another. Once you've skyjacked a helicopter, attached a tank to it, flown to an enemy base, jumped out, fallen thousands of feet without opening your parachute, grappled to the ground and emerged totally unharmed, you will understand the sheer physics-defying insanity that is this game.
Rampages like that aren't just fun, they're necessary. Players have a chaos meter, which is exactly what it sounds like, and they need to fill it to unlock new missions. Like players needed [another] reason to blow stuff up.
The insanity doesn't stop there; the story is basically and awesomely bad B-movie. Cheesy dialogue is combined with bad acting to create situations worthy of Bruce Campbell himself. Case in point: one mission has the player rescue the femme fatale from a moving car full of gun-wielding ninjas while dodging rockets from a nuclear submarine. Meanwhile, the snarky sidekick randomly appears in a helicopter and airlifts both of them to safety.
Just Cause 2 has its frustrations, like the aiming and driving mechanics, but they are forgivable in the face of all that raw, destructive fun.
Just Cause 2 is a sandbox game in the best sense. Players have about 1,000 sq km where they can let loose and can arm themselves with everything from pistols to fighter jets. This is Grand Theft Auto on crack. Not just regular, everyday crack, either. It's a crack cocktail handcrafted by monks in the Himalayas and served with a side of steroids.
Explosive barrels, oil silos, oxygen tanks, and tons of other volatile goodies that might as well have "shoot me!" written on them are scattered all across the landscape. This game makes the player feel like a kid in a candy store; that is, if "kid" meant "psychotic pyromaniac" and "candy store" meant "dynamite factory."
The key to this game is your arm-mounted grappling hook. This thing makes Scorpion's (from Mortal Kombat) look like a balloon animal. It can pull you to any surface, pull lighter objects and people to you, and even attach one target to another. Once you've skyjacked a helicopter, attached a tank to it, flown to an enemy base, jumped out, fallen thousands of feet without opening your parachute, grappled to the ground and emerged totally unharmed, you will understand the sheer physics-defying insanity that is this game.
Rampages like that aren't just fun, they're necessary. Players have a chaos meter, which is exactly what it sounds like, and they need to fill it to unlock new missions. Like players needed [another] reason to blow stuff up.
The insanity doesn't stop there; the story is basically and awesomely bad B-movie. Cheesy dialogue is combined with bad acting to create situations worthy of Bruce Campbell himself. Case in point: one mission has the player rescue the femme fatale from a moving car full of gun-wielding ninjas while dodging rockets from a nuclear submarine. Meanwhile, the snarky sidekick randomly appears in a helicopter and airlifts both of them to safety.
Just Cause 2 has its frustrations, like the aiming and driving mechanics, but they are forgivable in the face of all that raw, destructive fun.
(Originally written for and published with Tiger Weekly newspaper in Baton Rouge, LA)
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