I should start by saying that, because this is entirely an opinion, I have done little to no research prior to writing and base everything I write on my own gameplay experience.
Just Cause 2 is a fairly massive third-person sandbox action-adventure sequel to Just Cause released in 2010. Once again it follows Rico Rodriguez, a mercenary hailing from some part of Central America, although given his apparent love for the USA I get the impression he's either Puerto Rican or was adopted. Anyway, this time the agency he works for (cleverly titled 'The Agency'), which may or may not be referring to the CIA, has sent him to Panau, a fictional series of islands in South-East Asia which is referred to in the game as a city and at other times a country, so I really have no idea what it is. It seems as though Panau is a weird hybrid of all the cultures in South-East Asia; the place names, majority of the characters, and some of the language is clearly Malay, however (and excuse my lack of linguistic knowledge) the text on the signs appears to be Thai, or at least something that resembles it. I also noticed characters speaking in Tagalog, so there you go.
The first thing that comes into my mind when thinking about Just Cause 2 is the sheer size of the game, and I'm not just talking about the game world. At time of writing I am less than 50% of the way through the game, despite having finished the story and all the missions you do for the 3 gangs that reside in Panau. This is because other than the main story line you can collect materials to use in upgrades, destroy various government properties, collect stuff that the gangs want for no particular reason, and partake in time trials scattered all over the map. To progress with the story you must create chaos throughout Panau, you do this by, surprise surprise, destroying things. As someone who enjoys exploring sandbox worlds, I quickly found myself causing chaos wherever I went and soon discovered that before I had even started the third mission in the story I had created enough chaos to unlock every mission up until the end, so whenever I finished a story mission my ally would congratulate me on the success of the mission, tell me to go and create chaos to trigger the next mission, and then immediately tell me to haul ass to the next location. Fortunately the bad guys are in no hurry whatsoever and you can take all the time you want to start the next mission in the story.
The second thing is the characters. Each one is ridiculously stereotypical. You've got the American ally who makes it his mission to constantly remind us that he's a full-blooded 'Murican who despises commies and loves barbecuing full pigs. Then you've got the Indian-Malay who uses Malaysian slang whenever he can, especially when it doesn't belong. You come across a Russian who refers to his 'Mother Russia' incessantly and happens to be able to summon tanks at his will. And let's not forget the NPCs that populate the world, all speaking in incredibly exaggerated accents, shouting 'cibai' as you knock them down in your car. All that was missing was the triskaidekaphobia. A lot of games have the problem where the player character is a bland, emotionless piece of concrete who is made to look even more boring by the range of other characters. Fortunately Just Cause 2 doesn't make this mistake. Rico is just interesting enough to keep you from falling asleep and even manages to spout a couple of one liners that are genuinely funny, usually in the 'so bad it's good' way.
Going back to the setting, a problem I've had with other large game worlds is the repetitiveness of the scenery. For instance, Far Cry 2 was a game set in Africa that essentially had three environments: desert, jungle and water (and calling water an environment is a push), this got monotonous rather quickly and free roaming was never particularly enjoyable, helped by the fact that every human character in the country was out to kill you. There were times during Just Cause 2 where I would be swinging across the land and would find myself thinking about things that were going on in my life like work, relationships, my future.. Things that even made me question why I was wasting my time on a game. Having said that, some of the environments are very pleasant to look at, and there are various interesting things to discover as you explore.
So what about the most important element of a game. The gameplay. Well, it's good. That's the short answer. Why is it good? Because it's original. The grappling hook plays a central role in the gameplay. Just Cause is by no means the only game series that uses grappling hooks, but this one does it better than those silly games. Most prominently it is used to get you around, it can be used to scale structures, get you to a piece of ground faster than walking and, in conjunction with the parachute, offers a method of transport faster than most of the vehicles in Panau. Other than movement, it is used as a weapon: you can use it to pull enemies towards you, pull them off structures to their doom, attach them to vehicles so you can drag them along behind you, hang them from things leaving them helpless, or simply pummel them to death with. The game makes it obvious that it wants you to use the grappling hook often, but there are also various firearms available to you. You can carry three weapons at a time, two secondaries and a primary. The secondaries can be duel wielded if you feel the need to be a badass.
Gameplay consists of shooting things, blowing things up, collecting things, escorting or protecting people, hacking or disarming things, driving or piloting things and discovering new locations, of which there are very, very many. Each location can be 'completed' by destroying all government objects which vary from propaganda trailers, water towers, statues of the dictator, radio towers, cranes etc. as well as collecting all the items in the vicinity. The items you collect include weapon parts, vehicle parts, armor and money. The parts, in case you hadn't guessed, are used to upgrade weapons and vehicles that The Agency can provide you with for a fee, which is what you use the money for. The armor provides upgrades to your health. There are absolutely loads of these items scattered around the world, too many to find all of given the size of Panau, but that doesn't matter, at least it didn't for me playing on 'normal' difficulty, because I realised the only weapon I really needed was the ultra-powerful machine gun with incredible range and firepower. Fully upgrading this with weapon parts and collecting enough armor to boost my health ridiculously, I became an indestructible force that no longer cared for the petty enemies that stood in my way. Earlier on in the game the enemies provided me with sufficient challenge that occasionally had me needing to escape quickly by means of grapple hook and parachute, however after I defeated the 'final boss' with my insane weaponry the game quickly took a turn for the easy..
Throughout the game you are expected to assault some of the many military bases in Panau. I found the most effective way of doing this was to sneak in, disable any anti-air weaponry with explosives, then run away - only to return with a helicopter to mow down structures and enemies. This could also be applied with tanks. So in the end, I used all of my collected vehicle parts to upgrade the chopper and the tank because they were all I really needed to get around quickly and destroy things with. I was barely into the game when I realised you get money from just about anything and quickly became the richest mercenary in history, with enough to buy helicopters to spare. I found myself buying expensive, military grade vehicles just to fly them short distances and smash them into things. Despite this, by the time I had finished the main missions I was so powerful I no longer had any need for simple machines, for I could quite easily walk into any situation with a machine gun in hand (no kidding, Rico can literally hold the machine gun with one hand) and blast away anything in my path. There was one point when I was walking around a base searching for crates to collect and suddenly two helicopters and several boats showed up. Normally this would have terrified me and I would have grapple hooked my way out of there without a second thought, but at this point they posed no threat. It was a hilarious scene to see Rico jogging calmly around as machine guns and rockets sprayed the ground around him. After collecting all the items I simply pulled out my over-powered world destroyer and made short work of all the vehicles and enemies in the camp, followed by Rico cheerfully announcing "that was fun!". I almost felt sorry for all the poor bastards, they were fighting a war that was already over. It was very reminiscent of a certain mission where you had to fight your way through 100 year old Japanese men who thought they were still part of World War 2.
All in all, I enjoyed the game. The story was very short, but there are enough side missions to keep the game going. Getting 100% seems like it could get very dull very quickly, but you're not forced to do it so it's not fair to complain. Characters were a bit annoying at times but, along with the setting, being based on South-East Asian culture, it was very refreshing considering the settings for most mainstream games. The one thing that wasn't refreshing was the plot - people fighting over oil again, woop-de-doo. Now, if I ever reach 100% will I play it again? No. Never. That's not to say it isn't fun, it's just not the kind of game that any normal human being could get around to going through a second time, not even on a higher difficulty, and that's coming from someone who craves achievements.
Sorry for the rushed opinion, I probably missed a few things and the structure isn't great, but we needed to start somewhere, expect better in the future!
- Jimmy
No comments:
Post a Comment