Just Cause isn’t really your typical GTA clone, but the well known free-roaming concept is there. And it’s taken to the limit…
Story
You play the role as Rico Rodriguez, a US undercover agent specialised in starting revolutions. You are sent to the island paradise of San Esperito to free it from the dictator Salvador Mendoza who has couped the position of president. To help you, you have the local guerilla and a PDA from the agency.
Graphics
The first thing you’ll notice is that the visuals are great. The scenery is showcased in an excellent manner as you start of parachuting from a plane. It’s a great deal of terrain that unfolds before your eyes, I’ll tell you that. If you’re planning to drive across the entire paradise of San Esperito, you’ll have to plan ahead, because that’ll take more than 20 minutes. Flying across takes a good eight minutes as well.
The only bad thing I have to say about the graphics is that the objects on the screen sometimes “duplicates” themselves onto the sky and leaves a darker colored field there, but that might as well be my graphics card or drivers.
Sound
The sound is realistic and immersive with a good amount of detail. I love standing on a beach next to a small village listening to the waves, crickets and the shouts from the merchants at the market selling coconuts, ice cream, beer and fish (all in Spanish), although the peace often is interrupted by the constant fights between the guerrilla and the government troops. And this is the weakest part of the entire game’s dialouge. In a South-American country you wouldn’t expect to hear “Achtung! Policía! Stop right there!”. I mean, what is this? German, Spanish and English? Okay, Spanish and English is fine to mix in a setting like this, but German?
The music fits very well into the setting with fast paced “tequila style” rhythms when driving, calm guitar when relaxing from fighting in a safehouse and action filled tunes when in a fight.
Controls & gameplay
The gameplay is easy to get into, but the controls are there on the spot to complicate everything.
Most ground vehicles feel like they’re driving on ice at times and the mouse sensitivity is way too low. I had to set my mouse to 2000 dpi to even get hold of the stuff that was going on without dying.
When you get on a bike for the first time you’ll most likely notice that they don’t lay over to the side when you turn. For them to do that you have to hold down either turn button for three seconds and you should be driving at speeds excess of 100 km/h.
The really new, exciting addition to the concept here is the ability to do some pretty sick stunts. You can stand on the roof of cars and boats and hang from the back of planes and helicopters. Then you can either enter/jack the vehicles or deploy your invisible parachute, which is always there. In addition you have a grappling hook that you can shoot after any vehicle and parasail after them with. Then you can reel yourself in on them and jack them in the normal manner. An effective way to get out of a tricky situation.
One feature I was missing from the controls is a crouch button. You won’t really need it because of the huge, open battlefields, but it would have been nice to include it. The camera can be controlled freely just like in GTA San Andreas, which is nice.
Aside from the main story, you have lots of side missions. You can either help the guerrilla liberate settlements and do other side missions for them, or help the Rioja drug cartel with taking over Montano drug cartel settlements or doing similar missions as those from the guerrilla, which is mainly “drive one place, get something, drive back with lots of police on your tail” or “kill that guy over there”. Although there isn’t much variation in these missions, it’s a change from the more difficult story missions.
The bigger cities are welcome variations from the jungle, but they lack detail, and there are absolutely no shops or interiors whatsoever. It would have been nice with at least a weapons shop and a hospital so you wouldn’t have to go back to a safehouse every time you needed health or ammo.
The agency PDA is very useful, because you can call for extraction, a vehicle drop, see a complete map over the island, political map and statistics and ranks. This works great except you can’t call for extraction or vehicles when in the bigger cities. The only thing that happens is you get a message saying “Agency not able to confirm your position. Please proceed to a clear, ground level area.” I thought asphalt was ideal for this? This can get frustrating since there aren’t that many vehicles driving around compared to the size of the city, so if you loose your car there, you should be prepared for some running.
Bugs
The game also has quite a few bugs. For instance, one of the more frustrating ones are that your allies have a tendency to run over you in a firefight if you stand in the middle of the road. Instant kill…
I also lost more than 50% of my health when I jumped from a helicopter. Rico somehow got his head into the rotor blades and there I was, mid-air, before the last mission, with less than half my health.
In addition, there was something that ruined most of my scenic trips through the country. Everywhere I went, there were fights. That’s natural in a revolution, but when I hear the police shouting “Stop, citizen!” all the time and it sounds as they’re breathing down my neck I can’t really be sure if they’re after me or not. At least the voices should be lower when they’re after other people than me.
I sure hope there’s a patch released soon that fixes most of these bugs, as this would make the game a lot better, both in “stability” and enjoyment.
Conclusion
Even though the world is absolutely huge, I – and I’m not an incredibly skillful player – didn’t use much time to complete the story (about 9-10 hours). I still have over half the country to take over, but this task gets repetitive. It would have been nice to see some interiors and deeper missions, but Just Cause is still a fun ride that will keep you going for some time…if you can endure without loosing your mind to the bugs.
And as a small bonus…if you can’t afford to pay for a real vacation, you can sit on your ass and drive around San Esperito.
I have been reviewing the PC version of the game.
Score
8/10
