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Overall an exellent game. Certainly worth the money, as this game beats GTA4 in my opinion. Drive around a huge island, destroy things, cause chaos and complete missions for gang factions and the "agency".
Pros: Huge island, Loads of cars, boats, planes. Superb graphics, stunning views especcially when you skydive, or dive underwater. Black market feature allowing you to extract to discovered places around the islands, and spawn special cars and weapons. And lots of free and purchaseable DLC.
Cons; A little glithy, no multiplayer feature or split screen. No cheats available.
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I played the original 'Just Cause' on PC about 3 years ago. It was a real mixed bag game: Great graphics, cheesy cutscenes/dialogue, complex yet intuitive controls, shed-loads of vehicles to hijack, poor vehicle controls, massive area to explore/destroy, limited missions/side-missions.
The main thing that let it down was repetativeness. Because of this it became very, very boring very, very fast. The play area was too big for too few varying missions. This was a shame as you could see how much attention/time Avalanche had invested into it.
Now 'Just Cause 2' has arrived and I have to say its a massive improvement on the original, albeit it still has a slight niggle.
I wont go into the ins an outs of 'where its set' or 'the storyline', to me they are not important. Where JC2 shines is purely and simply down to freedom of use and gameplay.
Graphics are what you would expect at this time in the current gen... Breath-taking. The lighting effects are amazing and highly detailed. Beams of light pierce cityscapes and wooded areas during sunset/sunrise. Lightening flashes and dark clouds form before the heavens open at random times during the game. Smashin.
Controls, like the original, can be complex and a little frustrating to start with, but half an hour or so familiarising yourself with the grapple should be enough to start terrorising the local militia and will have you performing spectacular stunts using anything from buildings and cars to mountains and jumbo jets. Is right.
Any vehicle in Panau can be hijacked and the controls for all vehicles have been improved. I hijacked a jumbo the other day. I jumped out and freefell approx 1200m. Seen a light aircraft below me. Grappled onto it. Hijacked the light aircraft. Flew to Panau city and crashed it into a petrol station, not before parachuting out to safety of course. Nuff said.
Where JC2 really shines is in the exploration on Panau. From the highest snow-capped peak to swimming amongst the coral underwater. From hijacking a helicopter gunship an trawling across the map for nearly 10 minutes to take-out a random military air base to jumpin in a car an crashing it into a 'propagander hut' only 100 yards down the road. Finding 'Drug drops' or sacred 'Skulls' or taking part in various races throughout the map, its where no other game comes close. Ooof.
The only niggle I can see (25 hours in) is that the repatition is starting to creep in again. There are more varying missions and settlements but there are only so many times you can blow up a water-tower or oil depot before you start gettin a little frustrated with the linear way you deal with certain aspects of settlements/missions. Grr.
I would recommend JC2 to anyone who loves exploring, killin people, blowin stuff up and enjoys cheesy cutscenes and bad voice acting (They havent improved but add to the charm of it all).
Yo...
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Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant!!!! A worthy successor to the first game (unlike Army of Two sequel) This time you have a Zip-Line and can scale mountains, missile silos and fat betty. I cannot add any more technical info than that provided, but in terms of fun, durability, absolute concentration and addiction I can say that this is a cross between Assassins creed and Modern Warfare. Buy and enjoy.
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using the parachute and grappling hooks are the highlight of the game, as they are very fun to use to get around. Graphics are good, especially for the many explosions.
however there are problems:
-no cover system so you get shot to pieces, and evading isn't that effective
-ammo gets burnt up quickly at the beginning of the game
-loose handling in vehicles and some general bad camera work
-camera when grappling is nauseating when climbing up sides of buildings
-enemies soak up as many bullets as juggernauts in MW2, so you have to use headshots or explosions
-loose flying controls that are not sensitive enough and there is no yawing, meaning flight challenges are virtually impossible as turning is so hard.
-melee is a joke. it takes 3 hits to kill a guy and his does stop firing his gun at you until he dies
-sometimes its a little too corny, actually mostly it is corny and the accents of ALL the voices are a bit of a joke and can be annoying.
-sensitivity is wrong most of the times and cannot really be changed to make it better
-missions aren't great
-soundtrack isn't great
on the other hand:
-fixed machine guns/helicopters with machine guns/vehicles with machine guns balance combat a bit more in your favour and are easy and fun to use
-some great vehicles
-island has great variety
-you can get a tank
-fun to blow up stuff and cause chaos
there are other little things that work quite nicely but are negligable and should be expected of a sandbox game eg upgrades and collecting stuff.
don't get me wrong it is a very fun game, but can be frustrating until you get used to its controls and faults. for £18.00-£25.00 it is a good deal if you like over the top free roam action games, but I was a little disapointed.
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Plenty of good reviews already, I'd just add this: it's a cross between Assasin's Creed 1 and GTA San Andreas, but better than both.
A little repetitive, although 369 places to take over has a lot of variety. Enemies aren't all that clever, but there are 4 difficulty settings. And you can do a race challenge in between missions, some of them seem impossible - to begin with.
Plenty of glitches, lots of sound hiccups - but they are fun. Lots of character glitches - sometimes you can be fighting an enemy that is only a gun and a bullet-proof vest, disappearing object problems, amusing until you're fighting completely invisible enemies - reboot. Seeing trousers walking around on their own is funny, being shot at by invisiguys with heavy machine guns isn't. If you spend a lot of time going from one place to another graphics glitches start becoming more frequent, but not a big problem.
ONE MAJOR FAULT. If you don't complete an oil rig in one visit you can't get 100% for it and can't get 100% for the game. Oil rigs must be completed at one sitting, if you blow up the drill head (in particular), go away and come back for some reason this 10% gets 'forgotten' about and you can only get 89% for the rig from here on. I shot up a rig with a jet fighter from a distance, and when I arrived the % damage I'd already done meant I couldn't get 100% for the rig.
One minor fault. I studiously collected all the faction items, 100 black boxes, 100 skulls, 100 drug drops - nothing, not even a thank you. Not a glitch, just a game play disappointment. And who would say - "another box of revolutionary goodies" for goodness sake? Sometimes a location that says 100% complete, isn't - I completed Panau City 100% with a tick and still found a gas station to blow up!
Also I never watched any of the cut scenes - 2 seconds of bad actors doing foreign accents was enough to be totally unconvincing - so I've no idea what the story is meant to be! I think Bolo Santosi is supposed to fancy Rico, only she looks like a bloke and sounds like she's originally from Wales, and Sri Irawan sounds like he fancies a bit of Rico too, but he could be a reject from Little Britain - makes me shudder.
Overall a pretty good game though, I've just spent my 400th hour - I MUST get a 100% game! Plenty to do, plenty of vehicles, my son loves stunting, the dual grapple can have hilarious consequences for the enemy - pinging them over walls and hanging them from chimneys - and swinging statue heads from helicopters to get the 'wrecking ball' acchievement, and beautiful sunsets and sunrises - not to mention the reference to 'Lost' on the Mysterious Island.