I have heard a ton of great things about Just Cause 2 from a lot of people who's opinions I respect. Still despite months of awesome praise the idea of playing Just Cause 2 just was not appealing to me. I am not the biggest fan of open world gaming and prefer a game with a tighter focus but after finally giving Red Dead Redemption a try and loving a good portion of that game, I felt it was time to give Just Cause 2 a try. Well that and the fact that Gamefly sent it to me as my next game out.

I am not going to beat around the bush, before I even started the game I envisioned I was going to hate it and I said so publicly. I was not wrong. Just Cause 2 is everything everyone said it was, a huge, beautifully realized sandbox to play around in and the mechanics themselves are actually pretty cool. But it is also a game that tries to present a narrative to drive you along and OH LORD it is awful.

I quickly voiced my complaints and was told to ignore the story and just play around in the world and blow stuff up. Unfortunately that just is not the type of gamer I am. I am not one to play in the sandbox unless there is a purpose to me being there. In the case of open world games, that purpose is generally the story progression.

I am the type of gamer that goes from mission to mission, advancing the storyline to get to the end game. Just Cause 2 has a system to its progression and I did not enjoy it at all and worse than that the story might as well not be there because it is told and performed in such a way that I wanted to slit my wrists watching it. OK, so maybe I am being a bit dramatic but I can easily state that it is one of the worst attempts at the GTA style of storytelling ever.