Just Cause

    Just Cause is a GTA-inspired action game that takes place in a fictional Caribbean island. You play as Sheldon, who is a Latino-American that works as a mercenary of some sort for the US government. During the campaign, you must make friends with the local guerrilla organizations and try and take down the corrupt government. The concept of the game is a free roaming, GTA type 3rd person shooter. You have this entire huge island that you can roam around on. The island itself looks beautiful full of color, brush, and other foliage, and the lighting effects are awesome. However, the game play is a bit too repetitive. The games combat consist of getting near enough to an enemy until you automatically lock on. From there, you just pull the right trigger a lot. There is a zoom button that you can use, but it makes you aim the gun yourself and really just doesn’t work as good as just letting the game do the aiming itself. And sometimes when you get close enough to an enemy and try to shoot, you’ll attempt some weird melee attack that usually never hits. So really, the combat in the game is pretty bad and boring. However, what is unique about this game is its stunt features. Your character is equipped with a parachute that can be deployed if you fall a short distance. Couple that with a grapple hook that you are given access to shortly after the game begins, and you have some fun. You can use the grappling hook to attach to cars and parasail behind them. From there, you can reel in the line and jump to the car you’re attached to. You can then get inside the car or jump to another car. This comes in handy a lot throughout the story given that many of the missions require you to kill someone who is fleeing in a vehicle. So basically the game contains some neat and unique ways to jack cars and vehicles as well as make daring escapes from a car before it is blown to shreds. 

     In terms of story, the game doesn’t have much going for it. As mentioned before, you just kind of show up to this island that is apparently under the control of a corrupt government. There is no insight as to why the government is corrupt or what they have done, but you take their word for it. So then, you do missions for the local guerrillas and they help you out in overthrowing the government. And that’s basically it. There is no twist or anything special. It’s just a good scenario that allows for you to roam around an island and kill a lot of things. The plot is also full of holes, but I don’t think many will really mind considering how bad it is. Also the mission structures aren’t very well done either. They really start getting repetitive pretty quickly and aren’t that fun to begin with. However, there are a few neat missions that are more unique than the others. As mentioned before, games environment really looks awesome. You get a nice sense of this when you’re riding in helicopters or planes. The environments are lush and rich with color, cool explosions, awesome cloud effects, and nice lighting. However, the character models could have used some work. The sound in the game is pretty much standard. The voice acting is pretty cheesy and lame, but the ambient sounds are nice. There are a few neat little tunes in there that you’ll hear as well. Really, the sound just is kind of there and does nothing special for the game, for good or worse.

     The game does features a decent sized arsenal of weapons. Pretty much some standard machine guns, a few different pistols, a rocket launcher, and a sniper rifle you’ll probably never use. The pistols and machine guns all pretty much behave the same, but have different clip sizes. I’m not sure if the accuracy for each gun changes or not, but it doesn’t really matter given that it locks on to targets anyway. The game does feature a lot of different drivable vehicles. Anything from cars, motorcycles, trucks, airplanes, jets, and helicopters are pilot able. Aside from the main storyline, there are side missions you can do to build your rep up with the two guerrilla factions on the island. They are pretty poorly designed missions and start to repeat themselves after about the 10th mission. So you’ll probably get tired of doing these pretty quickly. You can also liberate towns controlled by this other “purple” faction or government faction. Again, all of these are done the same way and are boring. You simply start the mission, kill a few guys, blow up 3 barricades, then press “A” at a flag. Then you can do the lovely same 10 side missions there. Lastly, there are some lame collect missions you can do that aren’t worth it. Just don’t even attempt them. You just ride around the huge island looking for a blue dot on your map and walk over a package. They suck. Oh, and some races you can do, but screw that crap. Overall, Just Cause is a decently fun game that has a few unique ideas that are pretty cool, but its boring gun-play and terrible story mode, and lack of content thereafter, will probably make this a quick rental at best.