Giant Bomb Review
48 CommentsJust Cause 2 Review
4- X360
by Ryan Davis on
Just Cause 2 refines and expands on everything that made the first so charming, delivering a joyous blend of B-movie goofiness and physics-defying open-world shenanigans.
In proper sequel fashion, Just Cause 2 happily rehashes the setup from the first game, though the action is moved from a fictionalized corrupt island nation in the Caribbean to a fictionalized corrupt island nation in the South Pacific, again putting you in the role of swarthy Latin caricature and superhuman CIA agent Rico Rodriguez. You're initially sent there to hunt down an old comrade-in-arms who seems to have gone all Colonel Kurtz, but you quickly find yourself in league with multiple rebel factions intent on taking down the militaristic regime that's currently in power. Everything, of course, is not as it seems, though the twists and turns aren't themselves as interesting as some of the set pieces they help justify, including a grand finale that outdoes the climax of the original Just Cause on an atomic level. It's pure B-movie fodder, right down to the wide variety of broad stereotypes and consistently terrible accents most of the characters are saddled with. But then again, if you're coming to Just Cause 2 for the story, you're kind of missing the point.
One of the more important new tricks in Just Cause 2 involves using the grappling hook on the ground in front of you and deploying the stunt parachute while you're in motion, providing you with immediate lift and forward momentum. Once you're up in the air, you can basically just slingshot your way through the air, provided you stay low enough to the ground to still grapple it. It's a great way to get out of a sticky situation when you're low on health, or when you just need to cover a little ground in a hurry. While the vehicle handling is much more agreeable than it was in the original Just Cause, and most vehicles still feature the "stunt positions" originated in the first game, the new grapple-parachute dynamics provide so much more mobility that, other than when required by missions, I rarely found myself compelled to stand on top of cars. This is the power of the sequel: what was one of the most satisfying and memorable features of the first game is a second-stringer in Part Two.
But here's my favorite example of just how ridiculous the grappling hook is in Just Cause 2, and a bold indictment of the most basic laws of physics. When you fall a certain distance, you automatically move into a free-fall position that slows your fall and provides more horizontal mobility. You can fall several stories without taking any damage, but if you hit the ground in the free-fall position, you're done. It used to be that the parachute, or a conveniently placed vehicle, were the only ways to safely transition out of a free fall. Now, once you're close enough, you can just grapple the ground beneath you--which actually makes you move faster than when you're in free fall--and land without a scratch.
So what's the point of all these silly-ass action fantasy moves? To facilitate blowing up of as much stuff as possible. The weapons you'll brandish are fairly conventional, including submachine guns, assault rifles, rocket launchers, grenades, triggered explosives, and so on. The aiming can be incredibly forgiving, which proves to be a bit of a necessity when you're trying to shoot a sniper out of a helicopter while you're clinging to the front bumper of a speeding jeep.
If you find yourself short on ammo, holding the wrong type of weapon, or simply stranded from your desired destination, you can call on a friendly black-market dealer who will airdrop guns and vehicles, or just take you where you want to go, provided you've already discovered the place you're trying to go to. It's through this dealer that you can also upgrade the weapons and vehicles you have access to, using supplies found in the world and earned through missions. Rather than providing a completely destructible environment--ala Mercs 2 or Red Faction: Guerrilla--Just Cause 2 limits the stuff you can blow up to vehicles, various explosive canisters, and specific military structures, and it smartly color-codes most destructible objects, making it easy to quickly identify any potential targets.
It's a good thing that blowing stuff up is so much fun, because the structure of missions themselves can get kind of repetitive, and I often felt like I was performing the same types of tasks for the three factions over and over again. What it lacks in variety, though, it makes up for with volume. I had sunk a good 20 hours into Just Cause 2 when the credits started to roll, though I had completed a mere 28% of the game, a number that I'm still eager to increase.
Not to sound too harsh, but there's nothing all that original about Just Cause 2--this is, in the purest sense, iterative game design. Many of its best ideas feel lifted from other games, including Mercenaries 2, Red Faction: Guerrilla, Bionic Commando, The Force Unleashed, Pursuit Force, among others. What makes Just Cause 2 special is the way those parts are assembled for both the minimum amount of reality, and the maximum amount of fun, the law will allow.
