Just Cause 2: A Dissection

Just Cause 2, for all intents and purposes is a good game. Unfortunately it could have been a lot more than that due to several factors. Why was this game only good, and not the great game it could have been?

Just Cause 2 starts you off as Rico Rodriguez being deployed into the South East Asian island of Panau, which has gone over a regime change and in all honesty, it all descends into generic action fare. The main draw of Just Cause 2 was the destructive element, the ability to create more exciting explosions than a Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer film which it does very well.

The main gimmick is that you have a grappling hook to attach things together, like a soldier to the back of your car/bike/jet plane. Mainly though, you'll use the grappling hook to climb up buildings, and then you'll use the parachute, which is the other main gimmick, to land safely on the ground. It has to be said that it is really fun to fall a good 15,000 feet and at the last second pull out your parachute and glide safely into an enemy base to cause some mayhem.

Sounds pretty awesome no? Well unfortunately there are some things which makes it only a good game rather than a great game. Normally I'd moan about a game adding a multiplayer or co-op mode because it feels obligated to in the increasingly more online way we play our games. Just Cause 2 shirked this, and frankly its screaming out for a co-operative mode, which brings me onto the second problem, the size of the island.

I'm not for a second that Panau should be a large GTA style suburb, but because the island is supposed to be a relatively poor Asian country, there is lots of little villages, which would be fine. But Panau is around 1000km2. That means most of your time will be spent just finding stuff to do as the game doesn't really want to help you along the way. There's just a lot of empty forest life and mountains, and with the lack of a quick jump to a specific village you've been to before, it takes a lot of time and effort to get around. It does bring up why would you make it that big? Surely we've gotten away from the "my map is bigger than yours" dick waving?

There is also problems with the game literally just dumping you in the middle of this huge island, it tells you the main factions, and then tells you to work for them. That is literally what the game wants you to do, explore the vastness of  Panau to find missions to do for the 3 warring factions. Sure, there's some points on the map, but you'll find that you'll have to walk, drive, or fly to them which can take 15-20 mins to get to.

There is a lot wrong with Just Cause 2, but is it a bad game because of it? No, far from it, but the game doesn't really want you to get to the meaty goodness without a fight, extending the length of the game, just due to the sheer scale of the island. If only they'd thought about what they were doing, we could've had the greatest online co-op game this side of Crackdown.