One of the specialties of sandbox games is the ability to rampage around an open world leaving trails of fire and destruction in your wake as you wage a private war against the entire world.  Grand Theft Auto is a proprietor of this type of chaotic fun, as are the Saints Row games, Prototype, and InFamous.  Let’s see if Just Cause 2 has the potential to join this team.  It should be noted that this is the first Eidos game I’ve reviewed since Square-Enix purchased them; this is a good start.

Developer: Avalanche Studios, Eidos Interactive
Publisher: Square-Enix
Genre: Third person shooter
Console(s): PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC

The verdict: Just Cause 2 is one of the biggest, most diverse, most chaos-happy sandbox worlds I’ve ever seen.  The story missions are forgettable, but odds are you’ll have too much fun to even realize there is a story.  I know I did.

Sandboxes have come a long way since Grand Theft Auto III.  New technology, better physics engine, destructible environments and improved game engines have done a lot for the freedom and possibilities of open worlds.  Just Cause 2 drops you in a huge island nation with plenty of cars, planes, weapons, and gear to get around the island easily.  What more could you possibly want?  Just Cause 2 may lack the refined story of Grand Theft Auto IV, but the setting, scope, and sheer enjoyment of the sandbox element will never get old.  This is one sandbox you’ll play in for hours at a time.

An island at your fingertips

As was the case in the first Just Cause, you step into the shoes of Rico Rodriguez, a special operative for a force called the Agency.  As the game begins, Rico is dropped into the Southeastern Asian island nation of Panau.  A dictator known as Pandak “Baby” Panay has instituted a ruthless totalitarian regime on the island and is now battling with three criminal factions.  To make matters worse, Agency agent Tom Sheldon is hiding on the island with two million dollars of Agency cash.  As Rico it’s your job to restore order and track down Agent Sheldon by the method of single handedly causing enough destruction to put Grand Theft Auto to shame.

All of Panau is open to your exploration, and this isn’t just a city.  It’s not even three cities ala Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.  It’s literally an entire island nation with urban population centers, quiet farmlands, sprawling undeveloped forests, and roads connecting everything in between.  You can spend hours driving across the vast landscape, which encompasses the huge capital city, lush jungles, barren deserts, sandy beaches, and snowy mountains.  If you plan on driving even halfway across the entire map I hope you have an afternoon free, because there’s a phenomenal amount of space to explore.  Buildings, cars, forests, and military bases really make this feel like a vibrant world, which makes exploration alone that much more satisfying.  Cars aren’t your only method of travel by any means; motorcycles, helicopters, jet planes, fixed wing aircraft,

What matches the sheer scope of the world is the technological prowess on display here.  The graphics in Just Cause 2 are jaw droppingly scenic, and several times throughout the game I found myself just driving to a nearby objective to drink in the attractive atmospheres.  Jungles are dense and beautifully vibrant, water glows and reflects realistically, and the many, many explosions you’ll create blossom in a way where you’ll be tempted to briefly stop your rampage to admire your handiwork as a gas tank explodes and engulfs the enemy soldiers nearby.  All of the environments all feel unique and distinctive; snowy mountaintops will be subdued as snow gently falls, while the shining bloom effects characterize the beaches.  The scope of the game means that there’s virtually no texture pop-in; even when I was soaring through the skies in a fighter jet the view over the beach through the forests to the distant mountaintop was simply mesmerizing.

I caught a few audio glitches in the dialogue but explosions, bullet sounds, and environmental ambience sound crystal clear and can lend themselves to either a scenic motorbike ride or a fight scene where you hijack a fixed airplane, leap out and parachute into a military base, proceed to shoot up everything in sight shortly before blowing up everything that can be destroyed, and then hijacking a Jeep and using it to run down the survivors.  Regardless of the scenario you find yourself in there was no slowdown or any kind of glitch, which is a technical marvel considering the size of the map.

Surf’s up…on an airplane

The reference to explosion brings this review nicely to gameplay: In a nutshell, you will be causing chaos that makes Grand Theft Auto look tame.  The entire experience is set up like a B-movie, with some really amazing over the top stunts and abilities.  Rico comes equipped with a parachute that lets him zip through the air at any time as well as a grappling hook that can instantly pull Rico to any surface within range.  Grapple onto a fighter jet, surf on the nose, parachute off it as it collides into a mountain, then grapple onto the top of a car as it moves around 60 MPH; believe it or not, this is only scratching the surface.  Whether it’s a wild motorcycle leap or plowing through an enemy base dicing enemies into confetti with a laser-controlled rocket launcher, the amount of havoc you can create in this game is flat out insane.

The relationship between a compelling single player story and chaotic sandbox fun is a tentative, lightly treaded one, and thankfully Just Cause 2 factors in the carnage as a method of story progression.  Simply blowing up everything you see is actually an incentive because it gives you Chaos points, which are effectively a form of currency that unlock new mission and weapons.  Causing destruction is a prerequisite for 100% completion; suffice to say, with hundreds of areas to explore if you aim for perfect completion you’re in for a long, long haul.  Exploration is made fun by the attractive settings and smooth vehicle handling, not to mention the chance to take a break and blow something up.

Missed story potential

The actual story and narrative is where the game is at a weak point, largely owing to the fact that the missions are surprisingly generic and the writing is bland and uninspired.  Avalanche and Eidos seem to have been going for a B movie theme with a lot of cheesy situations, which would have worked, but ironically they didn’t exploit it enough.  The story is surprisingly vanilla for a game of this type; Saints Row 2 featured a lot of hilariously over the top situations and conversations in its story, while Just Cause 2 can’t seem to decide if wants to be funny in an edgy way or just a slapstick way.

Missions can be a lot of fun, owing to the part that they – what else – involve causing explosions and mayhem.  The only problem is that the open world gameplay lets you do this too, and it’s often a lot better when you don’t have arbitrary restrictions or conditions imposed on you that limit your freedom.  Sometimes you have a timer, or other times you’ll need to escort a phenomenally dim AI partner; admittedly, AI in general is dim, but with enemies it keeps the feeling of a B- movie.  The point is that there are very few situations in the story that ofer something beyond what you can get when you’re just tooling around, hijacking airplanes and nose diving off of them while spraying machinegun fire everywhere.  The checkpoint system in Just Cause 2 is also a cause for issue because if you die you mighthave to go back to wherever you started the mission, meaning if you flew halfway across Panau and you get killed you have to go and do it again.

There’s a nifty little bonus for PlayStation 3 players.  This version features a video capture that lets you record gameplay, and then upload it directly to YouTube.  Tragically I forgot to enable it shortly before surfing on a plane and then grapple hook hopping between helicopters, but I’ll make a concentrated effort to recreate the scene; with Just Cause 2, anything is possible.

Closing thoughts

Ultimately, the throwaway story is a simple blemish on the surface of an extremely fun, fast, entertaining romp in a sandbox that’s more the size of a beach in terms of scope and scale.  Just Cause 2 is still a fantastic time for any gamer who enjoys virtual destruction (a substantial majority, I would say).  Prepare to be blown away by the world of Panau – then you can return the favor by blowing away several buildings and then grapple hooking up to a chopper to make a getaway.

Disclaimer: This PlayStation 3 version of Just Cause 2 was provided by Square-Enix for review purposes.