Preview: Just Cause 2

Had you asked me about this game a few days ago I would have said that I wasn’t interested, but you’d be amazed at how my mind did a complete turnaround in such a short time with only a small amount of convincing. After checking out this game and taking an in-depth look at what is on offer, I can easily say that Just Cause 2 just might be one of the most fun games I’ve seen in a long time, and that’s saying something. I’m talking about pure, mindless fun here, the fun all gamers love to have once in a while, but don’t often get these days. This game just might turn out to be a must-have March title – it certainly has the potential for greatness.

Name: Just Cause 2
Genre: Action/Third Person “Open World” Shooter
Players: 1
Multiplayer: N/A
Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox360
Developers: Avalanche Studios & Eidos Interactive
Publishers: Square Enix
Release Date: 23-26 March 2010

The original Just Cause was released in 2006 and it was a game that you could have an immense amount of fun with. However, it was plagued with enormous repetitiveness and complete lack of depth, which brought the entire experience down. Still, it managed to be a love-hate game, one that was undeniably fun at times, even for the haters. Now, this year and this month, in fact, we’ll be seeing the release of the sequel, Just Cause 2, which promises to correct all of the issues of the first game and deliver an over the top, explosive open world action game that will stand apart from the rest. Personally, it didn’t take their promises to make us excited about this game, all it took was closer inspection.

Just Cause 2 will take place on the fictional tropical island of Panau in Southeast Asia, which is a massive playground, around 400 square miles in size, the same size the game world was in the first title. Players will once again assume the role of CIA black ops agent Rico Rodriguez, the protagonist from the first game, who, in this sequel, is tasked with overthrowing an evil dictator named Baby Panay – and to confront his former boss, Tom Sheldon. In the game, you’ll be working with rebel factions on the island in order to obtain information on Tom Sheldon. Despite how you feel about the story at this point, Just Cause 2 is a game that doesn’t focus on its plot, as it’s a game all about the action, so you can expect to see a rather typical unstoppable one-man army theme going here.

Just Cause 2 is a sandbox action game, one that focuses entirely on chaos, stunts and over the top action. Just as you’d expect from a sandbox game, you will be free to roam the game world as you please, doing what you want, engaging in side quests, stunting around, collecting stuff and basically causing chaos. Players control Rico from a third person perspective and, as I mentioned, the objective of the game is to, quite literally, destroy everything and everyone in your path in the most enjoyable and hilarious ways you can think up. That’s essentially one of the reasons Just Cause 2 is so appealing, because there is just such a vast amount of ways to do things and a lot of freedom involved. You, as the player, will be thinking up different ways to dish out pain and make use of the many tools at your disposal, the environment and your surroundings. Exactly how this is done will be explained now.

Just Cause 2 is the type of game you can appreciate, because it not only has in common solid elements from good games, such as Mercenaries, Grand Theft Auto and Pursuit Force, but it also has its own unique features that give it its own identity. Starting with the basics, there are loads of weapons to use in the game, ranging from pistols, assault rifles, sniper rifles and sub machine guns to rocket launchers, grenade launchers, grenades, C4 and much more. You’ll also be able to duel wield any two one-handed guns and your weapons can be upgraded using the black market system. You’ll be able to drive any vehicle, either found or hijacked from enemies in short quick time events. Just Cause 2 boasts over 100 vehicles, including cars, sports cars, motorbikes, four-by-fours, boats, helicopters, planes and jets, all of which will handle differently and have different attributes.

Just Cause 2 hypes up two gameplay features, that were there in the first game, which make up a large portion of the game’s appeal, namely the grappling hook and the parachute. They may sound like simple and uninteresting features, but when you hear and see how this game makes use of them, you’ll throw away all skepticism. The grappling hook is attached to Rico’s arm, so you’re able to use it at any time at the press of a button, and the same goes for the parachute. With the grappling hook, you’re able to grapple to practically anything. You can hook up to a solid surface to travel faster and, of course, to climb buildings and hang on the side of them to fire at enemies. You can grapple on moving vehicles to get onto the roof, front or back, grapple to helicopters to either hijack, destroy, travel or hang from them to fire at enemies – and this is all just the basics, we haven’t even gotten to how it’s used in combat.

The parachute is an essential tool of yours, especially since you’re going to be getting up to high points with your grappling hook. Due to the freedom involved, you’re able to sky dive from any high point, which can get you points depending on how well you do and how far you fall, or even if you just jump out of an airborne helicopter, thereafter activating your unlimited parachute. What makes the parachute and grappling hook so great, aside from the variety and gameplay features that comes with them, is the fact that they can be used alongside each other fluidly. You can grapple up to a high point and, just before impact, activate your parachute, which gives you quite a large boost into the sky. While in the sky, on your parachute, you can fire your weapons (even the rocket launcher, believe it or not) and you’re able to grapple around in order to steer, speed up and maneuver and keep yourself airborne.

Undoubtedly, one of the game’s biggest highlights is the grappling hook in combat. Just Cause 2 is not, by any means, a realistic game. It’s one that focuses on over the top, ridiculous action and stunts. In sacrificing realism, the game has made much more room for fun and entertainment, which is essentially the concept of one of my gaming theories. The theory goes thus: the more realism you have in your game, the more fun you take out, while the less realism you have, the more room for fun. It’s not always the case, but you will find a lot of cases where too much realism puts a damper on the fun, like in Grand Theft Auto IV for example. The developers themselves have stated that Just Cause 2 is in no way realistic, it’s completely far fetched. The ability to defy the laws of physics is testament to this.

Now, with the combat, there is just so much variety and creativity involved with the grappling hook. The basic actions include pulling an enemy towards you or off of a cliff, pulling exploding barrels and objects off ledges to blow up or crush your enemies, lift enemies off of the ground and juggle them in the air with bullets (no lies) and throwing enemies around. However, the advanced actions make use of the duel-grappling hook. The duel-grappling hook allows you to tether two objects together to create both awesome and extremely humourous results – and the possibilities are aplenty, it’s all about what you think up. For example, you can tether two enemies together to make them smack into each other, you’re able to tether an enemy to the ground, a wall, any vehicle (yes, this includes moving cars and planes, so you can watch them bounce around helplessly on the road as the car moves or flail uselessly as they get dragged through the air) and even exploding barrels and gas canisters, where shooting them will release the gas, sending your enemy (and the exploding gas canister) flying through the air in a hilarious manner before the canister blows him to hell.

You can get far more creative. You can even use the duel-grappling hook to attach a car underneath a helicopter, and then pilot the helicopter using the car as a wrecking ball or to crush enemies. You can tether your truck to a large statue and then drive away, bringing the entire statue down. One of the most awesome kills I saw in the game, if all of the above isn’t enough, was when Rico grappled to a moving enemy vehicle, planted a C4 on the roof of the car, grappled back to the safety of another vehicle, and then tethered the C4-rigged enemy vehicle to a lamppost. The result was the enemy car doing an insane flip in the air, and while this was happening, Rico triggered the C4, blowing the car to pieces while it was flipping wildly. Ultimately, an enormous amount of the fun is going to come from experimentation of the game’s mechanics, especially with the grappling hook and environment. If done correctly, it will truly be a blast to test things out and create new ways to make life hell for your enemies and enjoyable for you.

The game’s structure is relatively simple. In order to progress with main story missions, you have to build up something called the “Chaos Meter”, which is essentially a bar on the top left of your screen that increases the more chaos you create, which naturally means lots of explosions and dead bodies. So doing side missions or just going on a rampage will contribute to unlocking story missions. Or you can just leave story missions and do what you please. The game makes use of the regenerative health system so if you take too much damage you need to stay out of combat in order to heal again. However, you do have a health bar, so you can be aware of how much more punishment you can take before death.

With its visuals, Just Cause 2 is quite simply beautiful. The island is massive in size and incredibly detailed, as is everything else in the game. The island will experience climate change and day and night cycles and will also include many different terrains. These aren’t just for show, as the ground you’re driving on will effect the handling of your vehicles. For example, a sports car might not be suited for off-road driving, especially on harsh, bumpy or sand terrains, so you’d have to choose a four by four. The game’s physics engine also deserves a great deal of credit as there are plenty of things to be destroyed, especially vehicles, which look to be, from a visual perspective, awesome to destroy. However, it must be mentioned that the physics of vehicles is purposefully made a little overboard, so don’t be alarmed if you see cars flipping around and toppling over while stunting around.

Just Cause 2 is definitely one of the titles we’re most looking forward to this month. It looks to be just the type of game that suits my style: pure, mindless, hellishly addictive fun. This game really has the potential to be one of the most entertaining and satisfying games we’ve seen in a long time – a game where you can do cool stuff for cool stuff’s sake. I certainly hope that this game learns from its past mistakes and really puts the awesome concepts and gameplay features it has to the best possible use. The game will be releasing on the 23rd of March 2010 in North America and on the 26th of March in Europe. The South African release date is still not fully clear, as some sources indicate an April 2010 release, but I’m expecting to see the game in local stores the same time as the European release. Stay tuned for any updates on that. Just Cause 2 will be available on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox360, and you can check out the PC requirements below.

PC Requirements

Minimum:

- Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Windows XP is unsupported)
- Processor: Dual-core CPU with SSE3 (Athlon 64 X2 4200 / Pentium D 3GHz)
- Graphics Card: Nvidia Geforce 8800 Series / ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro with 256MB memory or equivalent DX10 card with 256MB memory
- Memory: 2GB RAM
- DirectX: Microsoft DirectX 10
- Hard Drive: 10GB of free drive space
- Optical Drive: DVD-ROM drive
- Sound Card: 100% DirectX 10 compatible sound card
- Internet Connection: Internet connection required for product activation
- Input: Keyboard and mouse (Microsoft Xbox 360 controller optional)

Recommended:

- Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Windows XP is unsupported)
- Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6GHz or AMD Phenom X3 2.4GHz
- Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 Series with 512MB / ATI Radeon HD 5750 Series with 512MB or equivalent DX10 card with 512MB memory
- Memory: 3GB
- DirectX: Microsoft DirectX 10.1 with Vista SP1
- Hard Drive: 10GB of free drive space
- Optical Drive: DVD-ROM drive
- Sound Card: 100% DirectX 10 compatible Dolby Digital 5.1 sound card
- Internet Connection: Internet connection required for product activation
- Input: Keyboard and mouse (Xbox 360 controller optional)

[Credit to IGN for the screenshots]
[Credit to teamxbox for the screenshots]