So it’s outing number 4 for Rico Rodriguez, is it? Another dictator, another large map, another unbreakable shoulder joint – alright, let’s do this.
Do you need the plot?
Okay, here we go – there’s a dictator on this island (which I think is basically meant to be Brazil? not sure?) who has built superweapons which control the weather. You show up to take him out, get blown away (haha) and then have to… um…
*checks notes*
Build an army, take territory, unlock weapons, do several story missions, defeat the evil dictator, and win.
Sounds a bit hackneyed. Sounds a bit cliched. Kind of is, frankly. Can’t get away from that fact. The same storyline happens in Just Cause 3 – a single resistance fighting against a superior modern police force and military. The colour palette changes, and the weaponry is different, but in most other ways it is the same rodeo.
Moving around the map is kind of fun, at least. There’s some interesting geography, and zipping about with your grapple, parachute and wing suit is entertaining – Just Cause 2’s map was so big that actually getting anywhere was a pain, so the scale of this landscape is a lot more manageable. Solis itself features a real rapid switcheroo between three different biomes, going from arctic, to desert, to pleasant equatorial over the course of fifty yards.
The thing is…
It’s a little hard to care.
We get a little clip of the dictator in question at the beginning of the game, and his second-in-command shows up after the first real mission to introduce you to the notion that there is a war to fight. Then? Then they both just… vanish. The enemy becomes faceless for the rest of the entire game. No personality. No point. Just a bunch of angry folks in black and red. This only changes in the literal final mission, which…
Ah, no. I will get to that.
The big thing about this one, in particular, is the weather. There’s wind, now. And rain. And sandstorms. And blizzards. And lightning. None of which will actually bother you very much, until you are in a mission that specifically requires you to interact with them – an example being a mission that requires you to guide a tornado into an urban area of Solis, then dive down into the middle of it to get at the thing creating it. Prior to this, tornadoes have formed precisely zero of the threats I have faced on the map.
It looks pretty great, frankly. Aside from the odd fuckup in terms of facial hair, the visuals of the game all work nicely. The HUD is clean and shows me what I need to see – or at least what the game tells me I need to see, which isn’t a graphic problem, it’s a planning issue – and a lot of the animation of the characters you interact with is pretty pleasing. The lack of good writing in the cut scenes doesn’t take away from the fact that, often, they are generally pretty pleasant to watch.
There wasn’t exactly an overflow of likeable or memorable characters in the previous games in the franchise, I will grant you – but it feels like that is more of a big deal, here, if only because there’s so little else going on. The plot actually only consists of about eight discrete missions which, if not padded out by the “conquer the map” requirement, would probably only take two hours to play through.
There’s all sorts of physics fun you can engage in with the grapple hook’s attachments – an upgradable system with three “loadouts”, so you can have one set up to yank two objects together with incredible force, one set up to Fulton your enemies (or friends) into the sky attached to explosive hydrogen balloons, and one set up to stick rocket boosters all over a thing and project it off into the magnetosphere. Upgrades to these systems are unlocked via little side missions, and…well…
So one of the sets of side missions actually vaguely impressed me. A well-spoken intense academic trying to redeem the hegemonic over-write of the island of Solis’ historic rulership, by way of finding their tombs and historic relics. Reclaiming the local history from the overwriting hand of the invading oppressor. That? is COOL. Having to do so by activating big rolling ball challenges and guiding those big rolling balls into sockets made for them? Also kind of COOL, given the versatility of your grapple hook system. If anything I kind of wish this line of entirely optional side missions was the main story line, it would have been far more compelling.
The other two sets of side missions are, basically, dross. A series of “combat” missions, which usually involves ferrying around some crap NPCs and shooting the bad guys for them. A series of “drive through these checkpoints” missions. A sigh, a shrug, okay, it’s something to do while I’m not doing the same five “liberate this territory” missions over and over again.
There’s precious little going on that makes you want to be here, is the problem. There is almost – ALMOST – a bit of plot that actually links Rico to what is going on on Solis, but then it kind of gets brushed under the carpet immediately, and entirely forgotten.
So. Let’s say you stick at it. You progress through the game, fend off the rather lame script, enjoy the historic reclamation story, run through every repeat mission, use the right grapples when you’re meant to, battle through highly unbalanced combat setpieces that are more difficult than seems entirely justified, then get to the final mission of the game.
Ah, here we go. We see the bad guys again. The dictator and his strong right hand. And here comes Rico Rodriguez, swooping in! I predict a hard-hitting fight against an endless array of bad guys, a final climactic face-to-face with the –
Oh, wait, no, that’s not what happens at all.
We fight our way up a building – two set-piece fights ending with slapping a handful of helicopters out of the air.
Then we get three cutscenes, in which the bad guy gets away, then he doesn’t get away, then Rico has a beer with some people and casually mentions the potential plot of the next sequel.
And that is it. The credits happen.
I don’t know about gameplay time – but it feels like there is only half a game here. It feels like it is a hollow echo of any of the games before. It feels like they ripped out most of what made Just Cause fun, and replaced it with…
Weather mechanics.
It’s not a good trade off. It feels like, just maybe, this game got cut off partway through its development cycle and they had to really quickly cap it off and rush it out to market.
Pick it up at discount if you want to pick it up at all. I would suggest just playing the third one again – you will probably have more fun.