![]() Yes, the story is still a laughable attempt to give some semblance of context to the crazy stuff Rico pulls, but it plays second fiddle to all that crazy stuff. Ever wonder what it'd be like to tie some random guy to the back of an airliner? Just Cause 2 was ludicrous almost to a fault – you can't even continue with the main story missions unless you generate a certain amount of "Chaos" by doing all kinds of badassery. The ragdoll effects meant that you could grapple almost anything – or anyone – to anything else. With Havok being used in Just Cause 2, the grappling hook-parachute combo became the star attraction. While the grappling hook was certainly useful in Just Cause, those sixth-gen limitations did rear their heads in terms of what you could do with the grappling hook. Havok physics, though, was the real game-changer. ![]() From the lighting and the water on up, everything was substantially more detailed, and just plain better-looking than the original Just Cause. Panau island took full advantage of seventh-gen console hardware. But 2010's Just Cause 2 was definitely worth the wait. With new additions to AAA franchises coming out every year these days, a five-year gap between titles might seem a bit much. This is about as much awesome as you're going to get from a six-gen title. However, repetitive quest design and bland, samey environments held Just Cause back from greatness. Launched right in the 2005-2006 transition era, the enhanced Xbox 360 version was a good reason to jump ship to seventh gen. Unfortunately, the game pushed consoles a little too hard – the PS2 version lagged badly. While it is true that the procedural generation techniques that allowed for this huge landmass in some really sparse, repetitive cookie-cutter locales, San Esperito was the biggest game environment this side of Daggerfall, and it certainly didn't hurt that it was over 20 times larger than San Andreas. That's right: Just Cause's in-game island is bigger than many real-life Caribbean islands. The map size for San Esperito is over 1000 square kilometers. Instead of giving you lovingly recreated slices of urban America, Just Cause gave you guns with lots and lots of bullets, and Rico's signature grappling hook. Spoiler alert: Just Cause 2 has exactly the same plotline. Just Cause didn't have much of a story: You're Rico Rodriguez, a CIA agent who's sent to the Caribbean island of San Esperito to overthrow the local nuke-toting dictator. The original Just Cause took GTA's open world formula – drive here cutscene go there – and dialed the implausible action-hero shenanigans all the way up. But although you could simply use cheats and go around shooting rockets at people, GTA was as much about character development and social commentary as anything else. You had large, reasonably detailed environments, cars to drive, and people to talk to. The 3D-era GTA games – III, Vice City, and San Andreas – largely defined what an open-world game could be on sixth-gen consoles. ![]() You better watch out for this guy: He really likes to talk. With just a few months to go before Just Cause 3 drops (parachutes?), we thought it would be a good time to look back at the Just Cause series, at one ridiculous Latino dude with a grappling hook-parachute.thingie, and what he has to say about just plain having fun. It's about blowing stuff up, aiming for those bright red barrels. It's about doing crazy, random stuff and then telling your friends about it at lunch. With all that talk about the number of facial animation bones used in Uncharted 4, and the hours of cutscenes Metal Gear Solid 5 is no doubt going to put us through, we seem to have collectively forgotten that gaming's really just about having fun. But with the cinematic pretensions of most AAA games – just have a look at the latest Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed title – the gaming industry appears to be slowly drifting away from its roots. ![]() Gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry now and, just as with film, books, TV, or any other mainstream media, you can find games by the dozen in any genre under the sun. There are games as art, and (as with Valiant Hearts and Monument Valley) art masquerading as games. There are serious games, humorous games, games that rip off Hollywood. ![]() Video games have really come into their own as an expressive media. We've come a pretty long way since the pre-8 bit, coin-slot era. ![]()
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