Just Cause 2 Demo: It was a holy shaking earthquake and you were stuck up the tree

Never getting to play the first and somewhat intrigued at screenshots for the second, Just Cause 2 from Eidos and published by, of all companies, Square-Enix is due out March 23rd.  Not as disappointing or typical as most other demos tend to be, JC2 is a 3rd person delight at times, and at others a frustration and copycat of another famous series. 

The first installment was released late 2006, a year after it’s direct predecessor, Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction where the gameplay is sandbox style.  And ok, Mercs was just a mimic of GTA but the changes made it worthy to separate the two games.  Where GTA focused on driving and the city, Mercs focused on destruction and the country.  JC is very similar to Mercs.  Very.  And with this game the differences between Mercs and JC aren’t enough to separate the two.  Lots of explosions, vehicular manslaughter, and equipment air drops, not to be confused with log drops, are all quite fun the first, second or third time through or get old just as fast. 

If you’ve never played GTA, Mercs, or JC1, the concept is quite simple.  Take on some missions while the rest of the world is open to destroy or just breeze around in lusciously stolen vehicles and take in some various scenery.  In JC2, you are a black market merc aiding in an overthrown of an evil dictator on an island in Southeast Asia.  And the way in which any evil dictator is overthrown in the modern world is to create random chaos.  And why?  Just Cause.  Yep.  Tagline. 

What JC does really well, better than Mercs or GTA, is entrancing the player with beautiful graphics in the world you explore.  Where the console versions may be stuck at a set resolution, the PC version can be forced to FarCry or Crysis levels of beauty.  Exploring the world can be done at quick rates without vehicles with the addition of a grappling hook in JC2.  This allows you to grab trees, buildings, vehicles or even the ground and zoom quite quickly from here to there like Curious George on speed.  Base jumping is made easy with an unlimited amount of parachutes making falling out helicopters and Boeing 737s a breeze.  So the exploration and transportation is done well. 

What isn’t done as well is the aiming system.  Precision aiming can be a bit of a pain on the fly as well as the AI aiming that gets increasingly accurate as time progresses after initiating a battle.  When things are pulled off to your liking they do look amazing as the destruction system is somewhat a step up from most action games.  Vehicles lose parts and pieces, buildings crumble, and Bob working the fruit stand seems to not mind you running over his business time and time again.  Quest progression does seem a bit random and listless but might be overshadowed by the open world environment.  Control of some of the vehicles is sometimes difficult to grasp, ie the piper cub planes, but what is interesting is the responsiveness of the vehicle chosen and where you are using that vehicle does yield a nice change.  For example, riding on a sport bike on the streets is pretty easy to accomplish but once you take it offroad, the bike realistically feels sloppy and almost uncontrollable. 

Just Cause 2 was a very fun game to try, the demo allowing for anything available in the full game being at your fingertips within a 30 minute time period.  If you enjoyed GTA, Mercs, or JC1, Just Cause 2 deserves you to try at least the demo.  As for forking over the cash for the full game, you would have to really love the sandbox environment genre or not have spent money on any of the others before it as you can attain the joy of open world mercenary work by playing some of the older games for a cheaper price or waiting for one of those special Steam clearance weekends.  Sorry Rico.

 

 

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