Alright, so I had a chance to play around with Just Cause 2 this weekend. Let me say it right off the bat: Very fun game. Now that that’s out of the way, I’ll give you some more details.

The game is set on what I can only assume is a fictional island named Panau. Looking at the people, listening to the names and accents, I would say that this place most closely resembles Thailand. This is a VERY pretty game. The island is beautifully done, and the game world is HUGE. The island is controlled by an oppressive government, with military police all over the place, abusing citizens and just generally being assholes. You play an American super agent named Rico Rodriguez, on a mission to bring down a rogue agent, but in order to find him, you must cozy up to the local gangs, which means doing bad things.

If you’ve played any of the GTAs, you know the drill; this one another one of those sandbox 3rd person shooters. You can steal and drive pretty much any vehicle you come across, kill civilians, all that jazz. The way this game sets itself apart is how creative you can get about the way you do anything. Your character is equipped with a grappling gun and parachute. You shoot the grapple at any surface or object in range, and then you go flying at said object at high speed. Deploy your chute, and you take off into the air. This makes for some very fun travel and combat. I have yet to run into a glass ceiling, which is nice. If you grab a plane or helicopter, you can fly up as high as you want, it would seem, and just jump out. Very cool.

The gunfighitng is pretty simple, though you are given the choice of a simple auto-aim style, or you can take more specific control, and zoom in a little to disable the auto aim, to make specific shots. Ammo is pretty abundant, and if all else fails, you have a melee attack you can use, or you can just grapple guys, which is pretty fun, too.

One of my gripes with this game (and there aren’t many) is that the story is rather thin, and the cut-scenes are, in a word, lame. Every time you start a new mission, some gang leader drives up to you, drops off some weapons, and gives you a cryptic mission objective, and drives away, leaving Rico staring begrudgingly at the weapon crate on the ground.

If you’re in it for the story, tough shit. You will be disappointed. However, the amount of fun to be had playing this game far outweighs the crap cut-scenes and thin storytelling.

There is a LOT to do in this game, as well. You are going to go insane if you try to finish everything in this game. It’s a completionist’s nightmare. You will lose your shit over trying to find that one little thing in a whole town that will give you that last percentage point. It’s just not worth it.

So if you’re looking for a game that is a lot of fun to just play around and get things done your way, definitely give Just Cause 2 a playing. It will keep you busy for a while, at least.

ZL Rating: 8.3

/Remus