Just Cause Review (X360)

Stunts

Just Cause sets itself apart in one other significant way, and that is with the stunts. Rico has an unlimited supply of parachutes that you can use pretty much whenever you want. You can drive down a road in a car, hop on the roof, and then hit your parachute to float safely away, which is very cool and makes police chases a completely different beast in this game than other GTA clones. You can also jump from car to car, boat to boat, or even airplane to airplane during chases. Early in the game you are also given a grappling hook which lets you attach to a moving vehicle, deploy your parachute, and be towed along. This also works with helicopters and airplanes, and you can pull yourself towards them and steal them in mid-flight! And when you get to your destination, you just jump out and parachute down to where you need to be. This also means that there are a ton of different ways to complete missions. Rather than blasting through the front door of a prison, for example, you can simply parachute into the exercise yard and rescue your camrade from there. It gives Just Cause a completely different feel from the other GTA clones and I really, really enjoy it.

Glitches and Annoyances

It is not all fun and games in San Espirito, however, as there are some very significant glitches and bugs that seriously hinder the overall experience as well as some things that are just plain annoying. Glitches range from characters and vehicles loading incorrectly (like waist deep in the ground), to failing missions seconds after they start for no apparent reason, to mysteriously teleporting around the island. I have also heard multiple stories of people pressing the “Y” button to steal a vehicle only to be magically moved halfway across the map to take over a helicopter they didn’t even know was there. These glitches are insane, but they keep the game funny and fun and it keeps you playing just to see what will happen next. Other annoyances include the sloppy vehicle handling as I already mentioned and some incredibly long load times. Also, the game might be a little too big for its own good. It definitely helps to make you feel like you are actually fighting for an entire country, but it takes forever to get anywhere. You can use your radio to call in for extraction to your base of to have your allies drop off a vehicle for you, but the game would have been just as good if it was half the size.

Graphics and Sound

For the most part, Just Cause is a very nice looking game, but there are some things that look so out of place as to be distracting. The environment is absolutely gorgeous looking and features some beautiful water and lighting effects and explosions. The characters, however, were given a cartoony style and they look hideous. Enemy character designs repeat over and over and over again and you kill the same guy about 10,000 times throughout this game. The vehicles also lack detail and look just plain bad. It is too bad the whole game doesn’t look as nice as the island itself, because Just Cause would have been very, very pretty.

The sound is decent, but not spectacular. The voice work in the story missions is fairly well done in that it fits the tone of the rest of the game which is pretty lighthearted and silly despite the fact you are fighting for regime change. One thing that seems great at first but quickly gets old is the soundtrack. The music has a Latin feel with lots of acoustic guitars and trumpets and stuff and it kicks in at just the right times, but it gets really repetitive after a while since you hear it over and over and over again.

Bottom Line

Overall, Just Cause is a game that you’ll want to love, but it just won’t let you. There are just too many glitches and annoyances to really consider it a great game. With that said, however, it can still be a lot of fun and I think if people give it a try they’ll enjoy it. In the last year, we have had several GTA-style games that have all blurred into one for me. Saints Row, The Godfather, Driver: Parallel Lines, True Crime – they are all desperately trying to be GTA. Just Cause takes us out of the city and puts us in the jungle, and I can say with absolute conviction that I personally enjoyed it far more than taking another lap around a city with a wannabe thug. It is far from perfect, however, and the multitude of little problems make it pretty hard to recommend Just Cause at the full $50 price tag. The demo that is available on the XBL Marketplace is a pretty fair representation of the final game, so if you can get into the demo you’ll love the final game. Or you can give it a rent and decide if it is worth buying from there.