Developer: Avalanche Studios
Publisher: Eidos
Genre: Action Adventure

Just Cause Gallery

Just Cause is one of the more unique games I’ve come across in the past few months, especially considering it is a strictly single-player title. This review will focus on the Xbox 360 version of the game, where the next generation feel makes a world of difference when it comes to displaying all the beauty in an environment of this size.

The storyline is disappointingly shallow, although refreshingly original, for a game of this scale. Your character, Rico Rodriguez, is a member of "The Agency" (aka the CIA) who just so happens to specialize in destabilizing governments. In this little episode you will be traveling to the lovely set of islands known as San Esperito with the intention of taking out the ruling (and slightly mad) government. The main story develops over a score of missions which act to throw different sections of the islands into political instability. Most of the missions are fairly short, taking ten minutes or less to complete, so the main story line can be pushed through surprisingly quick. But as with all strong single player games, the main story doesn’t approach the full depth of the game.

In addition to the agency, there are two rebel factions you get to work with, the Guerrilla and the Raja. By helping to liberate settlements you can change the control over regions and increase your reputation among each respective faction. Liberating settlements also opens up new safe houses throughout the island, from which you can save your game, restore health and ammo, pick up a few weapons, or even get some select vehicles. The more reputation you earn the more weapons and vehicles you can unlock. Liberating settlements also make regions safer for you to travel in; instead of police choppers in the sky, guerrilla ones dot the sky. In addition settlements have side missions that can be completed at any time, mostly "go fetch this," or "go kill this." Completing these missions will help improve reputation within each clan faction. In GTA style there are missions where you can collect some items, although the rewards are mediocre at best. Racing makes an appearance as well, and while some are a piece of cake, others are a royal pain. The variety of gameplay options does help bolster the mediocre storyline, but it doesn’t completely cover the shallow plot.

Burn baby burn

If you are a fan of realism, this is not the game you want to go into. Rico makes James Bond look incapable, and things you will end up doing normally make no physical sense. But if that doesn’t irk you, it can add to the appeal of the title. When in any vehicle you can exit it and go into "stunt position." From there you can jump off the vehicle, jump up a couple hundred feet in the air and open your chute, hop back in and keep driving, or jump to another nearby vehicle. Shooting is a piece of cake; the game automatically targets enemies within range so you don’t even need to aim. This isn’t exactly GR:AW either, going Rambo is encouraged, and you have the health to manage it. Getting hit with a missile while in a chopper or three consecutive rockets from a government vehicle make up the majority of deaths; the infantry is more of a joke, especially considering when the health bar dips very low it automatically regenerates to about 15%. There are some slight issues I noticed with the game, as it lacked the final polish some bug testing would have helped iron out. On several of the side missions a slight issue with an item not being high enough in the world made it impossible to pick up - it was literally about 2m underground, rendering the mission impossible to complete. Also after spending several hours liberating towns one after the other, the game froze and when I rebooted my 360 all of that work was lost. The lesson: go to the safe houses and save every few towns you liberate, unlike the main missions it will not offer to save after completion.

For a fictitious world, the most impressive thing about Just Cause is the scale of the game. At 10-15 minutes to fly across and 40 minutes to parachute down, the game’s land mass clocks in just under the size of Hong Kong (250,000 acres) and makes for a truly beautiful vacation spot. The size of the world does make the map nearly impossible to memorize completely, save for a few major landmarks like the volcano or airport. Referencing the map is crucial to help you get where you’re going, and absolutely necessary for the collect missions. On the plus side, for a world of this size, on the 360 there is essentially no load time after initially loading the map. This means that for the entire 20+ hours you might be playing to complete the main storyline and some of the side stuff (grabbing say 500-600 gamer points) you will spend the majority of it actually playing the game. In most games with such expansive environments, there is a fog off on the distance that limits the amount the console must render. Longer draw distances have become more common, with multiple texture resolutions so that objects appear more detailed as you approach them. Just Cause totally blows away past thoughts on draw distance, expanding the view out to the horizon. Unfortunately this does make a few limitations painfully apparent. Vehicles have a tendency to span rather close to the player, well within viewing range. Additionally, because vehicles can be destroyed, it is possible to get stranded far from land or any sense of civilization. Fortunately, the game makers thought of this, and rather than being stuck in the middle of nowhere they came up with several clever ways of bringing you back around.

Throughout the game you can get several vehicle drops. These range from a dirt bike to a speed boat, car, to a mini chopper. Some have weapons while others unfortunately don’t, but either way they can help you travel to where you need to get without walking. If one were to walk across the entire map it would take many, many hours. In fact, the island is so large, you might encounter multiple weather systems while traversing it. The daytime quickly circles to night, so your favorite viewing spots go from stunning sunrise to gorgeous sunset time and time again.

Somehow even with such massive scale, the game managed to include a lot of little things. Vehicles are destructible to a decent degree (tires, hood, windows, bumpers all can fall off), boxes and barrels fly around due to explosions, and there are a plethora of gas tanks around for your amusement. All in all, the graphics on the 360 are stunning; lighting is nailed beautifully, water looks beautiful, and the islands are well adorned with trees, beaches, and cliffs.

Free falling

The audio is sadly not nearly as strong as the visuals. The default game music becomes boring after a few minutes, and you might find yourself reaching to stream music from your PC despairingly quick. Noises from the forests, beaches, ocean, or city are pretty well done and not overbearing.

Unfortunately when it comes to the police it gets old fast. In the time it takes to complete the missions expect to hear "Stop right there citizen!" a couple hundred times at least. Usually it comes from one of the choppers that always seem to somehow be around whenever you try to do something… like mew a few inches. Even more frustrating, the guerrilla choppers (which are equally present after liberation of a settlement) say the exact same thing. Because of this, its impossible to rank the sound very high; it ends up being as much a detriment as a benefit, although explosions and gunshots all work well with the title.