Just Cause

To avoid beating about the bush, yes this game is obviously inspired by Grand Theft Auto and does share many of the same game mechanics. You run about, you shoot people, you jack cars and have pretty much free reign of the map. That said, Just Cause has some pretty interesting game elements that do show potential - and it has a completely different setting, which worked for Rockstar Studios’ own San Andreas stop gap, Mafia, back in the day.

As the title suggests, the developers have come up with a plot that justifies shooting people and car-jacking within the game. The government is corrupt and in league with a drugs cartel. What this of course means is car chases, gunplay and a lot of point A to point B missions. That’s all you really need to know.

What makes the game semi-unique however are the cool spy manoeuvres you can pull off at any time. Jumping from one moving car to another before commandeering it is undeniably cool. Even cooler is that you have an infinite amount of parachutes attached to you, meaning jumping a car or bike off a cliff is always a good bail opportunity. If done with a bit of skill (and luck), you can even land on a car at the bottom and drive off in one swift movement. Excited? I haven’t even told you about the grappling hook yet! This baby can latch onto any moving vehicles including boats and planes (!). This again deploys your magic parachute, so if you feel like it you can get a scenic and stress free paragliding trip around the map.

Now this all sounds fantastic and a lot of fun, but unfortunately there are some flaws that do hinder the gaming experience. Firstly, the controls are a bit iffy - they're context sensitive, so you really need to keep your eye on what is going on onscreen. It’s all too easy to occasionally do the wrong thing in the thick of the action. The cool spy moves mentioned earlier seem a bit erratic to pull off at first, but after some frustrating mistakes you should be able to execute them at will. You also have to keep in mind that many of these moves defy physics, which will irk some people, but I say it should all be taken in context - and who cares if it’s fun? Less forgivable is the gunplay. I had a hard time seeing which people were on my side. The aiming doesn’t work as well as I would have liked and somehow the auto-targeting system is unsatisfying, leaving me feeling slightly unattached to the action.

The Island setting is nice, with most of the map being rain forests, beaches and sea. There are also many small villages and the occasional town and military bases. The nice thing though is if you do get stuck in the middle of nowhere, you can request a vehicle which will be airdropped to you. This saves a lot of running about, and while it’s not earth shattering, it is a very nice touch which I appreciated. Shortcuts through the bush mid car-chase can be a lot of fun as you don’t know what the terrain is going to do, but otherwise there isn’t really much to do in these desolate areas of the islands which, as mentioned, do take up most of the map.

Graphically the game is reasonably nice looking with lush vegetation and a kind of run-down 3rd world country look which sets the atmosphere well. The PlayStation 2 version of the game though does suffer in some areas such as the draw distance being rather short, the occasional pop-up and grainy textures. It may not be quite as interesting to look at as, say, San Andreas, but there are some nice touches and the visuals do their job for the most part, although I did have difficulty spotting some chain-link fences until I ran into them - but hey, maybe that’s just me?

The length of the game is actually quite short for this style of outing; you can beat it in an overnight rental easily if you nut down and burn through the linear objectives. There are some side missions, but not nearly as many as seen in a certain other game franchise. Being a free range game, you can always go off and mess around for a while, and while this is fun, again we have been spoilt by GTA and this game seems a bit empty in comparison.

So of course the most important question is if I enjoyed the game. I’m actually quite surprised to say I did. It’s not as flash as some games out there, it punches physics in the face and has glitches and control issues – but overall I did enjoy playing through the game. One way to look at it is like the Mission Impossible movies. A lot of people don’t enjoy them because they expect every movie to redefine their life. Sure it’s easy to pick holes, but if you sit down just to have some dumb fun and can put aside its faults then Just Cause is worth a look.