Ok, I know this game has been out for a while. To be honest, with a severe lack of packaging and box artwork, it just didn’t seem like my sort of game. However, one of my friends has this game and loves it and has been after me to do a review on it. So finally I gave in, not only to get him off my back but because Just Cause 2 is due out June, 2009. After watching my friend play Just Cause, I thought to myself that I had been missing out on a very fun game. While Just Cause is not extremely challenging, it is fun to play.

Just Cause puts players in the role of Rico Rodriguez, a debonaire CIA agent with a flair for capturing the hearts of women everywhere and the skills needed for regime change. Rico doesn’t exactly work as a behind-the-scenes operator. You won’t be brokering deals or throwing silent support to pro-US dissenters. Nope. The powers that be prefer to send Rico in to destroy weapons caches, publicly assassinate people, and generally cause as much chaos as possible.

There are a number of different side quests, some of which are entertaining for a short amount of time. The prime example of this is the racing missions. What racing has to do with regime change is beyond us, but it’s in all of the other games like Just Cause. The only difficult part of these racing missions is finding the next checkpoint which isn’t always obvious. There are other types of missions to occupy your time aside from the pseudo-racing. Two of these, the liberation and rival drug cartel attacks, are technically different, although they have the exact same layout. Each time you enter one of these, you’ll have to kill some people and destroy three road blocks. At the end, you’ll either raise a flag or kill the local drug boss. It’s fun the first few times, but you probably won’t want to do this thirty or forty times like the game expects you to. The reward for these missions is some added trust from either your drug cartel buddies or the freedom fighters, along with a new place to get the next type of quest which are simply called side quests. Gain enough trust points and you’ll move up in their ranks and gain access to new safe houses. At these safe houses, you’ll get a new place to save your progress and find a new weapon and/or vehicle to use. The vehicles and weapons are more exotic than those you’ll find scattered about in the game, which is the real reason to complete the side quests.
The final type of side quest is the collection missions. While you travel around San Esperito, you’ll notice blue dots on your mini-map. These indicate that a certain item is there waiting for you to pick up. Collecting one will prompt you to find the rest in the area.

And then there’s the stunts. They’re the main draw of Just Cause and were developed to allow you to quickly get from one vehicle to the next, easily and in style. Early on in the game, you’ll be given a grappling hook that can latch on to any vehicle. Once you’re attached, you can start to parasail and reel yourself in to take control of whatever you’ve hooked. Once you’re in a vehicle, you can go into “stunt mode” where you’ll hop out onto the roof or tail (yes, you can jump out onto the tops of planes and helicopters) in preparation for a jump. You can quickly launch yourself into the air and begin parachuting or hop onto another ride. Your parachute can be deployed and tucked away as many times as you want, even during the same jump, and won’t ever get snagged – it was all designed around removing frustration and keeping stunts smooth. The aerial stunts in Just Cause are great fun, but it isn’t quite easy enough to get up into a helicopter or plane without already being in the air. Even so, the grappling hook is the best part about Just Cause.

The game does have many, many (I’ll say it again, many) bugs. But this doesn’t really affect game play and can actually be fun waiting for them to pop-up. Overall, Just Cause is wildly entertaining for non-serious gamers (young and old alike) but serious gamers might find it a bit tedious and boring after a few plays.

Available On: Xbox 360, PS 3, Xbox, PS2, PC