Making its way to retail shelves and digital platforms four years after its predecessor, Just Cause 2 is Avalanche Studio's answer to the gaming community's outcries for a lavish, modern day action sandbox. Building on the defining characteristics of the original Just Cause, this sequel aims to refine the unique grapple hook and parachute mechanics, while adding depth to its side missions, characters, and massive world all the while boasting an enormous map that is four times the size of Grand Theft Auto V.
Welcome to the island of Panau, where you are free to travel by land, sea, and air. Once again, you are in control of Agency operative Rico Rodriguez, more commonly referred to in this release as Scorpio/Scorpion due to the emblem on the back of his signature jacket. He has been called back into action to find Tom Sheldon, the man who hired him during his last adventure, as Tom is suspected of going rogue. Just like the debut release, this title is another tale of gangs, drug cartels, and a corrupt government; although it does have less of an emphasis on overall revolution and anarchy. Overall, the story is still just as lackluster as what was featured in the first game, though the title makes up for this with a campaign that is packed with explosions and high speed mayhem.
Your first handful of hours in Panau are going to be superb. You'll absolutely love being able to slingshot your way around the island with your grapple hook and parachute, all the while causing massive amounts of chaos. There's plenty to do and a lot to see if you have the time to put in; over 350 points of interest to discover and complete, more than 1000 resource items to find, hundreds of collectibles to locate, dozens of gang side missions, 9 strongholds to take over, over 100 vehicles to cruise in, 7 main story missions, and more destructibles than you'll know what to do with. Yes, Just Cause 2 is absolutely overflowing with things to do, as a sandbox game should be, but therein also lies all of its major flaws.
Let's start from the top and talk about how this game forces you to grind out chaos points in order to unlock the next story mission. You gain chaos points by, well... causing chaos around the island; blow things up, complete locations, conquer strongholds, finish side missions, you get the idea. This is most likely done for the sole purpose of elongating the game, since the 7 story missions only amount to maybe two hours of playtime at best. All of the aforementioned tasks that you have to complete to earn chaos points get exuberantly repetitive after a few hours, you'll begin to notice that a lot of the points of interest have the same layout, and pretty soon you'll grow tired of hunting down that last collectible or fuel tank in order to complete an area; it's always the same in the end. What's worse is that if you're going for 100% completion, don't even bother as it is literally impossible without a third-party fan made patch... the developer forgot to include 6 items and never corrected it, so the most you'll get is 99.95%.
Another major pain point of Just Cause 2 is the lack of the game remembering anything that you purchase from the Black Market. You can call in a chopper to deliver some sweet weapons and vehicles after you've paid for them with your blood-soaked money, but the vehicles will disappear after you start a mission, when you die, or even when you load your save file back up again. What happened to the garages from the first game? Sure, they were useless there, but they'd be very handy here. This is specifically and inherently irritating when it comes to the dual turbo boosters for your parachute, which you're unable to use with any of the DLC parachutes by the way, since the game considers it a vehicle and not an add-on. Needless to say, all of the cash that you earn from missions and pick-ups is going to be wasted on rebuying these things again and again.
There's also the technical aspect of it all, since this game does not work well on anything newer than Windows 7. I'll go ahead and save you a load of hassle by saying this: set your launch options to include /failsafe. I went through a dozen or so "fixes" to get this title to run properly, and that is the only one that made the game stop constantly crashing. This mode makes the loading screens a little bit longer, but it will save you a lot of time in the long run since every crash will set you back significantly in the realm of grinding chaos points.
On the up side, the island is beautiful and the fact that the weather is almost always bright and sunny with clear blue skies makes this a "feel good" game. There's also a decent mod community that's dedicated to bringing out the best in Just Cause 2, including mods to improve textures and even make the game more like its 2015 follow-up. If you're into multiplayer, there's a free mode with extra achievements included with the base game.
Even though this review dogs on every negative trait of the game, Just Cause 2 isn't necessarily a bad title, it just doesn't have any versatile content. The island of Panau is absolutely amazing for about 5-8 hours, but grinding out to the staggering 20 hour mark just to complete the story is a trial in itself. If you want a game that will last you well beyond 40 hours if you're going for as close to completion as you can get, then you'll love Just Cause 2. However, if you want a sandbox title that masks its repetitious nature better, then you'll need to look further than here; this is one game that has been severely over-hyped.
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