Played on:
Windows
1.4GHz CPU
512MB RAM
64MB DX9 Video
Win 2K/XP
Recommended System:
2.8GHz CPU
1GB RAM
GeForce 7, ATI
X1800 or better
Played on:
Dell XPS M170 Laptop
Pentium M 2GHz CPU
2GB DDR2 RAM
GF Go 7800GTX Video
Windows
If you haven't gotten your fill yet of action games that let you overthrow a corrupt Caribbean government, then have I got a game for you. Just Cause is often described as being a mix of Far Cry and Grand Theft Auto, and while that works well enough for the five-second rundown of the game, we need to dive a little deeper to see if that comparison really sticks. Let's get into the PC version of this new action game from Avalanche Studios and Eidos.
Truly, the Far Cry / GTA analogy seems to fit pretty well in your first few minutes of playing Just Cause. We've got massive tropical islands along with a totally free-roaming environment where the main character can carjack and shoot anyone you want him to; you can do all kinds of missions in any order as well. Your ultimate goal is to overthrow the president, but to do this you'll need to work with local rebels to shake up the drug trade in this small chain of islands known as San Esperito.
As you play further into the game, however, you'll find that many of the great aspects of Far Cry's complex AI system are nowhere to be seen here. In fact, it's tough to even use the term "artificial intelligence" when talking about the many soldiers, policemen, and enemy rebel troops you'll find yourself fighting in Just Cause. They're so stupid, it's difficult to really put into terms - but it's so bad tha I sometimes feel like my enemies have made some great accomplishment by sometimes successfully throwing a grenade in my general direction. At least they've almost all got weapons and ammo for you to pick up - you'll rarely run out of weaponry, as you'll often be faced with a dozen enemies at once. The funny and sad part is that this game's firefights are still pretty easy, and hell, even if your assault rifles, shotguns, powered-up pistols, grenades, explosives, and rocket launchers run out, then you will still have a pair of pistols with infinite ammo as well (although you'll need to reload every 12 shots).
What I've described so far probably doesn't sound too appealing, but luckily, rookie developer Avalanche Studios has given Just Cause enough merits to make this one actually checking out. There's a large number of vehicles here, including boats, motorcycles, jetskis, cars, ATVs, helicopters, planes, and more. Sometimes you'll be in the back of a pickup firing a rear-facing machinegun, and other times you'll be using a pimped-out speedboat with an infinite store of missiles and bullets to fire. In fact, every vehicle in Just Cause has infinite ammo, and in my opinion, the game's better for it. Sometimes it's just silly, stupid fun to fire a barrage of missiles at bridges, hills, random cars, and pretty much anything else around you.
Early in your progress through Just Cause you'll be given a pistol-fired grappling hook, which winds up becoming one of the most fun parts of the game. Through the use of some very dodgy physics, you can use the grappling hook to latch on to a vehicle and literally parasail around with your parachute (which, like in Battlefield 2, never needs repacking and can be deployed as many times as you want without issue). Now, I'm pretty sure that in real life you can't parasail behind a car that's going 40 MPH, but if you play Just Cause for more than ten minutes you'll soon figure out that realism was not exactly high on the developers' priority list.
What makes the stunt and grappling hook system even better, however, is that you have a couple of stylish ways to carjack people. All you need to do is drive alongside the target car in your own car, flip out of the window onto the roof, and hit another key to jump to his roof. Then hit a key to kick the driver out of the side, replacing him with yourself as the driver. Or if you're on foot, just snag his vehicle with the grappling hook, parasail, and reel the line in to get closer and eventually get onto the roof of a car. You'll find this to be a useful tactic when chasing someone that's in a car, since you can't fire your hand-held weapons from vehicles and most of the cars you'll be driving don't have guns mounted right on the front. Of course, this whole system gets even more challenging and fun when you realize you can hijack a helicopter a similar way...
