Just Cause 2 Preview
Avalanche Studios' action shooter Just Cause came on the scene in 2006, hoping to go off like a bomb; unfortunately, the game's repetitive gameplay made it fizzle like a wet firecracker. Even its much-lauded grapple mechanics couldn't save it, sending it quickly to the dreaded Bargain Bin of Mediocrities. With sequel Just Cause 2, Avalanche Studios aims to prove it's learned from its mistakes, and in 2010, is bringing us the explosive title we were always meant to see.
In Just Cause 2, once again you play CIA operative, Rico Rodriguez. This go-round however, (in a storyline seemingly ripped right from Apocalypse Now) you're sent to find your former commander Tom Sheldon, who’s vanished somewhere in the Southeast islands of Panau. We were recently treated to a hand-on demo of the game on 360, which—good news—showed the game's marked improvement over its predecessor. A portion of the demo was a rehash of what was seen at E3 this year, starting with a dramatic jump off a dizzying cliff edge showcasing the parachute system. The first bit of the action occurred on a beach head/port where we spent the majority of our time dodging bullets and getting used to the fairly-intuitive controls.
In addition to achieving your overall goal of rescuing the commander, the main thrust of Just Cause 2 is juggling the three local crime factions: The Reapers, the Roaches and the Ular Boys. These unscrupulous gangs spend their time trying to wrest control of the island away from both the local military and each other, and they're more than willing to hire a mercenary like you to help them do it. The main thing that sets Rico Rodriguez apart from other ho-hum CIA agents is his incredible talent with a grapple. The grapple mechanic is easily the most exciting part of Just Cause 2's gameplay, if the least realistic. The main complaint about the first game's grapple functionality was that you couldn’t grapple enough. Well by comparison, Just Cause 2 is grapple-licious. There's really nothing we couldn't grapple: enemies, buildings, barrels, trees, vehicles, mountainsides—even the ground is fair game.
After the port level, the second part of the demo had us saving a Swedish informant located in a high-rise casino. This area also showcased the usefulness of the grapple by letting us use it to climb the side of the building, Batman-style. Aside from being an indispensable tool for mobility, the grapple also works great in combat. During the demo we were able to: tether two guys together and slam them against one another, tether two vehicles together (or tether one to a stationary object) to create spectacular crashes, tether guys to the backs of moving cars and drag them behind us, pull objects toward us (if they were small), and the best use—tether guys to gas canisters, then shoot the canisters so the guys get shot up into the sky like Wile E. Coyote.
Just Cause 2 may technically be a game about combat, but the star of the show, without question, is movement. In addition to using the grapple to zip around the environments like nobody's business, we were able to use the absurdly unrealistic parachute mechanics to have a lot of fun. In real life, you need to be pretty high off the ground to use a parachute. In Just Cause 2, parachuting's like flying a kite; you can use one simply by jumping up after a running start. Of course, we tried the usual “jumping off buildings and cliffs” thing but also found we could parachute onto moving cars and out of moving cars, which added a whole 'nother angle to the idea of car-jacking. We could also shoot while parachuting or use the parachute as a means of long-distance transportation, just by catching the miraculously ever-present updrafts.
Just Cause 2 so far looks to be built on a three-pillar action foundation: grappling, parachuting and stunts. Stunts add to the action movie feel of the game by allowing you to stand on top of moving cars as well as hang off the front, back or sides of a vehicle. It was easy enough to do, just by pressing B whenever a “stunt icon” appeared. While in stunt mode, we were able to move around the vehicle, using it as cover, and could still fire our weapons. In another nice little action add-on, when our fingers got tired from all that stunt-riding, we were able to call in a helicopter to take us where we needed to go.
On paper, the point of Just Cause 2 is to skillfully manipulate Panau's explosive political climate to find your former commander. In reality—high-falutin' political agendas aside—the point is to create as much chaos and destruction as is humanly possible. The side benefit of causing this kind of trouble is you raise your “chaos rating”, increase your “area of influence”, and undermine the local government. Throughout the demo, our objective was to destroy as many propaganda items (signs, vans) as possible and take out important infrastructure, like water towers and fueling stations. The thing is, with all the grappling and parachuting and car-jacking, it was really easy to forget that objective.
The demo showed the game off well, demonstrating some superior graphics (except for embarrassingly bad rag doll physics) and plenty of action, but often got so chaotic, it was hard to stay focused and complete our mission. Even so, we were assured that the new Just Cause offers a lot more to do than the previous title, boasting more environments, more settlements and more side objectives. There's also been an obvious attempt to improve the story and flavor of the environment, but at the moment, that consists mainly of irritating faction boss voice-overs. (After something like six nagging audio messages from the bitchy female faction boss we were working for, we were ready to turn the sound off.)
Overall, Just Cause 2 is shaping up to be a significant improvement over the first Just Cause. With an open game world measuring 400 square miles, tons of vehicle, weapon and grappling options, not to mention more mission content, it looks destined to go off—if not like a nuclear bomb—then like a hefty chunk of TNT. We'll find out for sure when the game's released on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 in early 2010.
