Tropical Beaches, dense jungles, sky diving, speed boats, and non-stop action await you in a nearly 400 square mile world
that is yours to freely explore – sounds great doesn’t it? Eidos’ new single player only action/adventure game Just Cause for the Xbox 360 (and PC, Xbox, and PS2) gives you all of this and more. But for a game that has so much potential and has so many promising features on paper, its reach somewhat exceeds its grasp.
The most alluring feature of Just Cause is its immense game world and (usually) beautiful graphics. The game world is absolutely huge. Many 360 owners have played Oblivion, and noted the scope of the world in that game. To put the size of the game world in Just Cause (dubbed “San Espirito” in the game) into perspective, Oblivion’s land mass approached 16 square miles – Just Cause clocks in at close to 400 square miles (around 250,000 acres) of various tropical islands filled with beaches, jungles, volcanoes, and cities to explore. In addition to all of this ground available to cover by car or boat, Just Cause gives you another dimension to explore – airspace. Grab a helicopter or airplane, and the airspace of all San Espirito is yours. You can soar high above the highest peak in San Espirito any time you wish, jump from your airplane, and freefall towards one of the small outlying tropical islands only to open up your parachute at the last moment and gently glide towards its sandy beach. There are many peaks and cliffs throughout the islands of San Espirito that you can base jump from – the game even offers you an Achievement if you can complete a base jump of 1000 Meters or more.
This immense sense of scale offered up by Just Cause is certainly its biggest strength – the only game that comes close to providing you with this much land, sea, and air to cover has been “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas”. For the most part the graphics that accompany this huge game world are top shelf. The environments themselves are generally beautiful and well done. The jungles are dense with foliage, the sand and water effects on the beaches are nice, and there are many small touches such as insects, butterflies, and birds that can be seen flying around the environment. The game also boasts some great environmental effects, such as clouds that thicken up as a rain storm builds, a rising/setting sun with some nice bloom effects, and HDR lighting. Skydiving at sunset through the thickening clouds preparing for a storm is truly a sight to behold. From a technical standpoint, the game also impresses with no load times while exploring the environment (although there are short load times when pulling up the menus), a healthy frame rate, and I noticed very few vsync/screen tearing issues when playing in 720p. Not everything is this game is amazing to look at, though. Many of the ancillary models such as enemies, weapons, and vehicles are very generic and lack detail.
The game itself is generally fun to play – the action during missions is non-stop and very arcade like. It’s thrilling to run into an area guns blazing, blow up some chemical silos, escape by jeep, drive over a cliff to escape the enemy, climb out and parachute down to the beach below for your getaway. Many of the story missions give you this high octane action junkie thrill. But it’s here in the gameplay that we also start seeing the cracks in the facade. The auto-targeting system, while adequate and superior to the one used in the Grand Theft Auto games, gives you less control than you really want. This becomes very apparent when I played this game after Saints Row, a game that did targeting right.
The game’s difficulty is also way too easy, and there is no difficulty setting. I’m all for making games forgiving and all, but the difficulty in this game borders on insulting. When on foot, it is nearly impossible to die unless you're involved in an explosion or fall off a cliff. Gunshots and most explosions take relatively little off of your life meter. To give you a sense of how difficult it is to die in this game, I went after the 1/2/5 minute “Most Wanted” achievements (where you get achievements for surviving 1, 2, and 5 minutes at the highest police wanted level) early on with my playtime with the game. Once up to level 5 and I ran around on foot – I was constantly surrounded by 15 or so cops at any given time, had 4 helicopters in the air shooting missiles at me, and I barely had a scratch after I received my 5 minute achievement. Now get into a vehicle, and for some reason your odds change dramatically. Helicopter missiles are suddenly much more accurate and five police cars are bombarding you trying to knock you off of a cliff. This game could have used a good bit more play balancing and AI tweaking before getting shipped out the door.
There are also a few other things in this game that make it just a good game rather than a great one. Vehicle handling is really hit or miss – helicopters, airplanes, and speed boats generally handle pretty well, but most of the cars, trucks, and other land vehicles handle terribly. I may also be spoiled by the fun physics of Saints Row, because the physics in this game (especially car physics) are laughable compared to what was found in the competition. The voice acting and cut scenes are nothing to write home about, but at least the cut scenes were rendered in HD and not just directly ported over in low res from their previous gen brothers (like the ones in “Hitman: Blood Money”, which were awful). While the main story missions are pretty good, the side missions are basically filler. There are only a few types (liberate this settlement, pick this up, drop this off, kill this guy, hijack this car, blow up this building), and they repeat over and over again. The only motivation to play side missions is to get Achievements and gain more respect with the various factions on the island – they are completely optional. Luckily, most of them are pretty short (completed in 3 or 4 minutes), so at least they aren’t tedious when trying to boost your gamer score. The game is also almost too big for its own good – you’re constantly having to flip back to your map to make sure you’re heading the right way to your destination (the GPS map from “Saints Row” would have a been a valuable asset here).
Finally, there were a few annoying bugs and glitches in the game. I noticed a few graphical glitches, such as people floating in the air outside of their cars. There are also some annoying glitches that prevented you from completing certain side missions. There were some hijack missions where I stole a vehicle and was told to stow it in a garage at a drop off point, but the garage would not open. There was another side mission glitch where I was told to blow up a gas station, but when I planted a time bomb in the correct location, the building wouldn't register as being destroyed after it blew up. I also didn't receive the Achievement for completing Story Mission 7 until I finished Story Mission 8 for some reason. None of these broke the game, but when lumped together it left me with the impression that this game got out the door far from polished.
Despite these various problems with the game, I still had a lot of fun with it. Performing stunts, base jumping, flying planes, exploring and skydiving provides enough fun to recommend this game to anyone who finds the idea interesting. It’s a good action-adventure game with a great environment and sense of freedom with a merely average story and gameplay. If you’re trying to decide which next gen sandbox game to try out, this or Saints Row, I would say Saints Row beats this game on most counts – better story, better physics, better map, better targeting. But if you’ve finished Saints Row and are looking for something to keep you busy until Emergence Day, Just Cause might warrant a pick up or rental.
The most alluring feature of Just Cause is its immense game world and (usually) beautiful graphics. The game world is absolutely huge. Many 360 owners have played Oblivion, and noted the scope of the world in that game. To put the size of the game world in Just Cause (dubbed “San Espirito” in the game) into perspective, Oblivion’s land mass approached 16 square miles – Just Cause clocks in at close to 400 square miles (around 250,000 acres) of various tropical islands filled with beaches, jungles, volcanoes, and cities to explore. In addition to all of this ground available to cover by car or boat, Just Cause gives you another dimension to explore – airspace. Grab a helicopter or airplane, and the airspace of all San Espirito is yours. You can soar high above the highest peak in San Espirito any time you wish, jump from your airplane, and freefall towards one of the small outlying tropical islands only to open up your parachute at the last moment and gently glide towards its sandy beach. There are many peaks and cliffs throughout the islands of San Espirito that you can base jump from – the game even offers you an Achievement if you can complete a base jump of 1000 Meters or more.
This immense sense of scale offered up by Just Cause is certainly its biggest strength – the only game that comes close to providing you with this much land, sea, and air to cover has been “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas”. For the most part the graphics that accompany this huge game world are top shelf. The environments themselves are generally beautiful and well done. The jungles are dense with foliage, the sand and water effects on the beaches are nice, and there are many small touches such as insects, butterflies, and birds that can be seen flying around the environment. The game also boasts some great environmental effects, such as clouds that thicken up as a rain storm builds, a rising/setting sun with some nice bloom effects, and HDR lighting. Skydiving at sunset through the thickening clouds preparing for a storm is truly a sight to behold. From a technical standpoint, the game also impresses with no load times while exploring the environment (although there are short load times when pulling up the menus), a healthy frame rate, and I noticed very few vsync/screen tearing issues when playing in 720p. Not everything is this game is amazing to look at, though. Many of the ancillary models such as enemies, weapons, and vehicles are very generic and lack detail.
The game itself is generally fun to play – the action during missions is non-stop and very arcade like. It’s thrilling to run into an area guns blazing, blow up some chemical silos, escape by jeep, drive over a cliff to escape the enemy, climb out and parachute down to the beach below for your getaway. Many of the story missions give you this high octane action junkie thrill. But it’s here in the gameplay that we also start seeing the cracks in the facade. The auto-targeting system, while adequate and superior to the one used in the Grand Theft Auto games, gives you less control than you really want. This becomes very apparent when I played this game after Saints Row, a game that did targeting right.
The game’s difficulty is also way too easy, and there is no difficulty setting. I’m all for making games forgiving and all, but the difficulty in this game borders on insulting. When on foot, it is nearly impossible to die unless you're involved in an explosion or fall off a cliff. Gunshots and most explosions take relatively little off of your life meter. To give you a sense of how difficult it is to die in this game, I went after the 1/2/5 minute “Most Wanted” achievements (where you get achievements for surviving 1, 2, and 5 minutes at the highest police wanted level) early on with my playtime with the game. Once up to level 5 and I ran around on foot – I was constantly surrounded by 15 or so cops at any given time, had 4 helicopters in the air shooting missiles at me, and I barely had a scratch after I received my 5 minute achievement. Now get into a vehicle, and for some reason your odds change dramatically. Helicopter missiles are suddenly much more accurate and five police cars are bombarding you trying to knock you off of a cliff. This game could have used a good bit more play balancing and AI tweaking before getting shipped out the door.
There are also a few other things in this game that make it just a good game rather than a great one. Vehicle handling is really hit or miss – helicopters, airplanes, and speed boats generally handle pretty well, but most of the cars, trucks, and other land vehicles handle terribly. I may also be spoiled by the fun physics of Saints Row, because the physics in this game (especially car physics) are laughable compared to what was found in the competition. The voice acting and cut scenes are nothing to write home about, but at least the cut scenes were rendered in HD and not just directly ported over in low res from their previous gen brothers (like the ones in “Hitman: Blood Money”, which were awful). While the main story missions are pretty good, the side missions are basically filler. There are only a few types (liberate this settlement, pick this up, drop this off, kill this guy, hijack this car, blow up this building), and they repeat over and over again. The only motivation to play side missions is to get Achievements and gain more respect with the various factions on the island – they are completely optional. Luckily, most of them are pretty short (completed in 3 or 4 minutes), so at least they aren’t tedious when trying to boost your gamer score. The game is also almost too big for its own good – you’re constantly having to flip back to your map to make sure you’re heading the right way to your destination (the GPS map from “Saints Row” would have a been a valuable asset here).
Finally, there were a few annoying bugs and glitches in the game. I noticed a few graphical glitches, such as people floating in the air outside of their cars. There are also some annoying glitches that prevented you from completing certain side missions. There were some hijack missions where I stole a vehicle and was told to stow it in a garage at a drop off point, but the garage would not open. There was another side mission glitch where I was told to blow up a gas station, but when I planted a time bomb in the correct location, the building wouldn't register as being destroyed after it blew up. I also didn't receive the Achievement for completing Story Mission 7 until I finished Story Mission 8 for some reason. None of these broke the game, but when lumped together it left me with the impression that this game got out the door far from polished.
Despite these various problems with the game, I still had a lot of fun with it. Performing stunts, base jumping, flying planes, exploring and skydiving provides enough fun to recommend this game to anyone who finds the idea interesting. It’s a good action-adventure game with a great environment and sense of freedom with a merely average story and gameplay. If you’re trying to decide which next gen sandbox game to try out, this or Saints Row, I would say Saints Row beats this game on most counts – better story, better physics, better map, better targeting. But if you’ve finished Saints Row and are looking for something to keep you busy until Emergence Day, Just Cause might warrant a pick up or rental.
