Game - Just Cause 3

Release Date - December 1st 2015

Platform - PS4, Xbox One, PC

Developer - Avalanche / Square Enix

 

Just Cause 3 knows exactly what type of game it is and doesn't make any apologies for it whatsoever. Right down to the cheesy dialogue that is so matter of fact it's hysterical, main man Rico Rodriguez knows what he's there to do; Blow sh*t up and walk away. Fully destructible environments add so much interactivity that you end up getting lost in the game's main story and find yourself acting as an engineer of sorts trying to drum up different ways to send some innocent girl in a bikini shooting into the air.

Speaking of story, Rico Rodriguez is back in Medici in an attempt to, of course, overthrow dictator. Similar to the first two games in the series, this time around the dictator is Sebastiano Di Ravello, an evil man who of course needs to be taken down and Rico is the only one who can do it. As far as the entire storyline missions go, they are simply "ok" and function as more of a by product of the game's overall design. In fact, it's almost as if Just Cause 3 is an Expendables movie set to a game with all of the film's stars wrapped up in one person that is Rico Rodriguez. If you haven't played a Just Cause game yet there will be some getting used to the controls and different abilities afforded to you. With a world 400 sq miles in size, Rico can't simply run all over the place. You will free fall from a mountain, grapple to nearby cliff and right before you hit use your momentum to shoot back into the air with your parachute only to sail right over the military base you'll need to take down as simply walking right in will result in an insta-kill. It won't take you too long to get used but you'll want to make sure you get it right because, similar to having a child, trying for it is the most fun :)

The isle of Medici, ironically for a land that is about to be completely obliterated by explosions and devastion, is absolutely gorgeous. The lavish mountain side, landscapes, waterfront scenes, farm houses, clouds, sunlight beams shining down and more are featured in Just Cause 3. It's a stunning spectacle and view that is only topped by its shear scale alone. Outside of the main story, there are side missions available to you that pop up each time you free another area of the map from certain enemies. These can range from squirrel suit fly bys to high score contest on a machine gun to the obligatory car races. What makes these missions the most fun is the range of experimentation you can use to beat them. Of course you can just go through the motions, but that's not what Just Cause 3 is about. Beating these missions afford you different mods which will modify how your different weapons and items will function, and trust me, you'll want to see the ingenuity here.

One of the more interesting items is the tether, and it's one of the best items I've ever used in a game. It functions by connecting two separate items together and hvae them flung toward each other. One end of a helicopter while the other is attached to a mountainside makes for an interesting "BOOM!" Of course, it doesn't stop there. Rip an enemy into a exploding barrel or rip two choppers into one another as well. In Just Cause 3 fashion, however, it doesn't stop there. The most fun, and literal laugh out loud moments, come from when you take innocent civilians for rides into the great unknown and rocket them into the air. Something about a bikini clad woman on the beach being sent hundreds of feet into the air before plunging head first into sea makes me laugh incredibly, and it's that much fun.

If you've followed along so far, the progression system in Just Cause 3 is what it's all about. Take down the outposts/enemy bases/installations and it opens up missions for you. Doing these missions gets you near gear modification items. These items cause you to temporarily abandon the story in order to experiment with your newfound abilities. Once you iron them out and have your favorite down pat (until you get the next one unlocked) you'll go into the next installation or story mission and wash, rinse and repeat. The best part of these missions is that it's ongoing. Often times you'll find in games that you'll do a mission or two to unlock something near the beginning of the game and then that's it as you're left for the rest of the game's duration with a single unlock or two. 

This progression system doesn't just end with the overall functionality either. It continues with the practicality in game. With so much destruction and interactivity within the environment, Just Cause 3 had us forgetting about the main story for hours on end just to try and one up each other with "Who's explosion was cooler?" Just to give you an idea, I tethered a helicopter into a watch tower. The tower then fell into a fuel tank which exploded and caused the car parked next to it to go flying into the skull of another enemy nearby and BOOM, I win!. That was until my partner decided to tether two helicopters into each other and caused them to collide mid air. They then fell to the ground and exploded into a base and took out the entire installation of enemies, which opened up the area for side missions, without him even entering for a second. It's this type of variety that makes Just Cause 3 replayable on many different levels.

As good as Just Cause 3 is, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Being an action game first and foremost and as many explosions as there are, it's normal to expect some bugs, laggyness etc when it comes to development. These should,  however, have been pretty much ironed out in the final stages. Many of them have not. In order to test it out, as I do in games like this, I continually rotate the camera back and forth while there are explosions going on in the background. This causes the game to focus on many things at once and sometimes causes lag. In games where the frame rate is a steady 60 FPS on consoles it does not tend to happen that often. In Just Cause 3, however, it happened more than I would have liked. Also, at certain points in the story missions I found myself stuck and having to wait due to how the computer characters were acting. During a main mission where you're tasked to protect a non playable computer character, I had to reload the mission three separate times because the character kept getting stuck. His vehicle kept driving and while trying to make a turn would do so in a way which made no sense and would get caught up. Of course, they would get blown up and I'd have to restart. Things like this, which make you die when it's not really your fault, are the bugs that should have been ironed out prior to release. 

Other bugs were minor but still evident enough to worth mentioning although they did not impact overall gameplay. Only one time while driving a car did the vehicle disappear leaving me with that invisible car and Rico in a seated position moving through the world while hovering. It didn't impact the mission at all, actually, as I just pretended the car was still there and the controls responded accordingly, but to see it so evidently occur made it catch my eye. No other bugs or flaws were evident in our time playing which amounted to just over 20 hours. For the most part, actually, I was surprised that I didn't see more. Although I noted the bugs shouldn't be in the game, with the environment surrounding development nowadays it's almost a given that a game will have some sort of mission breaking bug somewhere. Just Cause 3 did not have that, for what it's worth, and only suffered from a few, small, insignificant hiccups. Were they there? Sure. But in no way did they impact the game other than on the one mission occasion for us. And to be honest, that most likely could have been avoided if we took a different route in our mission or simply took out the object that was holding up the vehicle beforehand. Devil's Advocate though, we also understand you shouldn't have to tailor gameplay around the possibility of bugs which is why we mentioned it to begin with. 

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