For a totally different look at Just Cause, check our US site for its take on the game.
As bizarre a comparison as it might be, Katamari was the first game to pop into our heads when we were formulating our final opinions of Just Cause, Eidos's free-roaming super spy stunt-actioner. You see, hands down, Just Cause has offered up some of the most frenetic, eye-popping, enjoyable and downright memorable moments we've seen in a video game for a long time - and it's hard to dismiss the fact.
By now, you shouldn't really need any introduction to the game but, just in case, Just Cause sees you slipping into the well-heeled shoes of smooth CIA operative Rico Rodriguez. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to liberate the people of South American island San Esperito from the corrupt government, using the most extravagant and ludicrously over-the-top manoeuvres imaginable. It's one of those 'sandbox' fares, deftly combining the good bits of Grand Theft Auto, the aerial freedom of Pilotwings and pretty much every utterly awesome bit from just about every spy action movie ever made.
Sure, you can roam around the (absolutely huge) island, wrenching drivers out of their vehicles and tootling off down highways and dirt tracks, but that's really not what the game's about. In a nutshell, Just Cause is about two things: heart-stopping moments of stupidly grandiose action and pure, unadulterated fun. This last one might well be its undoing in some people's eyes though - you see, developer Avalanche hasn't so much thrown away the rule book on what you should be allowed to do in games, but set it alight, jammed it in an electrified safety deposit box, smothered it in concrete then fired the whole damn thing up into space on the back of a rocket, never to be seen again.
Absolutely everything about Just Cause is huge, improbable and borderline idiotic - its sensibility is very much retro-kitsch for the James Bond generation. Most of these moments come from Rodriguez' two main gameplay gizmos - the parachute and the grapple hook. Really, there's no need to retread their ins and outs, other than to say that - for the most part - the game's control scheme is both slick and intuitive. The important thing here is that your tools give you the freedom to perform absolutely ridiculous stunts, guaranteed to leave you with a huge grin on your face, desperate to top your last humdinger with something even more extravagant. Fancy driving along full pelt in your armoured CIA truck, launching over the edge of a cliff, free-falling toward the craggy rocks below, pulling your parachute open at the last minute, grappling onto a passing helicopter on your way down, crashing the whole thing into the ocean and hopping onto a sunset-bound speedboat at the last possible minute? Then do it - and do it with style.
Where Avalanche really succeeds, however, is by injecting the game with the kind of atmosphere that screams, "BREAK ME!" The majority of the 21 story missions available can be tackled in just about any way possible, the only limit really being your imagination. It's fascinating sharing your Just Cause experiences with other people - mainly because it's amazing how much variety there seems to be in the way everyone tackles objectives. A quick example: one level charges you with killing a military official, indulging in some late night canoodling in a brothel situated in the crater of a massive volcano.
What the game wants you to do is take a car, drive up the impossibly winding dirt track, tackling the myriad law enforcement representatives along the way then finishing your target off with a bullet to the head. However, the developer knows that, with the tools at your disposal and a bit of tinkering, you'll realise that there're many other ways of going about your business. Inciting the wrath of our police friends enough to have them send in a volley of missile-discharging choppers was, for example, our chosen approach. From there, it's a simple grapple-requisition and you've got the serene calm of the skies to yourself, not to mention the awesome sight of a fast-approaching volcanic crater as you leap out and pile drive the whole thing straight into the top of the military official's head.
What's brilliant about Just Cause is the way that Avalanche has gone out of its way to make the whole game as painless as possible. On top of the entirely responsive controls, the game is chock full of nice touches - like your PDA offering heavy drop and extraction opportunities. While the former provides you with a meaty vehicle pretty much wherever you need it (ensuring you'll never find yourself off the beaten track with a tedious on-foot hike back to civilisation), extractions airlift you straight to one of your safe houses, essentially acting as a teleport function around the island. There's even Rodriguez' entirely daft ability to run-up near vertical slopes or pass straight through apparently solid trees as you careen through the lush foliage in your vehicle of choice. As with the rest of the game, if you stop and think about it too much, it's ridiculous - but it means that the action flows almost constantly and the game's all the better for it.
Speaking of lush foliage, if you've seen screenshots for the Xbox 360 version of Just Cause, you already know that it's an absolutely stunning game. With truly astonishing attention to detail affecting everything from the day and night cycles, weather, water (both above and below) and gorgeous vapour and clouds, every minute is like a having your eyelids licked by the Sultan's daughter. True enough, there's the occasional pop-up (mainly as the game switches out sprite-based trees for real models), slight tearing when the action gets frantic and some pretty hideous buildings (truthfully, the engine isn't much cop at rendering cities and other points of urban interest) - but when you're thousands of feet in the air, cruising over majestic sweeping vistas that stretch endlessly into the distance, you just won't care. On the subject of immersion, a special mention should also go to the Charlie's Angels-inspired Latin Funk Porn score which always kicks in at just the right time, guaranteeing tiny little hairs popping up on the back of your head as you suddenly become the best goddamn secret agent in the whole goddamn world.
There's no denying that a lot of Just Cause's appeal is having an absolutely beautiful world, packed with charm and character, open for exploration and practically demanding you do really, really stupid things in it. Even fifteen hours in, we still get a small groin-centred thrill every time we wrench our plane off the runway, only to see the ground drop away beneath the sunset-hued clouds. The fact we can then fly straight into a missile silo and knock a big hole in it is just the icing on the cake.
You might have noticed we've come this far into the review and barely mentioned the more traditional 'game' elements. As far as we're concerned, just messing with Just Cause's mass of planes, helicopters, boats and cars is fun enough - but, rest assured, there's a bit more structure than that. The story missions are jam-packed with some utterly hair-raising moments and all tied together by some far-fetched, but nonetheless engrossing cut-scenes. If you want something to grumble about, it's that the story missions are over all too soon - playing straight through is likely to take you somewhere in the region of ten hours first time around (assuming you don't get distracted on the way) - although, that's partly testament to their quality rather than their brevity.
On top of that, there're roughly three hundred side-missions. These come in four flavours and are, all in all, pretty disappointing. You've got your collect-style challenges requiring you to locate a bunch of items in your local vicinity, race missions (something of a misnomer, given that you're actually simply attempting to reach the next checkpoint throughout), basic fetch-quests (blow up a car, meet the courier, kill some randoms) - all of which grow old pretty fast - and, finally, liberations.
We actually got quite a lot of mileage out of the latter - the idea being that your tropical island playground is divided into provinces, each controlled by either the government, guerrilla forces or the Rioja Cartel. By triggering a liberation, you'll need to wrestle control of one of the many villages, towns and cities in the game - generally, this involves causing as much mayhem as possible until the opposing force admits defeat, then whacking up your flag. Although these start off small, requiring you to blow up a couple of roadblocks, by the time you're liberating the capital city of San Esperito, the ensuing battles are epic, to say the least. Technically, the idea behind the side missions is to gain 'respect' and rise the up the ranks of the guerrillas and Rioja Cartel, opening up new safe houses for easier access to the island, and some normally unavailable vehicles at each. In priciniple, it's a perfectly reasonable addition - whether you can be bothered though is entirely up to you.