REVIEW – If you were missing some good old action after Just Cause 2, then I got some good news for you. The third entry in the series will provide what the second game did, but with a much more detailed map, new weapons, and equipment. There will be no stopping for rest here, and no time for the barrel of the gun to get cold, nor will the adrenaline stop pumping in your veins. No worries, though, no need to take it seriously, just sit back relax and enjoy the chaos.

It was 2006 when the first Just Cause was released, and although it was not the apex predator of the graphical hierarchy, the super cool agent’s story left a deep impression. The toppling of the San Esperito totalitarian government, the vast playing field, the infinite parachuting, these were moments or features that no other game had back in those days. Even with these unique elements, Just Cause 1 was not an AAA title.

After four years, though, Rico appeared again, this time, to topple Panaji. It was safe to say that Just Cause 2 in 2010 showed the world how open world games are done, and not many games were able to reach that scope regarding size. Here we got a big sandbox to play in, a boatload of weapons, and an nasty villain called „Baby” Panay. While the map was huge, the developers were not able to fill it up with life, and traveling by foot, vehicle or with the parachute was rather slow.

Homecoming Patriot

Five years after the previous game we get to play as the awesome agent, who returns to his home country, the Medici islands. A few things have changed since we kicked off the dictator of Panaui with a missile to the oil fields. For instance, the publisher is now called Square Enix Europe instead of Eidos Interactive, and Rico has become much older. However the things that stayed is the unlimited freedom, the paper thin story, and Rodriguez agent is still like a combination of The Terminator, John Rambo, James Bond, and a bunch of G.I. Joe soldiers.

Attention to detail developers

Avalanche Studios have been developing the series for the first game that was released in 2006. Luckily this means that no other developer got the license (Thinking of the NFS – Burnout similarities after the dev team switches), and nobody bought the game rights. Something that happened to True Crime, but there the rights ended up with Square Enix from Activision.

The license ended up being used for Sleeping Dogs, which was a bit similar to the original True Crime series, but at the same time unique in its way. Just Cause was able to stay true to itself, and to its predecessors that were always a positive thing for the previous games.

Youtube Causes

I cannot emphasize how much I love it when a development team listens to their fans, and even takes inspiration from them. The guys at Avalanche choose a simple yet elegant way of care, which was them browsing Youtube for the most popular Just Cause videos. From these videos the development team gathered ideas for features. In a way, us the players became a part of the 3rd game.

A sizeable Medici

As mentioned above the game takes place in a „small” Island, that is also Rico’s homeland. Our hero begins his journey from here to topple the dictator, and upon seeing this beautiful country, it is no wonder he had homesickness. The primary objective is to stop Di Ravello general’s rule, but Medici is nice looking.

The size of the island matches with Panau from the previous game, but here the lay of the land is much more realistic. Not everything was added to the map; as there are no Mountains, deserts or giant skyscrapers all over the place. There is a bit of everything on this island: small villages, cities, a few big mountains. If I were to compare it to a actual location, I would say that Sicilia and the neighboring islands inspired the developers.

Clichéd characters

The story is just as simple as it was in the previous two Just Cause games. The series has never been to serious and thank god for that. The clichés, paper thin storyline, and corny jokes suit the series well. While Rico has become older and changed a lot after the years of Panau, he is still the young troublemaker agent that he was back then. His childhood friend Mario is a different matter; he is the loud mouth in this story, who is a bit bad at fighting.

Another important character is Dimah, who works for the resistance and suffers from a bit of ADHD; still she supplies us with upgrades for our equipment. There is also Sheldon, Rico’s handler who assists him in tying the ropes so that the Agency will not suffer in any way. Last but not least let us talk about the dark side, specifically Sebastiano Di Ravello, who is your typical evil general, who will do anything to reach his goals. One thing links these characters together, the loveable, yet horrible voice acting. I understand that they wanted to make the game more authentic, but at least, Rico’s voice could have stayed the same.

Branching skills

The eight main branches do not sound too much, which are called Gear Mods on our skill tree. However if we look closely, we can see that each chapter can be divided into four or five sub-branches, so in reality, the leveling up system is pretty deep. The system works like this: free a village, or city, maybe blow up a few military bases, and after that complete the challenges that will award the player with gear points.

These will automatically unlock different abilities. That is not all, however, as you cannot upgrade skills with any challenge, it has to be specific. Time trials will upgrade vehicle handling, destruction challenges will upgrade the aiming, and some grenades.., etc., etc. Objectives, and motivations to complete them our plenty, so we should not rush to complete only the primary missions.

Balanced handling

Sadly when we talk about balanced, we do not always mean it as a good thing in this game. Let us start from the bottom, the handling of motorbikes. They are awful and if you are rushing somewhere never take a two wheeler as you’ll always end up falling off from the damn things. Next up is the boats, and ships that are miles better than the previous group, but still not the best.

The four wheelers are okay to drive, and all of them have their different method of handling them. Luckily none of them feel the same, so there is enough variety for the player. The silver medal goes to the air vehicles, as they are excellent to use, and have little to no issues in Just Cause 3. The gold medal (or medals) go to the parachute, the wing-diving suit, and the grappling hook. I simply barely used anything else besides these three, as they are quick, fun to use, and breathtaking.

Beautiful booms

Finally lets talk about the unbelievably high amounts of destruction that we cause during the game. Compared to the previous game the amount of military equipment and bases we can destroy has nearly doubled. We not only destroy radar installations or barrels, but we also burn the earth in this game.

From walls to guard towers anything can be demolished with enough explosives. The AI is a bit braver now, and will even call in reinforcements that are usually three or four assault helicopters, a few tanks, and a destroyer. So we have to be careful against Di Ravello as his army is not so weak compared to the last two games. At least, the battles are massive and epic in such cases.

Let us make a compromise

There are two problems with Just Cause 3. One is the long loading times, and there are parts when it can take up to two minutes to load. The other problem is that the FPS drops down to the single digits in smaller fights. Let us hope these issues can be fixed via patch in the future, but regardless of the two issues, the game compensates these for the broad level, the field of view, and that we get to cause havoc with Rico again.

– Dazo911 –

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Avalanche Studios

Genre: Open world, Sandbox

Release date: December 1. 2015