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In my personal opinion, Just Cause 2 is the biggest disappointment of 2010 thus far. After playing the downloadable demo I was greatly excited for this seemingly over-the-top sandbox action-adventure title. However, the end result is a game that, in some ways, feels unfinished, lacks polish and never manages to find any real direction.

Just Case 2 might as well not even have a story. You play as the unlikable agent Rico Rodriguez. Rodriguez has been sent in to the South East Asian islands of Panau. Your job is to disrupt the government there by BLOWING STUFF UP! You’ll team with various anarchist factions throughout the game to do this. Sadly, the story and voice-acting is so poorly done that you won’t feel an ounce of attachment to Agent Rodriguez or any of the characters you’ll meet.

Panau is a big place and the graphics look pretty nice. They aren’t anything mind-blowing but they are certainly very acceptable. The architecture is also nifty and the ability to destroy massive structures is satisfying. I would certainly question why various areas are laid out the way they are. Nothing feels like it has any particular rhyme or reason.

As mentioned above, the voice-acting is poorly done. The soundtrack itself is fine but there’s certainly nothing memorable here. Enemy dialog is pretty entertaining for a time but many characters have repeat voices.

The gameplay in Just Cause 2 is a toss up. On one hand, the crazy over-the-top physics are a blast. Honestly, most of the cool stuff that’s going to happen isn’t even within the story; but rather when you’re creating more Chaos and just blowing stuff up! The grappling hook mechanic used to get around is nifty but the issue here is that when you jump onto an object there’s no way to grab onto it in order to lift yourself up. Though you can open your parachute at any time to help with your jump the lack of a grab mechanic feels like a serious over-sight. There’s also no cover system and this too feels like that something that should have made it into the final version.

Another issue is that while the game encourages you to create massive amounts of destruction, you’ll often times find yourself running out of ammo. You can collect guns and ammo from fallen enemies (of course you can also buy ammo) but switching guns is a real pain because of the design layout. All of these issues combined really affect the game in a negative way and that’s ashamed because it comes off as feeling almost unfinished.

In the end, there is fun to be had with Just Cause 2. The open-world sandbox type game is probably my favorite genera. But in my view, there are a lot of games that do it better such as Crackdown and of course Grand Theft Auto IV. There are those who will really enjoy Just Cause 2 because it is so open but I’d highly suggest renting before you buy.

-Yuen Fei Lung 云飞轮