Marcin
1701
Yeah. In way, JC2 has more guerrilla type fighting than RF Guerrilla, but created by eventual ammo scarcity in the face of endless opposition.
My way to avoid ammo woes is to never carry the same two secondary weapons. It seems that if I have two .45s then they draw from the same pool of ammo. These days I tote an assault rifle (for ranged fighting), a .45 (for most everything else along with grenades) and an SMG as backup. It burns through ammo so fast it’s not very useful without upgrades. I hardly ever dual wield. When I was using two .45s it was very effective but the ammo issue intruded.
I never really have issues. If I happen to see an ammo box I’ll head over there but usually I get all I need off of fallen enemies. I’ve also taken to upgrading several different weapons rather than pouring all my points into just a couple. This helps to make anything I happen to pick up a little more useful.
Thanks, guys. Regarding the “resupply from your enemies” strategy, I started doing just that but my issue has been that I’m too easily distracted by the resultant agro. Fleeing the scene often takes me away from wherever it was I wanted to be. Still, I’m sure a little more practice will fix that. Thanks also for the loadout recommendation, Brian, and for explaining the weapons upgrade process, RepoMan. (Lacking a printed manual, I was too lazy to look up how all that worked and totally misunderstood it.)
One other issue I have is using the grapple more quickly and efficiently when I’m outmatched and have to escape. When the pressure’s on, I’m still having trouble picking good grapple points. Again, practice will probably fix it.
Just grapple to the ground about 25 feet in front of you, trigger your parachute, and then grapple-and-release your way to freedom.
I had the same issue early in the game, it’s part of the learning curve. That said, upgrade your weapons, they do more damage (meaning you’ll use less ammo), and have a higher capacity (so you carry more ammo, too). I’ll also echo what was said about carrying 3 types of guns, this way you’ll have more ammo in total (a heavy gun, a sub-machine gun, and a pistol).
Yeah, I sort of got that down last night but sometimes I’m stuck in a weird structure or set of buildings where rails and other objects obstruct or seem to obstruct my path, causing me to cast around wildly for other spots to grapple onto and failing to attach myself, while a dozen guys slowly bleed me. Learning curve for sure.
Oh and one more newb question. I dislike the fact that when I’m suspended from the top edge of a structure (not clinging, but dangling from a foot or two of grapple wire) I can’t simply leap up there. Instead, I think I’m expected to re-grapple to a different spot where I can cling. Whereas in real life a person would, I assume, swing herself up, or something.
Edit: As I write this, I’m realizing that perhaps this actually is more realistic than I was assuming earlier. Still, it feels wrong.
In some cases, you can jump that remaining amount. If it’s too far to jump up, you need to grapple higher.
Huh, I guess I just need to work on that some more. I could have sworn, in these situations, that I was unable to do anything but drop or re-grapple, when I thought I was dangling from a pretty high point on the structures.
You’re correct – if you are hanging from the underside of a ledge (with your feet dangling in midair), you’re stuck. You can only jump up if you’re hanging from the side of a ledge, with your feet against the wall.
I haven’t done a whole lot of city fighting yet, but you should note that you can grapple a rooftop down the street and pop your chute as you’re zooming up there, which can often vault your paraglider right over the rooftop. Then drop your chute, land on the roof, and you’re safe.
Basically, as you suspected, if you are getting bled to death, you’re not nearly good enough at running away yet :-) Once you get good at chute-vaulting upwards from street level, you’ll basically never be trapped again, at least until the choppers start hosing you with rockets…
Ohhhhhhhhhhh. Sorry for not reading! Repo is 100% correct.
Marcin
1712
No no no no no. That way lies madness. Here, let me fix that for you:
“Fleeing the scene takes me away from an uncontrolled firefight and towards a new one that’ll be on my terms with new opportunities for insanity.”
This whole concept of “where I want to be” is slightly flawed in JC2. :)
One other thing that’s helped me out, when I’m in a bad situation and can’t find a good place to grapple right away, is using the roll/dodge command. Lots. Constantly. It appears to dramatically lower enemy accuracy. For example, it sounds like you’re at the bottom of one of those silo things where there are girders and catwalks everywhere. It’s sometimes hard to get a bead on a spot that’s helpful. I just roll, roll, roll until I find some cover and can think about where I want to go without a hail of bullets redecorating my sensitive hide.
What Marcin said is true. This game is like Red Faction: Guerrilla in that way. In fact, it could be called Island Paraglider: Guerrilla. If you stay in one place too long, you will die. The goal is to blow shit up, not to kill all the bad guys, because there is a finite supply of shit to blow up but an infinite supply of bad guys.
Also, note that you don’t really get anything but ammo from killing bad guys – no cash, no chaos, nada. This is your other cue that killing bad guys is a means to an end, not an end in itself; the true end is blowing shit up.
So, peel the onion – when attacking a base, take out a bunch of defense installations, rip off the mounted guns, take out the lookout posts, etc., etc., and when the heat gets too hot, run away – potentially quite far away – until things cool down. Then sneak back and peel some more onion. Repeat until 100%.
The other great thing about this is that when you finally get that 100%, you can get the fuck out of Dodge there and then, jumping merrily over the edge of the cliff in a hail of bullets, sailing serenely on to your next shit-blowuparama. Very enjoyable to just leave all the hassle behind.
The structure/area that gave me the most trouble with grappling around while under fire was the oil rig, actually. At certain points you’re above water or you don’t know what you’re above, and so you just have to pick grapple points more carefully (and don’t have the option of rolling and dodging).
Honestly, I had no idea I could roll and dodge! Must have overlooked that in the tutorial and keyboard mappings. Sheesh. That will definitely come in handy.
I think it’s really important to realize that if you upgrade a type of weapon in the black market, that also upgrades all weapons of that type that soldiers are carrying. So upgrade pistols, submachineguns, etc. as soon as possible.
I actually hit my first oil rig last night. It’s a bit tricky if you try and take the surgical approach, which I did at first, but then common sense struck and I just grabbed a patrol boat. Cruised around the thing blowing up everything that could be blown up before boarding and looking for supplies.
Actually, I’m starting to get to the point where too much is feeling samish. Every town or base is generally the same kind of thing. The scripted missions are getting to be more interesting than just freewheeling it given there isn’t a whole lot of variety of interactions to be had. I’m reminded a bit of Far Cry 2. Interesting scripted missions (and I’m not big on scripted missions). A bunch of bland checkpoints. The factional politics are perfunctory and merely serve to unlock content.
The bar for exciting street-level interactions in open world games is really a tie for me between Saints Row 2, for unscripted random mayhem, and Red Dead Redemption for evocative encounters that have some context to them and some variety (if predictable with familiarity). Just Cause 2 seems to try for the unscripted random mayhem but with only two sides fighting (all the rebel factions vs. the government), no repercussions or advantages for intervening in emergent clashes, and no control possible over friendly actors each such incident seems a bit pointless.
I can agree with that. Yesterday I flew around identifying undiscovered locations and more than a few of them looked just like places that I already liberated. The good think is that I sill like blowing shit up. Given how large the game world is, it’s hard to populate it with a lot of unique structures and stuff so I can give them a pass on that.
Jarmo
1719
Yeah, I was done with the game pretty soon after I had exhausted all storyline and faction missions and visited every location. I’d still buy and play any new missions immediately. The game is still much fun but I need a reason to do something. Just puttering around under my own steam is not enough after a while. Great game, though and a great fun per dollar ratio.
Eric_P
1720
i recently finished every faction mission in the game and am probably not going to play it again for a long time. i’m keeping it installed just in case they give us more amazing DLC but i think it’s time i found another way to spend my evenings
