I was sure we had another Just Cause thread around here but I can’t find it. Anyway, Eurogamer has a preview of Just Cause 2 up. They had to watch a developer play and never went hands-on, so who knows how far along the game really is.
But I’m psyched.
Like the parachute, the grapple makes a welcome return, but it’s been hilariously upgraded. At the simplest level, you can fire it at the ground in front of you, and use it to tug Rico into the air. Next, you’ll discover it can be used to zip quickly between buildings or vehicles, entirely changing the pace at which the game moves, turning a traversal system that depends on running and driving into something that borders on teleportation.
That’s just the start. Use the grapple in combat, and you can pull people down off ledges or out from cover, as well as trigger it whenever you need to make a fast getaway, but things really get exciting when you realise you can fire off both ends of the wire. That might not sound like a big deal, but it opens up an entire world of mischief. Suddenly you can attach enemies to cars, which then drive away. You can attach enemies to planes, which then take off. You can attach enemies to telegraph poles and leave them dangling, piñata-style. You can knock enemies out of moving vehicles and tether them to the back, where they whip about in the wind like an old plastic bag, while you stand on the bonnet and riddle them with bullets. Or, you can forget enemies entirely and attach cars to helicopters, in order to use them as wrecking balls, and yet another vista of comedic opportunity opens up.
the vehicle camera or control really felt off for me. always just a little laggy and unnatural compared to gta. i was running a 8800gtx with just cause in gametap and the control was enough for me to stop playing it.
I’m kind of interested in this - it has the whole Mercenaries/SR2 vibe of just enjoying yourself doing outrageous things, which is always good in a sandbox game like this. The presentation seems excellent too, vastly improved on the blocky original.
I did have a terrible experience with the original though, so much so that I feel it must have been my fault for doing something wrong. It was weird. I rented it, loaded it up, went through the parachute business at the start, and landed on a beach. A load of Castro-style soldiers rolled up and started shooting at me. I returned fire, and couldn’t hit any of them. At all. Even at point blank range. I tried everything for about ten minutes - they couldn’t kill me, and I couldn’t hit them, despite my crosshairs being dead on. It was like a Benny Hill sketch directed by John Woo as we all ran around a load of beach huts firing blanks at each other out of akimbo pistols. So I jacked it in and never loaded it up again. Never been able to figure out what happened there.
I just got Just Cause for the PC via Steam, and I love it. I think the first one was a port for the original Xbox (the 360 one had way better shadows and lighting), but this one definitely will be better on the graphics-side. I can’t wait.
