The time has long since past when it was taboo for a game to not take itself seriously or take a hammer to the fourth wall. Indeed many titles have made their fame and fortune on just such a premise like the Saints Row and Just Cause series. The latter series longevity can almost wholly be attributed to the modding community that sprung up around it, allowing you to engage in rampant carnage with your friends at your side (along with other fun things). Expectations were then high for the sequel to include many of these improvements into the core game. Whilst not all of them made it in you can definitely see the influence the modding community has had on Just Cause 3, even if those improvements can’t cover some of the more lacklustre aspects of this latest instalment in the series.
6 years after the events of Just Case 2 Rico Rodriguez makes his triumphant return home to Medici. His island has fallen under the iron fist of General Sebastiano Di Ravello, a not-so-benevolent dictator. His return home sees Rico pairing up with his childhood friends and some familiar faces from previous games all in the hopes of overthrowing Di Ravello. Of course his plan of attack is a simple one: cause as much chaos and destruction as possible, weakening the infrastructure upon which Di Ravello relies. It’s no small task but Rico is not one to shy away from a challenge like this.
Compared to nearly any other current generation game Just Cause 3 feels behind the times graphically. Indeed this contrast is no more stark than when compared to another recent release from Avalanche studios, Mad Max, which makes use of the same engine. After some initial tweaking I got it to look a little better however there’s really no hiding the fact that the graphics were simply not a priority. They’re serviceable, and to some extent expected given the level of chaos that can be on screen at times, but Just Cause 3 feels like it has more in common with the B-grade titles I’ve played rather than the rest of the AAAs it was released with.
Staying true to its roots Just Cause is an open world game where there’s little difference between running missions and simply blowing up stuff at random for the fun of it. You’ve got a long campaign to follow if you so wish, but if you’d prefer to just have a bit of fun there’s more than enough to keep you interested. There’s various challenges which unlock mods for your gear, towns to liberate and an endless supply of collectibles and novelty items for you to scrounge up. Realistically though we all know what people are buying this game for: destroying anything and everything they set their eyes on, something which the game wholeheartedly enables and encourages. Everything else that’s contained herein is just icing on the destruction sandwich.
Combat is like any other 3rd person shooter with an incredibly generous infinite health mechanic. You can literally run and gun your way through entire army bases without having a care in the world, only needing to grapple away for a second or two when things go really south. It’s initially limited to aim-assisted console style shooting, which feels a little weird on the PC, but unlocks later change that up if you so wish. However killing enemies is really only a distraction from setting things on fire, blowing things up or making things fall on other things. This can be incredibly satisfying when you manage to pull off massive chain reaction, unleashing explosion after explosion as you sit back and watch the carnage. Other times it can be an exercise in frustration, searching for that one last thing you need to blow up in order to move to the next mission or objective.
This is certainly fun for a little while however once you’ve liberated the 30th town things really do start to feel incredibly repetitive. There’s literally no variety to be found at all as once you’ve done a couple towns the rest are simply a different mix of the objectives you’ve seen. Worse still most of them feel visually identical, just the buildings rearranged slightly. Sure you can tackle the challenge in different ways but there’s only so many times you can drive a tank through the middle of a town and still be entertained. In all honesty I had thought that I had conditioned myself to be able to tolerate this for the sake of the main storyline. For Just Cause 3 though I was honestly so bored by the end that I just couldn’t be bothered to open the game up any more.
One thing that did keep me playing for longer than usual were the little challenges that popped up in the right hand side. Shown above is my failed attempt to beat one of my friend’s long standing wing suiting records, only to miss out by a mere 7 seconds right at the end. Whilst many of them are easy to game if you go on YouTube it can be quite a bit of fun to figure out how to maximise a certain thing in order to get to the top of the list. Less useful was the “X beat you 1 hour ago” pop ups which mentioned dozens of random players who I don’t know as I really couldn’t care if they beat my record or not. Still it’s a good mechanic, even if it isn’t the first game to use it.
Of course no review of Just Cause 3 would be complete without mentioning the numerous glitches, bugs and annoyances that are permeated throughout the entire game. You’ll likely get stuck more than once trying to grapple to something, either resulting in your instant death or necessitating a reload. Wingsuiting anywhere close to terrain can result in your untimely death as well, often without any obstacle near you. Probably the worst thing though is the insanely long loading times which are especially frustrating when you’re trying to max out a challenge or going through a rough patch of crashes or glitches. Suffice to say I, whilst my expectations weren’t exactly high for Just Cause 3, I certainly wasn’t expecting the Bethesda levels of jank in Avalanche’s latest title.
Similarly Just Cause has never really been known as a game with high aspirations for the story and Just Cause 3 is no exception. The plot is paper thin at best with all of the characters being thoroughly 2 dimensional. Most of them are outrageous stereotypes that border on being racist with none of them being even remotely believable. This time around I couldn’t even be bothered to look for a mod to get me past the main missions so I could finish the main campaign, it was really that uninteresting. The one thing it has going for it is that it fits the whole B-grade feeling the game has, although I’m not quite sure that counts as a positive.
Just Cause 3 is pretty much what you’d expect it to be: a destruction sandbox and little else. The combat and destructible world, whilst not exactly inspired, does the job it was set to do. The world is large and expansive however it starts to feel repetitive very quickly given the lack of variety. It is unfortunately a bug and glitch ridden affair, something that is only made worse by the lacklustre story. Had Just Cause 3 come with multiplayer by default I may have been more forgiving as with all things B-grade they’re far better when enjoyed with a few beers with your mates. However Avalanche have left that task up to the modders once again, forgoing an opportunity to capitalize on the frenzy that they had created. Just Cause 3 might be worth the asking price for some, but for others it might be worth waiting until it goes on sale.
Rating: 6.5/10
Just Cause 3 is available on PC, XboxOne and PlayStation4 right now for $59.99, $78 and $78 respectively. Game was played on the PC with 8 hours of total play time with 32% of the achievements unlocked.
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