Just Cause 2.

[Quindiana Jones]

"Hey Quin, why are you repeatedly using your grappling hook to strap police officers to the back of your car and drive off cliffs?" "Eh. Just cause."

Bah dum tsh!

Just Cause 2 was released in late March. Has anybody bought it yet? Thinking about it?

I bought the game today. So far, I've just done the opening missions for the clans. I then proceeded to do exactly what the above quote suggests. The grappling hook is ridiculously fun.

The game itself is actually quite terrible, and reviews say it pretty much stays like that. Generic revolution "plot" from the first one, but with more players and a bigger area (a freaking MASSIVE area). The voice acting is truly horrific. If it was slightly better, it'd be torturously bad, but because it's as awful as it is you just laugh at it. The accents are worse than Sam Worthingtons in Clash of the Titans.

Rico has gone from suave Bondesque agent to just pure badass. A total make-over in style and personality. It's alright. Nothing to write home about. And the whole game looks a lot more real and gritty.

Overall, you're basically playing Just Cause 1 again, but MORE FUN. And it's hella more fun. The grappling hook antics alone are worth the £40 price tag, and I rarely pay full price for games. Someone forces you to spin whilst driving? To vent, why not boot them out of their car, shoot you grappling hook into their spine, then shoot the other end into a lamppost for the ultimate wedgie? Then you can bat them around like a pinata if you want. Or you can just look up at them and shoot them dead. Or, my personal favourite, strap them to the back of their own car them speed off giggling at their poorly accented screaming behind.

It seems to be just a standard story, with terrible voice acting. The gameplay is great fun though and the whole game just screams childish malevolence. Well worth looking into, if you're a fan of games like San Andreas and Saint's Row 2.

[Bolivar]

man i'm sorry to hear that, i've only seem scant screenshots here and there and it seemed like they were trying to make it kinda good, but i'll take your word for it.

[Quindiana Jones]

It is kinda good! It's brilliant! The missions are actually quite fun, it's just that the story is pretty much the same as Just Cause 1. Bad leader needs killing. You help out some rebels (3 factions now - stirs it up and takes away the repetitiveness of 1). End game.

But the journey there is brilliant. The horrible "Take over every single place on the fucking map" idea is gone. If you want, you can 100% each village and city, but there's no real need to. To do this, you just need to run around gunning down government stuff and picking up the Weapon/Armour/Vehicle upgrade boxes.

A major worry with a large map is that the travelling will slow things up and be boring as hell (*cough Far Cry 2 cough*). Firstly, there's a fast travel option to any place you've visited before. The missions drop you immediately all over the map, so an hour in you'll be able to hop to each corner of the map quickly. Or you can just drive. I've driven 100KM in the 15 hours I've played so far. Haven't been bored once. The scenery is amazing, and any time you get tired with your vehicle you can just swap it for another you see! Or order in a cooler one, Mercenaries style.

Don't go into this expecting a great story experience as with GTA4 or the like. It's a Mercenaries style sandbox. There's an alright story but it's hardly the key point. Though what I've done of the Agency missions suggests a pretty interesting little thing, so you never know. The mission are great fun, and significantly less monotonous than the Just Cause 1 ones. But make no mistake: this game was made for reckless action hero fun. If you want a serious game, this ain't it.