In this review, we say “viva la revolución” in the PC/Steam game, Just Cause. We find out how well this third person shooter game plays.
This game was released in 2006 and would kick off a series of games. This game was also the subject of one of our first impression video’s as well.
The story of this game is that you, as Rico Rodriguez, are an agent of the “agency” which is presumably American. You are flown in and dropped down onto San Esperito where you meet up with your handler, Tom Sheldon. You are basically tasked with the mission of overthrowing President Salvador Mendoza, the dictator of that nation. Mendoza, along with the drug cartel, the Montano Cartel, have been using various means to finance their operations. This includes the production and sale of the drug, “coca” which we assume means cocaine. Obviously, you aren’t going to overthrow a whole regime by yourself, so you ultimately form alliances with local guerrilla’s as well as the Rioja drug cartel to overthrow both factions.
Part way through the game, you eventually learn that an organization called the “Black Hand” is also involved as well as influence from a remnant of the German Nazi’s. To make matters even worse is that the antagonists of this game are also building weapons of mass destruction in the form of long ranged nuclear missiles.
After a mission or two with the agency, the game generally opens up by quite a bit, allowing you to explore an open world where you can pretty much travel wherever you like throughout the various islands. The thing is, almost every province in this island is locked down by government control. Through your PDA via the “M” key, you can check out this through the political map.
On the surface, the political map may seem to be a superficial map which is an indication of progress. While it is an indication of progress, it also serves as an important piece of information if you intend on liberating or overthrowing settlements. As you complete various Agency missions, more provinces will turn from a light blue to a red colour. This indicates that the province has become politically unstable. This is important because, spread throughout the islands are various settlements. Each settlement has a green or yellow exclamation mark indicating the NPC you want to speak to to initiate a revolution. If the province is in political dispute, then you are able to initiate a revolution. Otherwise, you’ll get the standard default side mission which is quite difficult in a government controlled province.
Now, liberating settlements is by no means a requirement, but it is very helpful in your game. This is because you can maintain a relationship with the Rioja and the local guerrilla’s. The more you work with each faction, the more relationship points you earn. The more relationship points you earn, the better the equipment and more safe houses you can get throughout the game. There are two menu’s in your PDA indicating your relationship with each faction. Not only does it show you how many points you have, but also what the rewards and safe houses you can unlock if you reach those rankings. In all, the highest ranking requires 3,700 points.
There are actually multiple ways you can earn relationship points. The most obvious way is to liberate or overthrow a settlement or military base. Each one can net you anywhere between 30 and 50 points. Liberating everything can get you quite far in the rankings, but won’t necessarily take you over the finish line of reaching those top ranks. So, you’ll need to complete other objectives as well.
One method is by completing side missions. All you need to do is speak with an NPC of a settlement, preferably one that has already been liberated or overthrown. Doing so will initiate a side mission. This can involve collecting something, assassinating someone, or speaking to another NPC on the map. Once you have completed that objective, you return to that NPC to collect your relationship points. Documentation suggests that there are over 300 side missions, however, it is a little misleading because it’s possible to cycle through all the side missions in a settlement and star recycling through. So, technically, it’s unlimited. The 300 just suggests how many of them are unique.
A third way, which only applies to guerrilla’s, is to complete various collection missions. Spread throughout the map are various blue dots. Each blue dot indicates the location of an item. Collect the first item in a mission and you’ll “initiate” the collection mission. Each item is worth 10 relationship points. Collect the last item and you’ll get a 50 relationship point bonus. Some item collection missions are confined to a small area while a few are spread throughout the entire world. Note that while the blue dots tell you where an item is, it doesn’t tell you at what height. So, some are actually located on the top of a building or even in the palm of the hand of a really large statue. In all, there are 13 collection missions.
Another side mission that doesn’t actually seem to reward you with anything other than bragging rights are race missions. On your main map, you’ll have 9 checkered flag locations. Each race is a checkpoint race and you have a limited amount of time awarded to your total time for reaching that checkpoint. Complete the race and you’ll get another notch added to your statistics.
The main storyline missions are indicated by a black and white exclamation mark. In all, there are 18 story missions and this is technically the only thing required to beat the game. Missions are quite varied and can include blowing up buildings, rescuing individuals, high speed chases, and a number of other types of missions. You have to beat each mission in order. This is probably one of the few linear trees in the whole game.
Another element in your PDA is the heavy drop. Heavy drops are huge in this game. You generally start off with a small dirt bike. However, as you complete more objectives in the storyline, you’ll unlock other vehicles. A complete collection consists of the dirt bike, truck, gyrocopter, and a boat. For the first half of the game, the dirt bike will probably be the preferred vehicle of choice as it navigates busy highways and dense forests quite well. On the last half of the game, though, your vehicle of choice will probably be the gyrocopter because it allows you to travel anywhere unimpeded – though rocket attacks and enemy SAM (Surface to Air Missiles) can easily blow you out of the sky if you’re not careful.
In addition to this is a fast travel feature. This is critical because with a map that measures at 1,024 square kilometres, you’re going to want an easy method of travelling around. This fast travel is through your extraction feature which pulls you from one location and drops you over another. Conveniently, “briefing” will always be where you pick up your next mission and is always at the top of your list. Scanning further down your list is all the safe houses you’ve managed to unlock.
Safe houses aren’t just a place you can fast travel to. They also offer weapons, equipment, ammo, and critically, free health. There are actually two types of safe houses: one that offers weapons, ammo, and health, and ones that offer health, ammo, and bombs. Otherwise, they can offer vehicles to help you travel around outside of the heavy drop function. Generally, the vehicles can be better than the agency vehicles, however, once you lose them, you have to go back and find them wherever they generally spawn.
A number of safe houses are unlocked by completing missions and building your relationship with both the guerrilla’s and the Rioja. Some, however, unlock after liberating a specific settlement. Generally, those safe houses are located near that settlement. Generally speaking, the more safe houses you unlock, the easier of a time you’re going to have. This is especially so if you die part way through a mission. The game has checkpoints during story missions, however, if you die outside of a story mission, the game remembers what critical progress you made up to that point and spawns you at the nearest safe house. The more safe houses you unlock, the bigger the odds that you’ll spawn at a nearby settlement. Trust us when we say it’s no fun to respawn at a safe house a whole province over because that travel can be annoying after a while.
Now, did we mention that this is a third person shooter game? Well, that’s because it is. At the beginning of the game, you have your fists (which doesn’t really do much in the grand scheme of things) and double pistols. On the one hand, the double pistols grant you unlimited ammo and are with you all the time. On the other hand, they are also generally weak and typically used in a pinch more than anything else.
As you go along, you’ll also get up to three additional weapons. This appears to be another pistol, a medium weapon, and a heavy weapon. Most of your useful weapons typically end up in the heavy category, so you kind of need to think ahead of what you’ll be encountering before figuring out which weapon you want. In early stages, it’s generally easier to just load up on another assault rifle and be done with it. When one rifle gets depleted, you just whip out the second one and finish the job with it. In later levels, it makes more sense to ration your bullets and load up with a bazooka. This is because you’ll probably encounter tanks, vehicles, and, more annoyingly, helicopters that can fire either bullets or rockets at you.
Now, that isn’t the end of what you can equip at a time. You also have access to timed and remote mines on top of it all. These are generally useful for missions that require the destruction of structures, though beware that they make a heck of a bang – so you probably want to take a few extra steps away from ground zero first before setting one off.
The final weapon is more of a utility weapon. This is the grappling hook. You might wonder how one actually steals helicopters right out of the sky. Well, you’ll eventually get equipped with that grappling hook. Use the left shift after a successful hit and you have a shot at hijacking one mid-flight. It’s difficult, but possible. It’s questionable how practical it is because it’s more than possible to beat the whole game without it, but you do get it.
Separately, you have grenades. In all, you can carry 8 grenades. The limitation is that they have a fixed detonation time and you can only throw one at a time. So, you need to use them strategically in order to be effective.
In the mean time, you get access to a parachute. This is generally useful for any time you either find yourself in mid-air or are planning on launching yourself. When using an extraction, you’ll jump out of a plane. This requires the use of a chute through “E”. Generally, you want to land somewhat safely because a hard landing outside of water will cause you to lose health. The other utility with the chute is launching yourself. This is generally done by using vehicles. Simply get up to speed, go into the action position (“F”), then use your chute (“F” again). The momentum will cause you to gain a reasonable amount of altitude. This can be useful for jumping over small obstacles or when you realize your vehicle is about to explode. One last push with that momentum can really give you that slight edge.
You can also swim in this game. Generally, swimming offers little to no extra protection from enemy fire, but you can use this skill to collect a few items. Weirdly, you need to use left shift to move forward instead of “W”.
Using helicopters works similarly. To gain altitude, you need to use left shift. To lower the chopper, use left CTRL. WASD operates the same as walking.
Now, when you initiate a liberation mission, there are a few things to note. Each liberation has three roadblocks you need to destroy. At the end, you either need to capture the flag or defeat an enemy with his own health bar. The game can be finicky on when to trigger each step, but a general rule is that each stage requires a certain number of undisclosed points. Killing enemies will get you closer to triggering the next stage. Whether it is just foot enemies, enemy vehicles, or helicopters, it will all count towards the game triggering the next stage.
An alternative is to destroy the black dot “clues” in the settlement as well. Destroying these will count as a bonus to triggering the next event, but doesn’t appear to contribute to reputation points. At any rate, this can range from shooting a crate of coca to destroying an ammunition cash to even blowing up a police station.
When the game triggers the blockade destruction stage, there are three ways one can handle this: grenades (generally requires two), a mine (one will work) or a bazooka shell. One guide I found recommended against the bazooka, but I found it highly useful for easily blowing through the settlements quickly. As long as you have a line of sight on the blockade, you can use the bazooka to blow it up at a distance. This is exceedingly useful because enemies will run deeper into the settlement. From there, you can just use another weapon to mow down enemies to get you closer to triggering the next blockade (not to mention, possibly pick up vital health boxes and grenades they may drop in the process).
For me, this game generally offers a flawed, but reasonably satisfying experience. One positive going for it is the fact that there is so much to do in this game. As a result, you can very easily spend well over 20 hours playing this game. I wound up sinking 45 hours in this one personally. While it seems daunting at first, missions generally do not take all that long. In fact, you can easily finish some missions in less than two minutes each. So, while there is loads of stuff to do, you aren’t exactly spending months just to get everything done.
What’s more is that there is enough variety to keep the game interesting all the way to the end. Bored of constantly liberating cities? Try one of those races. No races? Why not take a crack at collecting a few things along the way. If you want to just take a more direct rout, this game also offers that. Just pound through each story mission and you can probably finish this game in about two or three days. So, it offers plenty of flexibility for players.
Another positive for this game is the variety of weapons and vehicles. There was constantly something new I could drive or fly. This includes the variety of motorcycles, the multitude of cars, and even a nice number of planes and boats to reach other destinations. It’s actually quite impressive what all is in this game on that front.
While this game certainly has its pluses, there are also plenty of negatives to be had here too.
The biggest problem this game has, for me, is the many bugs that can range from quirky to nearly game breaking. The worst bug I encountered was found while attempting to liberate the Los Islas defence HQ. Yes, it’s a very hard mission, but it is generally doable – if the bugs weren’t there.
In my case, the game seems to automatically fail the liberation randomly somewhere along the line. Sometimes, I make it all the way to the second roadblock. Other times, I barely get out of the small square where the NPC hangs out. Regardless, the game just randomly fails your mission, making this the only liberation I couldn’t complete. Personally, I consider it unwinnable in any practical sense because of this. I’m not wandering off or anything. In fact, I have seen it fail me while on the main road in the middle of the base. So, there is a broken mission in this game.
Another bug that nearly soft locks the game is ledges. If you are on a fixed object with a ledge, sometimes, the game makes it so that you are constantly falling and landing. This means that you can’t move. It nearly soft locks the game as a result. The only way out of it without restarting is an extraction. If that isn’t available, then you need to go back to a previous checkpoint.
A third bug I encountered, which is more random than anything else, is that vehicles will lock your controls. You can get on, but you can’t move at all with WASD controls. Your only options are getting out or going into action mode. Otherwise, your vehicles cannot be used. This seems to require either hijacking and using a few other vehicles to fix or restarting. If the bug is left for long enough, then all traffic gets disabled as well, leaving you with no choice but to restart the game.
A fourth bug I encounter revolves around liberation NPCs located on a border. It is possible to go to an NPC to trigger a revolution, but only get greeted with a side mission. This seems to depend on where you are located when asking that NPC. If you are actually on a location that is controlled by the government, then you can’t trigger a revolution even though the liberation option should be available. You just need to situate yourself on the side of the border where the political situation is registered as unstable before you can liberate a settlement.
Another bug I encountered revolves around extraction and bridges. If you are below a large bridge, then it’s possible that the extraction helicopter will become stuck, unable to pick you up. The solution is to run away to a more open area (you can’t trigger a heavy drop in this situation).
Finally, the physics are pretty buggy. Getting off of a motorcycle can sometimes mean that it flies off randomly due to the location of your character. This means you have to park to the left of a fixed object so you can retrieve your bike after. While this is a minor nuisance, driving tanks are far worse. If you are using the main cannon, the auto aim will cause the barrel to swing. Sometimes, this means your tank will tilt randomly. Other times, it’ll swing around so much, that your tank will end up taking off and flying into the air randomly. Tanks are extremely useful in this game, but only use the main barrel sparingly if you are in the middle of a battle.
While the bugs can be pretty bad, some aspects of this game can be pretty confusing too. For instance, heavy drops can’t be triggered in a large city or in the area around that. The game doesn’t really tell you this, you just know that the heavy drop is suddenly unavailable.
Another thing that takes some getting used to is how to liberate towns. This requires flipping between two maps to more or less figure out if a liberation is available or not. If you don’t know that aspect of the game, then you might find yourself travelling to locations only to discover that side missions are all that’s available. To make matters worse is the fact that some settlements are right on a border. So, it can be difficult to tell if it can be liberated yet or not. With nothing really regularly distinguishing provinces, you can easily find yourself travelling needlessly because of this confusing aspect of the game.
Generally speaking, this game has give and take. On the one hand, there is so much to do, that you’ll never really get bored. It almost has that feel of a Grand Theft Auto game, really. It also offers plenty of flexibility so that a number of different kinds of play styles can easily be explored. On the other hand, there are plenty of bugs and confusing aspects that hold this game back. At the end of the day, it doesn’t exactly shine in any one aspect, but combined, it’s not a bad experience either. So, you are in for a flawed, but reasonable experience with this game.
Graphically, this game is reasonably impressive. The huge amount of space to explore is quite impressive. What’s more is the fact that there are so many different environments to be had. The weather and day night cycles are also nicely done as well. While all that is impressive, the other side of the coin is the fact that some of the models and environments wind up being a bit on the low quality side of things. Some settlements end up being very cookie cutter as a number of settlements feels like the product of copy and paste. Additionally, the various characters are also fairly basic outside of the main characters of the game. Every end enemy of a settlement is the same guy even. So, you can easily tell corners were cut as well. Overall, I’d say that this game is quite respectable on this front.
The audio is OK in this game. The voice acting is actually quite reasonable. Meanwhile, the sound effects range from OK to fairly basic. The music winds up being OK, but nothing huge. At first, the music library is quite large. After a while, you’ll wind up hearing the same music over and over again, though. So many aspects of the different tracks get repeated to stretch things out. So, it’s an OK effort all around.
Overall, this game is an enjoyable, but flawed experience. The huge variety and area to explore is quite impressive. The problem is the bugs and wonky physics (vehicles are often pretty hard to control due to low friction). There is also a fairly high learning curve as some aspects of this game can be quite confusing. The graphics are quite reasonable, though the audio is only OK. So, a reasonable game to play in the end.
Overall
Furthest point in game: Made it to the last mission and triggered the step to blow up the tank and hit it with two grenades before getting killed. All but one settlement liberated. Got the 3,700 reputation points for the guerrilla’s, but only made it to the third to last reputation step for the Riojo.
General gameplay: 16/25
Replay value: 8/10
Graphics: 7/10
Audio: 3/5
Overall rating: 68%
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
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