Eidos brings us the long awaited sequel to Just Cause. Just Cause 2 can be described in one word; ‘Chaos’. Chaos is in fact, a type of currency that Eidos have incorporated into the mechanics of the game, but more about that later. Don’t worry if you haven’t played the first game, the storyline carries on, but basically is a complete new chapter, with a new location just with the same people.
Just Cause 2 ‘drops’(quite literally as you first gain control of the character as he plummets out of a plane) players into a South East Asian Country named Panau which is currently being ravaged by a war between four different factions. These are the Ulars, Reapers, roaches and we can’t forget the dictatorship military. Each are fighting for their own cause; Ulars to regain the land of their birthright, Reapers to liberate the people and the land, Roaches to gain wealth and the military to keep an iron fist to oppress the people. As you meet each of these factions, you will notice the characters accents which are done to perfection. If you are South East Asian or know someone that is, you know what I mean. The main character Rico, is give, one job: Kill Panay, the president of Panau. During your time playing the game you will be going around doing missions for each faction and slowly accumulating more and more chaos. This helps you unlock new story missions and helps you progress through the game. The storyline is rather confusing and doesn’t go too in depth, but the action in the game makes up for it.
The visual have improved dramatically since the last game and many times you will be sitting back just admiring the visual masterpiece that Eidos have developed. However these amazing graphics do come at a cost. You will need at least windows vista or windows 7 with direct 10 to run this game. That means the older systems with XP or an earlier card with no dx10 support will not be able to run the game. This is a real bummer. One of the most amazing aspects of the graphics that you will notice straight away is the infinite draw distance, or so it seems. If you are able to get yourself very very very high above sea level, you will find that you can see the cities individually and the lights that resonate from it. Many standout landmarks can be seen from a great distance, whether they be beautiful snow tipped mountain, bustling lively cities, a small quiet village, the dry desert plains or a military base. How far away though? The game creators have boasted that it is has over a thousand square kilometres to explore, this is about 29 times bigger than GTA san Andreas, 25 times bigger than Oblivion, 13 times bigger than far cry 2 and 5 times bigger than the whole of World of Warcraft. Get the picture? The playzone available I gigantic. But don’t fret, you won’t be walking everywhere, there is a large array to vehicles to choose from, from little civilian scooters, to fighter jets, from fishing boats, to gyrocopters. The vehicle array is vast and more is being added with the extra DLCs.
Eidos have been able to create a very unique feel to this game by giving Rico rather absurd pieces of equipment to use. The most interesting inclusion would have to Rico’s grapple hook. He is able to use this strange bit of equipment to not only grapple and reel himself in locations of great height, but you are also able to attach two objects together. This is where your creative and psychopathic self comes in and says, “hmmm, I wonder what will happen if I tie this guy up to this gas tank and shoot it”. And yes, it does happen, the gas tank will take your enemy into the sky, slowly tormenting him until it explodes and he drops to the ground dead. I told you this game is chaotic. Another cool inclusion, retained from the first Just Cause game, is Rico’s re-deployable parachute. Yes I know it doesn’t really makes sense that you can use your parachute over and over, opening it, then letting go, then opening it again, but hey, it’s a bloody game. Deal with it. If anything this feature reminds you that it is only a game, if you haven’t figured that out already due to the insane amounts of enemies Rico is killing and his giant balls to do the stunts he does. Now if you’re a smart player, you will notice that the parachute and the grappling hook can be used in a combination to help you travel around. It’s the fastest way to travel when you don’t have an aircraft.
So this chaos currency, how do you earn it? In addition to the dollar currency, the chaos, as stated before is used to unlock new missions. You do this by doing your missions for each individual factions and also by planning your own takeover of certain villages and cities. You are required to blow up gas tanks, petrol stations, radar stations, Rader dishes, Generators, Propoganda trailers, Statues and whole lot of other things to bring the country into more chaos, which hopefully will bring that dirty president out of his hiding place. Blowing all this ‘crap’ up is definitely one of the funnest parts of the game and better yet, you will never tire of it. You will probably go to bed dreaming about the blissful and serine explosions of Just Cause 2 because they are so good. You could easily shoot these ticking time bombs to destroy with you arsenal of weapons, or you can blow them up using grenades or c4, it’s really up to you.
The only criticism that anyone, could see with Just Cause 2 would be the gun mechanics. Often you will find yourself running out of ammo unless you headshot all your enemies and you are only able to carry 3 weapons; 1 double handed main weapon, and 2 side arms which you can dual wield in any combination. It would have been nicer to see more guns being carried and definitely a larger ammo carrying capacity. You can however call the your black market arms dealer to bring you more ammo or perhaps that gun you have a fetish for, but that is quite troublesome when you have some people trying to put a bullet between your forehead. That is about it for the negatives, as you can see it is a pretty damn good game.
Essentially this game is pure fun. Just Cause 2 has a unique feel about it which will resonate fun through its combination of incredibly stunning visuals and amazing gameplay. Add realistic ambient sound and explosion sounds to it and you have yourself a stunner of a game. Never has there been any game like this. If your sims characters could have this game for their computer, their fun meter would flash up to full within a sim minute.
Written by Geoff Yam.
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Being a completionist can be fun, but some games are more like chores than fun. Here are the worst games to 100% complete.
The Yakuza Games
Haha, yeah, currently over 100 hours into Yakuza 0. Considering going for 100% and well on the way but may not get there. Cat Fights are a real chore.
I use to be a trophy hunter, was getting around 20 to 30 platinums a year. Had a saying of Play-Beat-Platinum, play and enjoy the game like there wasn't no trophies, beat it and at least get 50% then look at them and see if I'll platinum and platinum it. I think death star was a pain, the servers was ending so i had to rush and play that for awhile none stop. NGs2 was hard because of that online trophy but easy if you had the partner that can do it for you while you grab the enemy attention. Grinding idk, death was grinding last one I had to grind for platinum literally 1 trophy needed was dungeon travler or something vita gave up on it. After that I stop trophy hunting get like a 1 platinum a year or 0.
Yeah, if I enjoy a game I usually go for the platinum unless there are some unreasonable trophies in there.
For Yakuza 0 I've invested too much time in it to give up just yet and most of the content is good fun, apart from Cat Fighting which is broken and dull after a couple of fights.
Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 was literally the last platinum I got on PS3. After that, I went into PS4 kinda deflated and getting them where it felt appropriate.
I genuinely HATED that platinum, but it was a personal challenge I took upon myself. It was a lot of "get 1,000 kills with [insert weapon]" and it got to be a bit tedious. Master Ninja really pissed me off, but the WORST which you alluded to was that bloody Gold trophy for missions that you needed to do online because the AI was useless and got wrecked in moments. I jumped on the game a bit late so I struggled with finding a partner for at least 1.5 months. After that, I burned out hard with trophy hunting. I still came back for games I really enjoyed (Bloodborne, Dark Souls III, Nier: Automata, and a few others that escape me) and low hanging fruit that was just a bit time consuming and I didn't want to buy new games at the time (Final Fantasy XV). Total, it becomes clear where I taper off since I've only plat'ed 33 games since there inception of trophies which really isn't much.
Screw Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 lol. That game was pure nightmare fuel.
I say never force getting a platinum, its not worth the trouble definitely if it costing you to waste time on chore like grind. Those brainless design trophies.
Dead rising was the worst one I’ve ever tried. I haven’t tried it with the modern console “rest mode” but the 360 didn’t have that.
Was GTa4 the on where you had to collect a shit ton of pigeons around the map and there was no help in finding them?
The saving grace was that there was only on average 50 collectables with the two exceptions being graffiti and oysters from memory horseshoes and photos were capped at 50 each.
But for me it was all the other grind that was way more painful in SA like the car export lists which even with guides took way longer than collecting stuff
There was a guide book that came out with the game that had all the pigeons in it. I actually still have it
One of the more recent games I got a Platinum in was Killzone: Mercenary for Vita. What a crap game, that requires so much terrible grinding.
Awful game, awful experience.
Oh man..wish i could get a vita. I've been trying to get a preowned too(in my country) but no luck.
I can vouch for Just Cause 2. It was the reason I quit achievement hunting. 86 hours in, the game bugged on me during one of the last side quests (it failed no matter what I did) and my save file got corrupted. Wiped it off my drive and never looked back.
I downloaded the ‘complete edition’ or whatever it was called for $2 about 7yrs ago in hopes of trophy hunting it for a platinum. It always sounded fun and I would like to commit time to it but not enough for a platinum trophy
A look back at some of the most iconic moments of horror from non-horror video games.
