Just Cause 2 is a game I always keep coming back to, it's not a masterpiece or a great story, but it's just a lot of fun.

The world is not as detailed as GTA's, but it is diverse and fun to explore. There are a lot of locations to liberate, such as large military bases and towns. There are also collectibles scattered around the world, giving you things such as health upgrades for collecting.

The story of Just Cause 2 is completely irrelevant, it's fine for what it is, this game is exaggerated satire to the extreme and you will have some fun setpieces if you choose to finish the story.

The grappling hook is what sets this game apart from its competitors, it's a fun and easy way to traverse the world, while also allowing for experimentation in combat. Combined with the parachute, the grappling hook allows for a unique gameplay experience.

The combat itself is nothing spectacular, but when you combine it with the grappling hook and its tethering mechanic, you end up having different options for every fight. There is also a decent selection of weapons and vehicles, with the option to upgrade using collectibles.
The black market is also a fantastic addition to this game, allowing you to buy weapons and vehicles wherever you are.

I would recommend Just Cause 2 over 3 and 4, but those games do have one advantage over this one, namely the wingsuit.
I think Just Cause 2 was very close to being the full package, if it had a better story and a slightly more detailed world, I think this would have been a rival to the GTA of its time.

This game makes driving at high speeds and off cliffs enjoyable because of amusing physics, and each crash feels impactful. What's more fun is the grappling hook that you can use to connect two objects and cause all sorts of silliness. However, this isn't enough to keep you playing through the repetitiveness of the game's tasks. Beautiful scenery, but not enough to make up for the story that feels shallow and rushed, and, on top of that is the number of cutscenes which is painfully low. The game mainly comes down to blowing up things, and the flashy effects that come after it get old after some time and don't feel rewarding enough. I loved riding the wind turbine and flying upside down though.

A massive improvement on the first game in pretty much everyway imaginable. Not without its problems but Just Cause 2 is a way more enjoyable experience than the clunky mess that its predecessor was.

The story is as simple as can be, Rico is once again thrown into a politically volatile country and has to kill its dictator. This time it is the island of Panau. I much prefer Rico in this game than the first, he doesn't only speak in one liners and has a smidge more personality to him. For some reason the entire voice cast was switched so the three returning characters all have new voice actors which is also the case for every game going forward, not sure if there is any specific reason. The main story itself is only 7 missions long but the game is padded out with required side content which I will go on to talk about in a bit.

The gameplay is an absolute blast. It improves so much on the first game through stuff like the grapple hook actually working, making health an actual concern instead of Rico being a bullet sponge and all around better controls. Don't get me wrong there is still a lot of jank, the flying controls are very hard to get used to and the camera doesn't always help and instead of the driving being more like gliding, I found it to feel really stiff. Best way to describe it is if I was trying to make a turn, the car wouldn't turn till the last moment and I would normally go flying off the road. Dont get me started on trying to use planes. Trying to take off on a plane was so weirdly frustrating as if you even breathe on the joystick the plane goes full tilt into the nearest wall. Sometimes it would just hit off something on the road and go flying backwards. It was like trying to ride a scooter on an ice rink. Despite all that they really nailed down series staples like the grapple mechanic and the gun combat. All in all it feels like a less polished version of Just Cause 3 which is to be expected.

Visually its a massive upgrade, thankfully they decided to ditch the uncanny valley cutscenes for more fitting character designs and cutscenes you would see on Xbox 360 games. Nothing really to note score wise.

My biggest complaint with this game is the chaos feature. Which I believe does become a staple going forward so it will be a bit of a reoccurring issue. Basically the main story is 7 missions long, to combat this in order to unlock the next story mission you have to run around doing missions all be it fun missions for the three biggest gang leaders in Panau. Now these missions were fun, none felt stale or repetitive and most where short enough to not drag on. My problem is with the fact that there are only so many of them. While waiting to unlock the last missions I had no faction missions left to do so I had to just fly around blowing up stuff in order to get enough chaos points to unlock more missions. Which again, was really fun but its something that did put me off a bit.

To put it simply, Just Cause 2 is really really fun. You get to fly around blowing stuff up and actually able to have an enjoyable experience in this game as it fixes what was terrible about the first one. Despite the lack of substance in the main story, I had a blast with this game. Im looking forward to replaying Just Cause 3 next to see if its as good as I remember. Solid recommendation.

This game is absolutely mediocre by itself, I definitely think public opinion of it gets carried by the modding scene on PC. Because playing this game on the 360 was painstakingly tedious.

For one, the main storyline is extremely short. Like, WAY shorter than I thought it would be, considering even the FIRST game has a longer story. There are only 10 main missions, and they can take less than an hour to beat, each. So in terms of narrative, it's almost nonexistent. Rico's characterization is not great in this game, either. He's just kind of an asshole, and that's it. Granted his character isn't all that complex in ANY game, but it was kind of off-putting here.

So, what else is there to do besides the main story? The FIFTY MILLION tiny little settlements to liberate on this ginormous map that should have been half the size that it is. The developers just copy-pasted the same menial tasks to do about 300 times across the map. Easily added about 50 hours of playtime to complete this thing, just doing the same thing over and over again, it was life-draining. I appreciate the developers making a huge, diverse map and adding "lots of stuff to do" on paper, but at least half of the time and effort they put into that aspect of the game should have gone into the main story, and some more diversity in side activities.

Past that, the game is just okay-looking, controls are fine but a bit clunky at times, and overall it's just a very generic game. I would recommend only really playing it on PC for the mods, as there's not much to it when the game is by itself.

В 2010, когда ты мелкий школьник, это ощущалось как великая игруля, где полная свобода действий в плане того, что ты можешь все взрывать, всех убивать, на всем ездить и т. д., но сейчас это ощущается как какая-то душнина с кал физикой, убогой стрельбой, однотипными заданиями и базовым сюжетом для боевичков, той самой свободы как будто и не было никогда, но перемешаться по карте все таки прикольно, особенно комбинируя разные виды транспорта, несмотря на то, что это 80% всего геймплея, а если отключить мозг и включить фоном музыку, то можно и местами кайфануть даже

Definitely have a huge amount of nostalgia for this but replaying makes me realize it’s not nearly as good as I remember. The story is super bland, the open world is pretty meh, and the missions feel mostly the same except for a select few. The game just starts dragging near the end as you’re just doing faction missions so you can do the main story which there isn’t a lot of to begin with. It’s definitely good when it comes to the simple things like blowing stuff up and the movement. While I do enjoy it slightly more then the first one the charm of the first game is pretty much gone from this game, feeling like a more generic open world game. Overall the game isn’t bad by any means but lacking in a lot of aspects I straight up just didn’t remember as a kid.