Just Cause 2 is a high water mark for me. The story is shit, of course; the number of games with good writing is very small. But the controls are so perfect, responsive, simple, powerful and endlessly fun. It is comparable only to the original Crackdown for me in terms of action games with perfect, addictive puppeteering. I'm always in search of anything comparable and have never understood why those systems aren't emulated more.
Just Cause 3 was a disaster for me. Suddenly we are given linearity when the whole enjoyment was endlessly, leisurely zooming around a tropical paradise blowing shit up. And the controls, with the overly complicated wingsuit and reduced function of the parachute, where you could no longer glide around forever without climbing and waiting to sink again, just annoyed me. I didn't last long with it at all. Everything they changed about the structure of the game was for the worse, to me.
This, the fourth installment, I probably got in a bundle and had no expectations for. The results are mixed. The controls still are wonky and overly complex-- nowhere near as fun as JC2. But they've restored the freedom of the open world and the thrill of flying anywhere you please and causing chaos.
There are other things that suck:
They've fallen in with the trend of masking draw distance with a haze over everything, something i will never stop complaining about. You can turn it off to a degree but it still sucks, especially since all of the games quest markers are the same light blue as the haze and blend into the background, a ridiculous choice. I really don't want to feel like I've developed cataracts while I play a game and I will never stop complaining about this trend of making every new world look like it's suffering from massive air pollution. I would much rather see the environment clearly and sharply, and accept a little draw distance, than fight my way through every game in a fog. Please, if by some miracle anyone anywhere in development ever reads my reviews, stop putting haze on everything, I'm begging you, it sucks so bad.
The thing that irritates me most of all about JC4 is that they have replaced the psychotic, impossible completionist goals of JC2-- little things to blow up in every village to liberate them (that I secretly loved and addictively tried to master for months and months) with terrible "stunts" to complete in every town. This is just boring, unfun busywork. Why would I want to fly the annoying wingsuit through little rings ten thousand times when I could be blowing shit up, and searching through the exquisitely crafted little towns for supply boxes. It's just not fun. You can still blow shit up but it doesn't do anything but jack up your chaos score, there's no satisfying element to it anymore. Bad choice. Put a few stunts and races around if you must, but there are way too many, and I know if I bother to play the game much more I will skip every one of them.
It's hard for a franchise to move forward when they've had one entry that was so perfect in many ways, but I feel like much as with Crackdown, the people in charge haven't quite understood what was so delightfully addictive about their own best work. And I won't feel the need to play this endlessly as a result. It's way, way better than JC3, a step in the right direction, but still not what I want from the game.
Just Cause 3 was a disaster for me. Suddenly we are given linearity when the whole enjoyment was endlessly, leisurely zooming around a tropical paradise blowing shit up. And the controls, with the overly complicated wingsuit and reduced function of the parachute, where you could no longer glide around forever without climbing and waiting to sink again, just annoyed me. I didn't last long with it at all. Everything they changed about the structure of the game was for the worse, to me.
This, the fourth installment, I probably got in a bundle and had no expectations for. The results are mixed. The controls still are wonky and overly complex-- nowhere near as fun as JC2. But they've restored the freedom of the open world and the thrill of flying anywhere you please and causing chaos.
There are other things that suck:
They've fallen in with the trend of masking draw distance with a haze over everything, something i will never stop complaining about. You can turn it off to a degree but it still sucks, especially since all of the games quest markers are the same light blue as the haze and blend into the background, a ridiculous choice. I really don't want to feel like I've developed cataracts while I play a game and I will never stop complaining about this trend of making every new world look like it's suffering from massive air pollution. I would much rather see the environment clearly and sharply, and accept a little draw distance, than fight my way through every game in a fog. Please, if by some miracle anyone anywhere in development ever reads my reviews, stop putting haze on everything, I'm begging you, it sucks so bad.
The thing that irritates me most of all about JC4 is that they have replaced the psychotic, impossible completionist goals of JC2-- little things to blow up in every village to liberate them (that I secretly loved and addictively tried to master for months and months) with terrible "stunts" to complete in every town. This is just boring, unfun busywork. Why would I want to fly the annoying wingsuit through little rings ten thousand times when I could be blowing shit up, and searching through the exquisitely crafted little towns for supply boxes. It's just not fun. You can still blow shit up but it doesn't do anything but jack up your chaos score, there's no satisfying element to it anymore. Bad choice. Put a few stunts and races around if you must, but there are way too many, and I know if I bother to play the game much more I will skip every one of them.
It's hard for a franchise to move forward when they've had one entry that was so perfect in many ways, but I feel like much as with Crackdown, the people in charge haven't quite understood what was so delightfully addictive about their own best work. And I won't feel the need to play this endlessly as a result. It's way, way better than JC3, a step in the right direction, but still not what I want from the game.