Just Cause 2 PC Games and Downloads

Released on 26/03/2010

• Just Cause 2 Review

  Riotous fun

  Just Cause 2 is all about explosive, loud, over-the-top action. It sees you reprise your role as super agent Rico Rodriquez, who's back to wreak even more havoc than he did in 2006's Just Cause, with more stunts, vehicles, weapons and an overhauled grappling hook.

  Panau, crash, wallop!

  There's also a hostile new destination for the carnage to unfold this time around. The game's set in the vast fictional playground of the South East Asian islands of Panau, a detailed open-world environment of different climates and weather effects that's the perfect home to create mayhem.

  Your former mentor has gone rogue with millions in agency cash and you're tasked with tracking him down.

  This single player-only game does have a story too. Your former mentor has gone rogue with millions in agency cash and you're tasked with tracking him down. It's not the most original story but that's of little concern because Just Cause 2 is all about mindless, high-octane fun, and on this account it delivers in spades.

  While you can get around Panau in all manner of ways, you'll mainly traverse the landscape using Rico's grappling hook. Activated with a simple button press at any time, it latches on to almost anything and pulls you towards it at speed. Another button tap and you'll break off, launching yourself into mid-air, where an endless supply of parachutes come in handy and enable you to home in on your chosen destination. Needless to say, it's a thrilling way of getting around.

  Point and chute

  It's also a mean tool in combat. You can link two objects together, including enemies, before sending them crashing into one another, or you can grab hostiles taking fire at you and launch them into the distance. You can also grapple onto air or land-based vehicles to hijack them, or swoop in from above using your parachute and land on the roof before taking out the driver.

  You'll get plenty of chances to use more conventional weaponry too, which can be purchased on the black market and upgraded using cash and items you'll acquire throughout the game.

  Swoop in from above using your parachute and land on the roof before taking out the driver.

  There's an almost endless amount of things to do in Just Cause 2's open-world environments, which are graphically detailed and often stunning. The game is littered with side mission and other distractions, and the sheer amount of things to see, explore, destroy and collect means action fans will likely end up playing for months rather than weeks.

  The title also introduces a new 'chaos' system that encourages you to cause destruction. Fill up the on-screen chaos bars by blowing up government structures and you'll unlock new weapons and vehicles, as well as more side missions and advancements in the main storyline.

  Wild and explosive

  The quality of the main missions ranges from challenging and spectacular to lazy rehashes of the same formula. There are only so many times you want to escort a technician through increasing waves of gunfire, for example. Likewise, laboriously draining the health bar of a painfully accurate rocket launching foe - it's a bit easier to die in this game than the first, which ups the challenge – can get a little tiring.

  On balance though, Just Cause 2 succeeds in what it sets out to do: let you wild in an explosive open-world to live out your destructive impulses. A Michael Bay Hollywood blockbuster type of game, it builds on the original Just Cause in just about every way possible, and blowing stuff up and tearing things apart has maybe never been quite this much fun.

  GAME's Verdict

  

  • Massive, lush game world to explore and destroy.
  • Always plenty to keep you busy.
  • Unique, game defining grappling hook.

  

  • No multiplayer.
  • Story is a bit daft.
  • Some missions feel too repetitive.

  Review by: Tom 'Pika' Pakinkis
  Version Tested: Xbox 360
  Review Published: 24.03.10

  Published: 24/03/2010

• Just Cause 2 Review

  It's Rico time!

  A fictional jewel in the shimmering South East pacific, the island of Panau is perhaps gaming's most idyllic location. 40 square kilometers, it plays host to every type of terrain imaginable, from resolute snowy mountains, to baked yellow deserts and lush, twittering jungles. Blue rivers bisect the land, feeding village communities at their source and powering heaving cities at their end. It is a beautiful, picture postcard place, a holiday destination for the rich and adventurous, and one that, in Just Cause 2, you are free to admire either as stroll through the foliage, or as you base jump from an airship at 1200 feet.

  But Panau, for its great splendor, is not without turmoil. The island is in the grip of a tyrannical government, under the leadership of an evil dictatorship, and is home to three violent and divisive factions, all of whom are vying for control of the otherwise peaceful islanders. Indeed, the stillness of Panau's clear blue waters is at odds with the social turmoil that plays within its peaceful vistas. You benefit from both the beauty and the turmoil in the game: the former providing an expansive, pleasant playground about which to hurl your character at great speed, and the latter providing a compelling reason to be there as you seek to free the people from their unhappy existence.
  

  Wish You Were Here

  As with any open world game there's almost as much fun to be had messing about with the tools and vehicles at your disposal as there is in pursuing the missions the game's designers have created for you. Rico Rodriguez, the gruff, stubbly protagonist who you control in the game, has access to a long, strong grappling hook, extendable with a tap of a shoulder button. By latching on to any tree, surface or even passing vehicle, you can yank yourself forward, speeding through the world like a stone fired from a catapult. While mid-air, pressing another button will uncoil one of Rico's limitless supply of parachutes, allowing you to take to the skies from a standing start.

  Attach your hook to a passing car and Rico will spring on its roof, from where he can either surf the vehicle along Panau's winding roads, taking potshots at the island's military as he does so, or jumping into the driving seat for a slick hijacking. In what is perhaps the game's most inspired use of the tool, you can attach your hook to the front of any bothersome helicopter in the sky, launching Rico forward onto the cockpit from where he can pull the pilot out and swing himself into the driving seat. Nico Belic eat your heart out.
  

  Gun for Hire

  Rico's overarching mission is to take out the Panauan dictatorship and, to this end you take on various missions with the three warring factions who reside there. Every village, town and city on the island is loaded with government-branded equipment: water towers, radio masts, anti-aircraft rocket missile launchers and so on.

  Emblazoned with the party logo, it's easy to pick out government equipment from the air, and you must destroy these elements one by one in order to fill a ?Chaos' gauge. When the gauge passes preset thresholds you unlock new missions, weapons and vehicles and so almost every action you perform in the game feeds into driving the story and missions along.
  

  Born Free

  However, the missions themselves vary wildly in quality, with some very imaginative exploits let down by rote challenges that, a few hours in begin to feel repetitive and monotonous. The tenth time you have to take out a super strong special ops agent in a heavily fortified base against prescient, strong guards is a letdown, especially after the thrill of, for example, shooting down nukes from the sky, or battling ninjas under a hail of battleship fire.

  So the game is perhaps at its best when it is structureless, allowing you to mess about with the world physics, tethering jet planes together and watching them spiral through the air, or hooking hapless soldiers to the backs of motorbikes and driving off at high speed as they jaggle behind. The option to record and upload your best moments to YouTube will ensue that records of these exploits will fill the Internet in coming months. And every player is guaranteed to have his or her own moment of joyous silliness in this world. It's just a slight shame that the story and missions themselves can't quite match up to the unfettered brilliance of the surrounding sandbox.

  

  Justice
  + Hijacking helicopters in the air.
  + Expansive open world.
  + Beautiful visuals..

  Injustice
  - Poor voice acting.
  - Missions grow repetitive.
  - Occasionally buggy.

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