Hello Enthusiasts,
My review today will be for Just Cause 3, which was released late in 2015.
For those unfamiliar with the series, the Just Cause games center around Rico Rodriguez, an operative for the lazily named "Agency", who specializes in tearing down opressive regimes in small nations. These games are basically like playing an action movie, with all of the explosions you could ever hope for.
Just Cause 3 does have a bit more story than the previous two games. Rico is brought back to his home land, Medici, to do what he does best. We get to see him interact with some of his childhood friends, particularly his close friend Mario Frigo. Because of this close connection, we seem to get more raw emotion from Rico, who desperately wants to free Medici from oppression. As mentioned before, these games are basically an action movie, so expect the dialogue to be pretty cliché.
Game play wise, these games have always been fun, with each game improving on the mechanics of the last. In Just Cause 2, the player got a grappling hook to play with. In Just Cause 3 we still have the hook, but Rico is also given a new wingsuit to travel with. The wingsuit really speeds up travel, and I found that I rarely used the "fast travel" feature, because it's so enjoyable to glide around the map. While the wingsuit can be a little difficult to get a hang of at the start, it really becomes second nature fast.
Outside of the wingsuit, much of the game play remains the same. Shooting things to destroy them and cause chaos, which is primarily how Rico liberates areas and destabilizes the government. Some areas are easy to liberate, they're small towns with minimal police presence. Other areas are actual military facilities with tanks and anti-aircraft weapons, so those can be a little bit of a challenge. While I personally loved the destruction and those moments that I would absolutely dominate a military base, I can recognize that the game play can get a little repetitious, as you will spend a lot of time destroying the same type of objects throughout the game. The developers did add a greater variety of weaponry in this game than previous ones to keep things interesting, and it helps, but it doesn't entirely make up for this fault.
Graphics wise, this game is impressive, better than it really needed to be with it not being one of the really big titles of last year. The landscape is beautiful, and the water effects are remarkable. And you will see a lot of water, as the map is a series of islands. Speaking of which, the map itself is enormous, which is why they included the fast-travel feature despite all the fun that comes with traveling in this game.
When the game was first released there were a lot of performance issues. During any kind of explosion (as previously mentioned, there are plenty) the frame rate would drop painfully low, which would make things like steering the wingsuit impossible. The game would frequently crash as well, which was made even more frustrating by the insanely long load times. Not long after release people were reporting waiting for a good 15 minutes for just a respawn. I personally never had that kind of wait, but 5 minute respawns weren't unheard of. Luckily, a lot of these issues have been resolved, though the load times are still a little longer than you may experience with other games, and I do still have a crash once in a blue moon.
While I won't be including them in the overall score, I do recommend purchasing DLC for this game, as the Air, Land, and Sea missions are fun with some excellent rewards. Each will give you another hour or two of enjoyment as you earn your new toys. For some reason though, the DLC didn't have the same kind of cutscene that the regular game did, instead replacing it for still shots with audio playing over them.
Overall, I think this game is a good time. It doesn't offer much in terms of a story, and its performance can be a little lackluster sometimes (though much better than it was initially). However, I do consider this a game to buy if you're looking for destruction, fun travel, and a nice looking environment.
I give Just Cause 3 a 7.5 out of 10.
Sincerely,
The Bored Enthusiast
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