Just Cause 3 release date: December 1 2015
In the five-plus years since Just Cause 2 was released developer Avalanche Studios has been tweaking and refining its open-world third person shooter.
Just Cause is now nearly ready to hit our consoles and I’ve had the opportunity to go hands-on, testing out its open-world sandbox and running through the first couple of missions.
The latest in the Avalanche Studios series sees Rico Rodriguez – the game’s protagonist – returning to his homeland of Medici, a small cluster of fictional Mediterranean islands. The problem is that a dictator, known as General di Ravello, is controlling the islands. The Medici rebels, which Rico’s old pal Mario is a part of, need Rico’s help to overthrow the General. So it’s up to you to free Medici.
and reach lengths.
The opening missions of the game see Rico returning to Medici in a propeller plane, which he’ll quickly have to wing walk along touting a rocket launcher – so far, so Just Cause.
After taking out some SAMs, the plane carrying Rico gets hit, spinning out of control. It’s then you get to test out Rico’s improved parachuting abilities. Unlike in Just Cause 2, you’ll find it’s a much more stable platform. In Just Cause 3 the parachute will level out if you stop controlling it – making it much easier to use and a more valid platform for mounting attacks.
You’ll also find that the grapple has been improved. It can still be used to make your ground traversal a lot quicker – Rico still can’t sprint on his own after all – but this time if you grapple near the top of a building, you can push forward on the analogue stick to automatically flip up onto the roof.
Just Cause 3 also allows you to grapple from your parachute, and eventually the wingsuit too, increasing your momentum so you don’t have to touch the ground. Combining all your traversal techniques takes a little getting used to. The first part of my hands-on saw me flying face first into walls, mountains and other impenetrable items at high speed thanks to poorly timed and aimed grapples.
After you’ve completed a few missions, you’ll catch up with another old friend called Dimal, who’s the master of experimental tech. She’ll upgrade your grapple so you can start connecting objects together. Tether an exploding barrel to the back of an enemy truck, and you’ll start making some serious fireworks.
You might find the controls a little fiddly at first – I certainly did – because all of the grapple related commands sit on LB on the Xbox controller. Tap LB and you’ll launch the grapple to propel yourself along, either on foot or in mid-air. Hold down LB though and you’ll start tethering things together. Hit LT and the tether between those grappled objects will start retracting, forcing them closer together – there’s a lot to remember.
However, combine your newly acquired wingsuit with your grappling techniques and trusty old parachute and it all starts to get very Just Cause indeed.
Just like it’s predecessor, Just Cause 3 is ridiculous in the best possible way. In the space of a few fleeting moments, I blew up a cluster of fuel tanks, grappled up to a hovering enemy helicopter, took out the pilot and claimed the chopper for myself. I then aimed it at a statue of the General, jumped out at the last moment and parachuted to safety, with the resulting chaos playing out behind me.
Of course, in the life of Rico, such events as these are just another day.
Just Cause 3 is a huge game with three major regions, giving you lots of varying terrain, lots of things to do and a million ways to do it – the only limitations being your imagination. And the game really shines when you start experimenting. There were regularly ripples of laughter around the preview room as players created strange and wonderful events.
When missions and challenges shoehorn you into specific actions however, that freedom and the game mechanics can become a frustrating burden – not to mention repetitive.
In my four or so hours of gameplay, once I’d finished the opening missions, all that was left to do was liberate some of the towns of Medici and open up the game’s challenges.
To get further upgrades you’ll need to complete the various challenges scattered around Medici. Complete wingsuit challenges and you’ll earn wingsuit related upgrades etc.
But liberating towns is a very repetitive and laborious beast. You’ll need to tick of a number of objectives, such as taking over police stations, destroying power banks, shooting down billboards and taking out satellite dishes. But you’ll need to do a number of these per town, and all the while battling against Ravello’s troops.
It might be fun to begin with, but it’s a process that quickly becomes a chore. Especially, when the challenges often task you to do the same all over again.
In the build I was testing, there was another slight issue. While playing there were some serious framerate drops during cutscenes, often causing the whole game to crash. Hopefully this was only an issue with this particular build, especially as I was reassured that this wasn’t final software – despite the game having already gone gold.
There’s also another slight glitch, and that’s Rebel Drops. In previous preview sessions, I was told you could call in Rebel Drops at any time, equipping yourself with vehicles, weapons and more for increased ridiculousness. But it turns out you’ll need to collect and earn all the equipment that you can call in – something that was not made clear previously.
Plus, you’ll need to have a beacon for every Rebel Drop you want to call in. And these are few and far between. So far I’ve only been able to collect one per garage, all owned by darling Mario.
Early Verdict
If you loved Just Cause 2 and are looking for a better looking, slightly more ridiculous version then Just Cause 3 will be right up your street. I’m just not sure there’s enough there to attract new fans or compete with other AAA titles launching this side of Christmas.
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