First of all I would like to thank Avalanche Studios and Square Enix for providing us with a review code and giving us the opportunity to rate their game, Just Cause 3…now on to the review…Our hero from the previous games, Rico Rodriguez, shows off his stuff for us again in Just Cause 3. We’re introduced to the large open-world island nation of Medici where Rico is once again charged with liberating provinces in favor of the rebels. The story is much the same as we’ve seen before; Medici is ruled by a dictator named Di Ravello who seeks world domination through the use of a rare element called Bavarium, but Rico must stop him to save the nation (and the world?). The game is filled with towns and military bases to liberate, a myriad of challenges, and hundreds of collectibles which were almost to the point of tedium. I enjoyed Just Cause 3, but I didn’t love it.
The gameplay is what truly stands out in Just Cause 3. Some of the most fun that I had playing the game wasn’t during a mission, challenge, or liberation, but rather in the traversal of the world. Rico is equipped with a parachute, a grappling hook and now a wing suit to make getting from location to location exceedingly entertaining. You can tether objects together to bring destruction to enemies, tear down statues, or produce general hilarity. You can grapple to the top of a mountain, parachute down a slope and then open your wing suit to quickly make it to the ground where you can grapple to a car, steal it, and drive to your next mission. There are over a hundred vehicles to take into your control including cars, motorcycles, boats, tanks, planes, jets, and helicopters. Using these vehicles you can get to enemy controlled territories which you liberate by destroying certain objects and eliminating the enemy troops. Liberating these territories became repetitive and a bit of a slog as you are required to liberate a certain number of provinces to progress in the story at regular intervals in the game. As you progress, the territories become more difficult with more military vehicles, more powerful enemies, and more powerful firepower. One thing that changed from the last game is that everything that needs to be destroyed has a small red light attached to it as well as being available on your map. This is an upgrade over Just Cause 2 as you were tasked with looking for the objects by sight or color which added to the total amount of time spent at each territory. There are also rebel drops that you gradually unlock items which will help you to replenish ammo, bring you a vehicle, and aid you in your times of need. As you liberate territories you also unlock different challenges that include vehicle races, wing suit challenges, exploding vehicle challenges, and many others. Completing these challenges unlocks different abilities, vehicles for supply drops, or upgrades. I would have liked to have the stunts be a bit more of a focus for the main missions, which seemed kind of boring after doing crazy stunts during the liberation of enemy territories and the side challenges. One big complaint that I had while playing was that it was too easy at the beginning. I literally felt invincible. I could get shot a thousand times, get hit point blank with a tank round, or fall from a helicopter that is a hundred feet in the air without any devastating effects.
The location of the game is gorgeous with tall mountains, forests, vast oceans, undersea caverns, tunnels, cliffs and towns. I did feel that the world was a bit empty as you will travel from one town to another with almost nothing but landscape in between. It just didn’t feel as “alive”. The controls were standard for a third-person shooter, but I would have liked to be able to aim a bit more with weapons. Shooting certain weapons felt like a crap shoot, but I think there was a bit of auto-aiming. Although I did not unlock it, one of the upgrades available was the ability to have more control over your weapon aiming. Why is this not just a standard control? There were some framerate issues when lots of things were exploding at once and the game slowed to a crawl, but overall it played quite smoothly.
Overall, Just Cause 3 provides a lot of action packed moments and out of control stunts to keep you entertained for tens of hours, but after a while I felt the game became tedious and repetitive. There wasn’t enough of a difference between the liberation of each individual territory to make me want to discover new towns or territories and the main missions really never kept me interested. I played Just Cause 2 for 80+ hours and got the platinum trophy, but never felt like the game became tedious. Just Cause 3 is fun for a time, but I really think that it missed its mark in keeping me playing beyond the story.
7/10
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