Just Cause

"Lots of Promise leads to lots of disappointment"

I feel like I have gone from elation with wanting this game to "damn is it over yet?"

What started out as an enjoyable game is quickly becoming one of tedium and I am beginning to hope the game is over as soon as possible.

Gameplay

Firstly, the map is way too big. Now I know people scream that bigger is better but it is simply not true. There is no point in having massive world that is just covered 95% with foliage and the rest with the same designed buildings and towerblocks throughout. The effort they put into creating this massive world is inspiring, but the design is simply uninspired and aside from constant traffic, the world feels empty and lifeless.

Moving on to the missions, at first they are quite interesting. Kill somebody, blow up a building, collect an item but soon you realise this is the bread and butter of the mission structure and you are doing these over and over again without much deviation. There is simply not much variety in what you are given to do.

The AI are also very stupid. You barely take a hit when they are shooting at you and it seems impossible to die unless you stand there and do nothing. Quite often I will save a mission at the safe house but my wanted level remains. Its extremely annoying to start afresh to go to a new mission and have helicopters shooting at you when they should not be.

The way they have dealt with collection missions in this game is quite well laid out. Because the world is so huge, instead of dotting packages around the whole world which may seem impossible to collect, they have actually localised collecting missions to particular areas. So you go to a blue dot on the map to start a collection mission and then collect the rest of the packages in the local vicinity. 10/10 for thinking of that one :)

Graphics

Lets start off with the good. The water effects in this game look amazing and just what I would expect from a next generation game. The different colours of the water show depth and on the beach the water washes around your feet with white bubbles.

At first the foliage looks fantastic but after a while it all blends into each other and all you see is green. Its a good thing you are able to run through most bushes and trees otherwise you would be forever bumping into trees.

As I mentioned above, the buildings are all samey. Not much effort seems to have been put into designing individual towns and cities. Its as if they took one design and dotted them around the map slightly tweaking each one. Poor effort.

Sound

The sound has to be the worst aspect of the game. Some cutscenes do not play sound. The South American dialogue is so cheesy it is directly out of a lame TV movie. Also the police shout over the tannoy to stop when there is nobody about. Its all out of synch. The music while skydiving is nice though :)

Overall

Overall I am terribly disappointed by this game. I really expected something brilliant and it turned out to have more repetition than a dose of RSI.

The stunts are fun, the skydiving is fun, but the mission structure just lacks any zing and imagination. The game feels unfinished and more like a tech demo than a full retail product. Top marks to the developers for their effort, but sadly the effort goes to waste when I no longer enjoy the game after 5 hours of repeats.

It had massive potential but I think the developers tried to do too much rather than concentrating on improving a smaller game. They could have made the game half the size and made what they did have, a lot better.

Gameplay - 7/10

Graphics - 7/10

Sound - 6/10

Overall experience 6/10

Total - 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/25/06