Will I like Just Cause 2?

[ninja666]

I'm thinking of playing it, but I'm not entirely sure if that's a game for me. Will I like it if I loved the shit out of Mercenaries and Saints Row 2?

What I'm expecting:

- action that's over the top, but still grounded in reality enough for it not to be cartoony,

- lots and lots of fun and satisfying destruction, using a large assortment of weapons and armed vehicles,

- lots of diverse stuff to do in the game world (side missions, assassinations, challenges etc.)

- humorous approach / not taking itself entirely seriously,

- a badass, likeable protagonist

Will JC2 provide me with all of this, or should I look for a different game? I'm especially interested in how it compares to Mercenaries, since those two seem to be very similar.

 

[ohnoitsabear]

Does the idea of a game where you run around a big island with a grapple hook and parachute sound appealing? If yes, then there's a decent chance you'll like Just Cause 2.

If you're unsure, there is an excellent demo for Just Cause 2. It basically gives you a decent chunk of the map, then gives you a half hour to just go nuts. Most demos aren't that great, but this one is definitely worth playing.

 

[aozgolo]

I'm thinking of playing it, but I'm not entirely sure if that's a game for me. Will I like it if I loved the shit out of Mercenaries and Saints Row 2?

In a word: Yes.

What I'm expecting:

- action that's over the top, but still grounded in reality enough for it not to be cartoony,

I wouldn't call it cartoony but it's certainly full of action movie tropes, like being able to jump out a car window onto the roof, jump onto another car from that one, and then parachute off of it and parasail behind it with a grappling hook.

- lots and lots of fun and satisfying destruction, using a large assortment of weapons and armed vehicles,

There's plenty of this, lots of different weapon types and weapons, every city and even small town has various infrastructure like gas tankers, water towers, SAMs, etc. that can be destroyed through various means, as well as statues you can destroy, special enemy officers you can assassinate, and the like. It's very much like Mercenaries but without the air strikes and buildings themselves aren't destructible usually but it's still just as fun.

- lots of diverse stuff to do in the game world (side missions, assassinations, challenges etc.)

Yes, all of this, the world is HUGE, a lot is full of empty wilderness but even with that you have tons of cities, towns, fortresses, and landmarks to explore and cause destruction in. You can undertake missions to take over every single town in the game and expand a factions influence which unlocks weapons and vehicles. You also have to cause "Chaos" which is racked up through destroying enemy assets or undertaking side missions to unlock the main story missions, so it paces itself really well.

- humorous approach / not taking itself entirely seriously,

It never takes itself serious at any point, there is no high degree of emotional pull in the game, it's just a fun action romp through a sandbox. The humor in the story can be hit or miss but there's a lot of comedy just in the gameplay being able to pull off crazy stunts, you can also use your grappling hook to tether two objects together to create trip wires, hoist up enemies to a roof, or keep a vehicle from escaping.

- a badass, likeable protagonist

He's certainly a badass, and while he is likeable (He's kinda like Jean Claude Van Damme meets Antonio Banderas in terms of personality) he is easily forgettable, but the story isn't a very high point of the game anyway.

Will JC2 provide me with all of this, or should I look for a different game? I'm especially interested in how it compares to Mercenaries, since those two seem to be very similar.

It is VERY similar to Mercenaries, the only thing truly lacking I believe is the airstrikes from Mercenaries but the world size is much larger and it has a lot of content to make up for this fact. There's less of a "war-like" feeling to the place, as really until you show up nobody is invading or causing chaos on the island, it's just a locked down dictatorship. That being said there's still plenty of tanks and helicopters around to wreak havoc in.

If you get it on PC it's often on sale, I've seen it go as low as 3$ though it's certainly worth paying full price if you like open world action sandbox games.

 

[ninja666]

I wouldn't call it cartoony but it's certainly full of action movie tropes, like being able to jump out a car window onto the roof, jump onto another car from that one, and then parachute off of it and parasail behind it with a grappling hook.

Considering Mercs 1 & 2 had stuff like mid-air helicopter thefts, stealing tanks by beating the crap out of the driver and blowing them up with a grenade, and using a literal mini-nuke to open up a bunker, I guess they're pretty much equal in absurdity levels.

There's plenty of this, lots of different weapon types and weapons, every city and even small town has various infrastructure like gas tankers, water towers, SAMs, etc. that can be destroyed through various means, as well as statues you can destroy, special enemy officers you can assassinate, and the like. It's very much like Mercenaries but without the air strikes and buildings themselves aren't destructible usually but it's still just as fun.

That's pretty disappointing. Airstrikes and destructible environments were a major part of the fun. Don't know how to get into an enemy base? Blow up a hole in the wall with a tank. Too many enemies attacking you at once? Carpet bomb the fuck out of them and kill off the survivors. Well, let's hope JC2 has something just as good of its own instead.

He's certainly a badass, and while he is likeable (He's kinda like Jean Claude Van Damme meets Antonio Banderas in terms of personality) he is easily forgettable

As long as he's not an annoyingly cold and bitchy person, like Jen Mui from Mercs, and you don't want to kill yourself every time he opens his mouth, then it's fine. I'd very much prefer him to be something along the lines of Mattias Nillson, though - he was just too damn funny.


Either way, after your post, and playing the demo for a while to check out the mechanics, I'm pretty much sold.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

It's more of a spiritual successor to Mercenaries than it is to Just Cause 1. It's all about the destruction baby. If you liked Mercs and Saints Row you can't not fall in love with Just Cause 2.

If Mercs 1 and 2 was a Michael Bay kind of action, Just Cause 2 is more like Robert Rodriguez and some Quentin Tarantino. Over-the-top and fully self aware.

If you like Mercs so much, perhaps you'd like The Saboteur. It's pretty much Mercs in WW2. No airstrikes though. But it's from the same guys who made Mercs and it's a very unique title. Highly recommended to all Mercs fans.

 

[aozgolo]

I wouldn't call it cartoony but it's certainly full of action movie tropes, like being able to jump out a car window onto the roof, jump onto another car from that one, and then parachute off of it and parasail behind it with a grappling hook.

Considering Mercs 1 & 2 had stuff like mid-air helicopter thefts, stealing tanks by beating the crap out of the driver and blowing them up with a grenade, and using a literal mini-nuke to open up a bunker, I guess they're pretty much equal in absurdity levels.

There's plenty of this, lots of different weapon types and weapons, every city and even small town has various infrastructure like gas tankers, water towers, SAMs, etc. that can be destroyed through various means, as well as statues you can destroy, special enemy officers you can assassinate, and the like. It's very much like Mercenaries but without the air strikes and buildings themselves aren't destructible usually but it's still just as fun.

That's pretty disappointing. Airstrikes and destructible environments were a major part of the fun. Don't know how to get into an enemy base? Blow up a hole in the wall with a tank. Too many enemies attacking you at once? Carpet bomb the fuck out of them and kill off the survivors. Well, let's hope JC2 has something just as good of its own instead.

He's certainly a badass, and while he is likeable (He's kinda like Jean Claude Van Damme meets Antonio Banderas in terms of personality) he is easily forgettable

As long as he's not an annoyingly cold and bitchy person, like Jen Mui from Mercs, and you don't want to kill yourself every time he opens his mouth, then it's fine. I'd very much prefer him to be something along the lines of Mattias Nillson, though - he was just too damn funny.


Either way, after your post, and playing the demo for a while to check out the mechanics, I'm pretty much sold.

Just to touch on the last few things, while the destructile environments aren't there in as huge a force as Mercenaries, they are there, just not on the scale of buildings or airstrikes, but you can destroy lots of different things. As for a mechanic that replaces it? Definitely the grappling hook. You aren't limited to grappling just vehicles, you can grapple anything... you can climb up walls, hide in trees, hang from a helicopter, use it in conjunction with your parachute (which you always have) to keep yourself airborne.

The main character is mostly just cheesy but never annoying, he doesn't complain, but will give snarky comments from time to time but you won't grow to resent him at any time.

 

[ninja666]

As for a mechanic that replaces it? Definitely the grappling hook. You aren't limited to grappling just vehicles, you can grapple anything... you can climb up walls, hide in trees, hang from a helicopter, use it in conjunction with your parachute (which you always have) to keep yourself airborne.

Doesn't really make up for lack of Hollywood action flick style explosions imo, but I guess it'll have to do.

If you like Mercs so much, perhaps you'd like The Saboteur. It's pretty much Mercs in WW2. No airstrikes though. But it's from the same guys who made Mercs and it's a very unique title. Highly recommended to all Mercs fans.

I'll keep that in mind.

 

[Grumman]

I wouldn't call it cartoony but it's certainly full of action movie tropes, like being able to jump out a car window onto the roof, jump onto another car from that one, and then parachute off of it and parasail behind it with a grappling hook.

This isn't really true. In theory you can do this, but anywhere outside of the second mission the NPC AI will probably just stop driving instead of letting you do anything interesting.

Fixed-wing aircraft also suck horribly. You can use one to get from point A to point B, but they only have dumbfire forward-firing weapons and the stall speed is generally too high to actually hit anything.

It's still a fun game for $5, it's just shallow. If you've played Prototype, the quality of the sandbox feels about on that level - it's no Saints Row 2 and it's certainly no Skyrim.

 

[Signa]

One thing I didn't see mentioned is the sound design. The explosions are so damn cool sounding in JC2. I like blowing things up just to hear it explode.

 

[Jingle Fett]

It plays sort of like James Bond meets Antonio Banderas. Focused on over the top action and most importantly--FUN. It's really hard not to like it. The grappling mechanic is lots of fun too, strap a car to the ground while it's at full speed to launch it into the air...or strap a person to a propane tank, shoot it, and what them fly. Hell, strap yourself to it.

By the way, if you can get it for PC...get it for PC. Multiplayer mod is amazing, that alone is worth it. Probably the only place in the world you can have a 75 man limo race on a tropical island.

 

[ThreeName]

First three yes, last two no.

That said, I loathed the game and had to stop playing because the controls were so awful and the main character was such a fuckbend that I couldn't go on. I found it immensely frustrating, but I'm obviously the minority here.

Not sure the destruction is all that satisfying either, it's all the same buildings copy pasted everywhere.

 

[Zhukov]

I'm thinking of playing it, but I'm not entirely sure if that's a game for me. Will I like it if I loved the shit out of Mercenaries and Saints Row 2?

Probably. It's rather similar to those games.

- action that's over the top, but still grounded in reality enough for it not to be cartoony,

Over the top, yes. Grounded in reality enough for it not to be cartoony? No. It's pretty damn cartoony. Watching some gameplay videos should settle this one for you. There'll be plenty on Youtube.

- lots and lots of fun and satisfying destruction, using a large assortment of weapons and armed vehicles,

Yeah. The weapons and vehicles are actually pretty standard stuff though.

- lots of diverse stuff to do in the game world (side missions, assassinations, challenges etc.)

No, not really. Certainly nothing like the variety found in Saint's Row games.

You blow stuff up, you collect stuff, you can assassinate dudes, and there are time trial races. That's it for side content.

The main story missions have some variety to them though.

Of course you can charge about raising havoc or trying to pull off stunts on your own, but the game doesn't give you explicit goals to do so.

- humorous approach / not taking itself entirely seriously,

Kind of.

It can be safely said to not take itse;f seriously. but I honestly found it hard to tell if the game was being deliberately stupid or just regular stupid.

- a badass, likeable protagonist

Debatable.

He's badass in the sense that damn near every action game protagonist is badass.

I don't recall either liking or disliking him. He's a very shallow character. Not really much there to like or dislike.

 

[Kyrian007]

Although many buildings aren't destructible, I really think the grappling hook makes up for that. Most starting out kind of run and gun, and it's kind of like a boring Mercenaries. Then you start to use the grappling hook and infinite (and instant) parachutes...

It easily doubles in enjoyment at that point. All of a sudden I'm just looking for the most evil way to use a grappling hook I can. Its party piece... you can fire both ends. Not only can you use it to easily hijack cars, helicopters, tanks... but it's a devastating weapon all on its own. See a baddie next to a compressed air tank? Grapple one to the other, then shoot the tank and watch your opponent rocket skyward, zigzagging randomly dragged haphazardly, careening into a gas station that detonates into a spectacular fireball. Car chase along a suspension bridge, roadblock coming up midway across, jump to the roof, grapple a chase car to a roadblock car, then leap off the bridge and hit the silk and watch while the moving chase car is catapulted off the bridge and drags a hapless roadblock car with it into the rocky gorge below.

There's plenty of fun to be had.

The driving and flying... the controls aren't that great. But there as good as they need to be when you can OWN any vehicle that gets within 75 yards of you by basically teleporting to it via magic hookshot. "Planes are hard to land" WHO CARES, point one at a gas station or an enemy base and bail. "Cars and motorcycles are hard to control" Good thing they're more or less useless then. I only use them to gain momentum or as ballistic missiles or roadblocks.

 

[stroopwafel]

I liked the game. Would definitely recommend it. It plays a bit like freerun GTA but without the cops and a lot more shit to blow up. Granted the game quickly delves into a 'protect person X/destroy facility Y' kinda grind but its a good enough set-up to lavish into the over the top gameplay that has you destroying entire bases all by your lonesome and hijacking fighter-jets in mid-air(among things). Just Cause 2 is simplistic and frantic fun but executed really well. It also looks pretty good(espescially for its time).

Only sour note as far as I'm concerned is the driving. Ugh its so unbelievably bad. I can't really think of another open-world game with worse driving, and I played quite a few. However the gameplay of JC2 is such that it hardly matters though.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Its a fun sand box game and one where you always get side tracked by the closest enemy base. So many that you start out to begin a mission and 5 hours later your still taking out bases for fun.

Also......you can surf jets. OH YEAH. ;-)

Just Cause 3 is being made now. Also would like Merc 3 to be made though doubtful that will happen now. Though Merc 1 is a game i would love a remake of, i still have my XBox copy which i still play every now and then.

 

[ninja666]

I'm not so sure about the diversity of the stuff you can do in the game. To get the most out of Just Caues 2 you'll probably have to be someone that really enjoys collectibles. The missions do have some amount of different objectives, but they generally end up being "Blow that guy/thing/base up!". I have personally gotten a lot of playtime out of dealing with all the collectible stuff and also discovering and "finishing" the various settlements. I just think that the way I approached the game had a significant effect on my ability to put a lot of time into it.

As you finish faction stronghold missions in Just Cause 2, you will create sort of a area of influence for the different factions on the world map. I did it so that once I had expanded a faction's influence thing further, I would first complete all settlements and get all collectibles in that area before moving on to the next stronghold mission. I actively avoided settlements outside of the faction areas.

 

[OneCatch]

I'm thinking of playing it, but I'm not entirely sure if that's a game for me. Will I like it if I loved the shit out of Mercenaries and Saints Row 2?

What I'm expecting:

- action that's over the top, but still grounded in reality enough for it not to be cartoony,

- lots and lots of fun and satisfying destruction, using a large assortment of weapons and armed vehicles,

- lots of diverse stuff to do in the game world (side missions, assassinations, challenges etc.)

- humorous approach / not taking itself entirely seriously,

- a badass, likeable protagonist

Will JC2 provide me with all of this, or should I look for a different game? I'm especially interested in how it compares to Mercenaries, since those two seem to be very similar.

There's a lot of very overthetop action which I think is on the acceptable side of realism for such a game, but your mileage may vary. The grappling hook thing is blatantly absurd (launching you around like spiderman with nary a dislocation or impact injury), but it's also ridiculously fun.

Plenty of destruction and explosions - it kind of follows the Red Faction school where anything that's got the enemy's colours will be destructible and will likely explode. Assortment of military-grade vehicles it slightly limited (about 4 types of chopper, three planes), but there are hordes of ground vehicles, some custom vehicles in the Steam edition, and some of the military vehicles come with a slightly variable weapons loadout (combinations of rockets, autocannons, and miniguns).

Hand weapons are a little more limited, but you can dual wield smaller weapons which increases variation. Plus the aforementioned grappling hook and environment kills.

Most of the missions revolve around blowing shit up, but there are assassination missions and escort missions and (I think) races.

The protagonist is a dual-wielding Zorro-Spiderman with combat driving/piloting/boating skills. It does not take itself seriously.

Protagonist is imo neither likeable or unlikeable. He's basically Zorro with less character development and more oneliners. Pretty badass though - the intro sequence is him pretty nonchalantly jumping out of a helicopter due to unexpected AA fire.

I've not played Saints Row or Mercenaries, but I did play a lot of Red Faction Guerilla, and it probably reminds me most of that - albeit with less architectural physics, more varied combat and movement, and a much larger populated map. All in all, I'd recommend it.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

- action that's over the top, but still grounded in reality enough for it not to be cartoony,

Yeah, it's got that. The action and approach to every situation is almost B-movie level of writing. Also the grappling hook.

- lots and lots of fun and satisfying destruction, using a large assortment of weapons and armed vehicles,

Not really. The destruction is all shoot the red barrel and the barrel explodes and doesn't harm the environment. The weapons are there, but the shooting will be pretty mediocre and disappointing. The vehicles are something else, though, shoutout to the Tuk Tuk Boom Boom.

- lots of diverse stuff to do in the game world (side missions, assassinations, challenges etc.)

It's mostly just going into bases, destroying red objects and finding flashing crates. As Yahtzee said, they somehow find a way to make that boring in the end, because that's all you'll ever do. But the game world's so huge that you'll be satisfied with doing that for a long while.

- humorous approach / not taking itself entirely seriously,

Definitely. The story mission doesn't take itself seriously at any point. Ninja henchmen all the way.

- a badass, likeable protagonist

He doesn't say much outside of cutscenes, but he'll satisfy you. Not saying anything and not spouting the same one-liners ever five minutes is a plus, in my opinion.

 

[Spacewolf]

I managed to do the first mission for the three factions before I got bored and gave up.

Personally I found the collectibles to be boring, the map to be far to big for the amount of content in it and the gun play to be uninteresting. The cars also all handle like ass and blowing up the same few types of buildings gets boring pretty quick.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

If you like Mercs so much, perhaps you'd like The Saboteur. It's pretty much Mercs in WW2. No airstrikes though. But it's from the same guys who made Mercs and it's a very unique title. Highly recommended to all Mercs fans.

I'll keep that in mind.

And there's Red Faction Guerrilla. It's Mercs on Mars. All about destruction.