Just Cause 2 encourages freedom with its game design and it's that lack of structure that makes it so much fun to play.
Just Cause 2 follows Rico Rodriguez, the star from the original Just Cause game. Now on a brand new mission, Rico arrives in Panau, a nation whose government is under control of dictator Baby Panay. Rico's biggest objective is to take Panay out of power, but the mission also calls for the location and subduing of his friend and fellow agent Tom Sheldon, who has supposedly gone rogue. It's your typical action movie storyline, and Just Cause 2 does a very good job of not taking itself seriously. Rico's one-liners are funny enough, and many of the secondary characters will follow suit with simple action-movie dialogue. Just Cause 2 feels like a stereotypical action movie from square one and the fact that it doesn't do anything in its power to change that turns out to be a strength more than a weakness.
Just Cause 2 possesses a sharp focus on Chaos, a type of experience that is earned by completing missions, finding secrets, and destroying major objects. Chaos also opens up new Agency missions and Faction missions to complete and, depending on how destructive you plan to be in Just Cause 2, new weapons and vehicles. While Chaos progresses the main storyline and side missions, players can also earn cash to spend on weapons through the Black Market. In addition to that, hidden vehicle parts, weapon components, and cash reserves are scattered throughout Panau to find. Finding the hidden items throughout the world is easy, thanks to a tracking device in Rico's PDA, and the items can also be used to upgrade existing weapons in the Black Market. It all sounds extremely overwhelming, but it only reinforces the fact that Panau is enormous. Even better is that it begs to be explored. With so many useful objects to gather throughout the course of the game, Just Cause 2 is a completionist's dream adventure.
But having such a huge world to explore would be an absolute wreck if the navigation was poor, and fortunately, Just Cause 2 introduces plenty of ways to traverse through the world of Panau. Like many other open-world games available this generation, Just Cause 2 lets players hijack vehicles like cars, boats, and copters (while introducing a quick-time event to disarm the driver). Also, players can "stunt jump" on vehicles, which usually means clinging dangerously to the transportation not unlike what many action heroes have done in the movies. The most immediate and surprisingly fun way of traversal is the combination of Rico's grappling hook and parachute. Rico can use a grappling hook to scale buildings, climb mountains, or simply zip around the flatlands. The parachute, as expected, lets Rico float around the island and drift from higher altitudes. When combined, the game introduces the "slingshot" effect, where the grappling hook momentum lets Rico catapult himself into a parachute fall. It's fun to control, though it can be just slow enough to make going from Point A to Point B a bit of a hassle. Fortunately, previously discovered areas can be used as extraction points from the Black Market dealer. The navigation suffers a bit from the overall size of the world, but thanks to some inventive methods of transportation, Just Cause 2 just barely avoids the pitfall of repetitious traversal.
Just Cause 2's world has hundreds of locations to seek and destroy throughout Panau, and it shows its best colors when you're simply wandering Panau looking for a new place to wreak havoc. Each location has hidden items and destructible environmental objects, both of which are the reasons why the basic mission designs are so disappointing. They just don't have much variety. The typical infiltration and race missions drag the freedom-based vibe down a couple notches. Taking out enemies is fine for a while, but eventually you'll grow tired of the waves of generic enemies and long for a less restrictive moment of destruction. Couple that with a frustrating checkpoint system that warps you back to rather inconvenient points, whether you're in a mission or not. Just Cause 2 is a sandbox game at its absolute essence. Simply playing in the sand is the best part, but having to actually work through the missions and rulings turns out to be Just Cause 2's most critical of flaws.
The presentation in Just Cause 2 is all over the place. The cutscenes look choppy and unrefined; the facial expressions are poor and the animations don't retain any degree of realism. In game, however, the beautiful vistas and breathtaking views really bring out the best in Panau. Drifting across the landscapes with Rico's parachute shows the open world in the best light. It makes the pop-in graphics and annoyingly frequent bugs and glitches all the more distracting. It must be commended that such a huge open world is available with next to no load times when exploring (they are instead wedged between cutscenes more frequently than you would've liked), but the different technical issues get in the way. The audio is good; the voice-acting is expectedly cheesy to match its action movie vibe, and the musical themes that play when the guards mobilize are actually pretty good. The technical issues are disappointing, but considering how massive the world is, the payoff proves to be much better than expected.
Pros
+ Open-world design is massive and encourages exploration
+ Destruction-based gameplay is addictive and bombastic
+ Grappling hook and parachute make exploration fast and easy
+ Huge amount of collectibles and destructible objects
Cons
- A number of bugs and glitches
- Getting sent back to a distant fortress after dying is a hassle
- Occasional repetition
Just Cause 2 is at its best as an unstructured playground of destructible objects and mindless wandering. It's the moments of freedom that really allow the player to break loose into their own personal action movie. It makes the mission structure all the more restrictive and dull. Just Cause 2's technical problems also make the game feel less polished that it could've been. These turn out to be surprisingly big issues, but if you can overcome them, you'll find a cool new breed of open-world games, a breed that not only lets the players tackle challenges as they wish, but one that also makes for a simply bombastic and epic experience. Pack in a ton of things to find, a huge amount of locations to explore, and plenty of antics to perform, and you're bound to lose yourself in Just Cause 2. It has its rough edges, but its essence is pure, making one of the most over-the-top open-world games released in years.