Why play this game? Just Because...
In JC2 you play as the secret agent Rico who is send to the fictive Island of Panau in the South China Sea to investigate another agent gone rogue and also to investigate the "Dear Leader" or dictator of this Island. Let's be honest and say that the story is no Hugo Award Winner and you will probably see all the twists coming a mile away – but it doesn't really matter because the story is just there to facilitate the action. So you will forgive the game for all its silliness and stereotypical characters. The story is that of a Michael Bay movie or a summer blockbuster film i.e. silly, loud and pointless. The voice-acting doesn't help here with over-the-top accents and hammy acting.
The graphics is both stunning and mediocre at the same time – from a technical standpoint the game is mediocre with low-rez textures and washed-out character-models but the art design is wonderful with lush vibrant colours, gorgeous day/night cycle (sunrise is stunning), varied climate zones from green hills, brown deserts, dense rainforests, misty mountains and snow-covered peaks. It all looks fantastic and can only be run in DX10 so Windows XP users is left in the dark here. The game is optimized very well and ran as smooth as a knife through warm butter on my 8800GT.
The gameplay is where this games shines. It's a third person shooter (TPS) where you spend most of your time shooting things and blowing stuff up. The reason is that this creates "chaos" on the Island and chaos is measured via a numeric system. There are story missions that relate the story of the game but often you have to create enough chaos to unlock the next story mission. The Island is also inhabited by three factions that you can do missions for also. These missions will typically be about overtaking a stronghold that is controlled by the Island government. You do this by blowing up gas tanks, silos, generators, fuel lines and other such installations. By blowing up each installation in a stronghold or town you get more chaos-points. Unfortunately you don't earn CP by killing guards. There are also a number of race-missions that will earn you money by completing a race in one of the games many planes, boats and vehicles by getting through a number of checkpoints. In the strongholds and the more than 300 towns on the Island you will also find crates with weapon and vehicles upgrades and money crates. As you create chaos you unlock more and more weapons that you can upgrade through The Black Marked that you can call in at any point during the game.
The weapons are standard fare like pistols, shotgun, SMG, assault riffle and rocket launcher. When you upgrade a weapon is does more damage and can hold more ammo. Sadly here is one of the games major flaws because early on you will simply not have enough ammo and you will often be forced to use a weapon that you don't like because ammo is too scarce. You will also only get enough upgrades to max out a few weapons and that includes grenades and C4. In a game that should be all about fun and action, it's a real shame that resources are so limited that it some times feel like a survival-horror game when it should play like an action game. My main weapon was the SMG and it wasn't until 20 hours into the game that I unlocked it and could upgrade it to the max. After that I only ran out of ammo one time but for the first 20 hours the game could be frustrating. The Black Marked is really poorly thought out because you can't buy ammo from it so if you want ammo you will have to buy the entire weapon all over again – and they cost a ridiculous amount of money. The same goes for all the vehicles in the game that also cost way too much. The worst part is that if you die or exit the game you will loose your vehicle and will have to buy it again and ditto if it gets destroyed. This creates a bizarre scenario where you may have millions of dollars and yet can't afford to buy anything on a consistent basis because you can loose stuff in a matter of minutes by dying. It should have used the "safe house" model from Far Cry 2 but sadly the game doesn't.
Another minor issue with the game is that the story missions tend to be a little bit too hard for a game that should be all about fun. This is primarily because the controls are not always up to the task when the game asks you to do something on a time limit. In the game you have a parachute and a grappling hook and these two are what defines the game and create its unique gameplay. The grappling hook will pull you towards any object that you hit with it and you can really get creative here (and don't worry about the laws of physics because this game is not supposed to be "realistic"). So with the grappling hook and parachute you can now be Spiderman swinging from building to building or just use it to get around the gigantic Island. But like I said some times the controls are not up to the task because of the game's console origin. Not only will you get an auto-target system for all the guns (but you can make headshots) but often the grappling hook can be a bit finicky with where and whom you can use it on. And in some of the later story missions you are faced with so many enemies from guards to gunship helicopters that it becomes a bit much. There are no penalties for dying and you simply respawn in a faction stronghold and you can use the Black Marked to extract to your last known position (in a town). The game uses an auto-save system so you can't manually save at a specific location and if you die all enemies will respawn and you will have to start the mission all over which can become frustrating (though to be fair in some of the longer missions the game will auto-save from time to time). The game is never hair-pulling hard but for a game that is all about casual fun, the lack of ammo and the over-the-top difficulty in some missions can feel out of place.
All in all Just Cause 2 is a very good game that will last you a long time and really give you a good bang for the buck. It took me about 44 hours to complete the game and I had only done 30% of all the stuff you can do in the game according to the in-game statistics – and you can continue to play after you beat the final story mission in order to reach 100% completion. The game has a few flaws, bugs, and can have a few rough spots were the difficulty becomes too much, but because the rest of the game is so damn fun and addictive you can easily look past these issues. For the price you can get the game for these days it's a real steal. And at the end of the day blowing stuff up is just so damn FUN – and that's what games should be – FUN!