+ The Size. The size of this game´s map puts every other "big scale" game before it to shame. This game is huuuuuuge and its all yours to roam. By land, sea or air.

+ The Engine. The Game´s graphical engine is quite spectacular. It draws up this enormous gameworld with rich detail and fantastic scaleablility and no loadingtimes. No small jumps in gameplay and no framrateissues what so ever and it looks fantastic by land, sea or 1 kilometer up in the air. No really noticeable pop-ups and a drawdistance that makes watching the sunset over there by the horizon one of Just Cause´s strongest feautures

+ Sweet Lightning. Dawn and Dusk in particular looks absolutely Jawdroppingly beautiful on my HD tv. racing a boat or a plane into the sunset makes me go "wow..." everytime. The sun feels warm and cozy out on the open sea as well as under a palmtree through the leaves. The Tropical paradise feeling is always there !

+ The seamless smooth experience. Going from watching a yellow butterfly flying past the man who sells fresh water in the village to taking the helicopter 1000 meters up into the air, flying through some heavy rainclouds,landing on the highest mountain, basejumping from there, jacking a car, driving it out from a cliff, jumping on a boat and driving it into the setting sun or the dawning day to jumping in the water to study the aquatic life beneath the warm watersurface. All so seamless and smooth!

+ The Stuntengine. Jacking a car at high speeds has never been this much fun. Drive up close to it, jump up onto the roof of your own car, jump to the car you want to jack and slide in through the sidewindow. You can also hang onto the wings of flying wehicles, jump between boats and planes and use your grappling hook to hook onto moving things and then jump onto them. The stuntsystem has endless possibilities and for the most part it enhances the type of game that JC is. And its hella cool !

+ Fun and "kickass" Action. Its easy, it has Auto-target and its alot of action when the **** hits the fan and it feels just right in JC. Taking over bases and settlements never gets dull together with some upbeat dancemixes of Latino guitar themes that are OK.

+ The Freedom. Such a huge world and so many different flying wehicles to try out. Where to begin.

+ Sweet political satire themed story.

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- Horrible characterdesign and graphics. The textures on almost every "enemy" in the game is just plain ugly. Even Rico himself dosent look very sharp either. The design is nowhere to be found. You forget the face of every maincharacter when you turn off the game because they dont really have faces, just generic boring ones without personality.

- Disgusting Indoor locations. There are not many, only a few. But those few are so ugly i just vomit all over my controller everytime. And thats not very nice at all. Just Cause are meant to be an outdoorsgame. A prisonblock, a downtown prison and garages for example makes me compare it with less attractive Ps2 games. Yuck.

- Cutscenes are big and ugly sleepingpills. The cutscens are prerendered with some kind of bad looking computer animated graphics from a bad Pixarmovie that never was released. Like Toystory Latino or something. And they are not just ugly, they are boring to watch to. There is absolutely nothing that catches my interest in these cutscenes AND they have bad baaaad voiceactors for the main characters.

- Bugs! Get the bugspray! The bugs are swarming me. Run over a small piece of debris with you car and youre stuck. Go get a new car. Run up on land with a boat just a TINY bit and youre stuck, go get a new boat. Run over a motorcyclerider and the rider sometimes get stuck on or IN you car in some buggy way. Sometimes requested vehicle drops dont show up. I have experienced one lockup so far that forced me to turn off the console. Achievments that i unlocked days ago pops up days later..  Just to name a few of the bugs. Game feels like it might have needed some more polishing.

- Wierd system to handle Police and Rival Gang. The Wanted meter is extremely unforgiving. If you run into another car, even just a little itsy bitsy tiny bit. You will have the police after you. You just scratched his tail-light and you have wanted level 1. The police dosent even have to be near you at all, they will just pop up. And Wanted level 1 in JC means jeeps, MCs and helicopters with heavy guns blazin. They will hunt you down with rockets and automatic weapons..because you scratched a persons tail-light. It dosent end there tho. I dont really notice any huge difference in difficulty when I have wanted level 5. Its still the same annoying helicopters and crazy suicidal cops with baaad baaad AI. But the main thing here is this: You cant drive a car for more than 100 maters before you have the cops after you since every road is PACKED with traffic....

- Non existant AI. Enemies of all sorts dont have any intelligence at all. None, zero, nada. I found out the best way to take down guards in towers were to just run up to the tower because this will make the guard in it jump like a crazy fool down from the tower and land flat on the ground...... Cop cars will run into each other and fly into walls..etc etc

- Always God Mode. At least it feels like it. Rico really cant die if you have some form of gaming skill. he can take a beating like a freaking terminator. Even tho he´s just a bad Antonio Banderas copy.

- Bad Overview map. The map screen should have been alot smoother and detailed for a game this huge. I could make a long list of improvements that could have been made to the mapscreen. Now i get the feeling its very clumsy.

- Sloppy car controls. I never get that "smack on" feeling that im one with the car. I get a very unsecure feeling when in a car. They just control...wierd and you always end up stuck on a rock or with that annoying cop helicopter after you.

- Annoying helicopters! Just cut it out ! Even when you have no wanted level what so ever theres always crazy helicopters flying around shooting missiles all around you. I figured out after a while that they are probably shooting at my Guerilla friends and i think i was right but i dont like have missiles swooshing past me wherever i am. It ruins my holiday feeling.

- Ugly weather effects. The rain looks like black pencil lines rather than waterdrops.

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Final Score: 7.4

A fantastic engine with a sweet stuntengine but overall its a game that lacks polish and above all, a soul that makes you want to come back. As a free roaming sandbox its both fun and beautiful tho ! Worth checking out!

Tested on: HDTV 720p, 26"