Okay, now I'm finally going to update my blog on a daily basis because I have two subscribers haha. But anyways, I'm here to give my first impressions on the newly released demo of Just Cause 2.
I haven't really played the first game, but I have played both demos. Frankly, the first Just Cause was simply rubbish. The color palette was too childish (light blue, light green, light black, and light white are not on my shopping list). The character models themselves look too macho-Mexican with tiny feet and too large (and muscular) of a body. So all in all, I didn't like it. That doesn't mean you can't. But personally, it just feels like I'm playing some retarded Carribean game.
However, the second game took on a totally different approach with more of the action movies in mind. The color palette is rich in drab colors that somehow catch my attention. Although it looks very plain, it does catch that realistic aspect of the world. Now, you're set in some Asian country, so there's plenty of variety in landscapes. There's desert (as of now), forest, snow, and possibly more. The country itself is massive. The area you play on takes around 3 minutes to traverse top to bottom in a helicopter, and 15+ in a land vehicle. Even then, that's a tiny speck out of the whole area available to explore in the full game. Maybe 30-50+ minutes to traverse the entire island on a helicopter.
So, the graphics are good. How about the gameplay? Well, it's very nice indeed. Taking inspiration from action movies, you have a variety of tools available. A grappling hook allows you cling onto various objects within reach, making an excellent Spider-Man or James Bond. A rechargeable parachute and skydiving mechanics allow you to make some pretty interesting scenes, like jumping off a cliff with some dude in a hand-to-hand fight while falling to your doom. While gunplay is pretty easy for the most part, not being careful will result in death. However, the penalty for death seems rather forgiving, as it spawns you fairly close to where you died, with no apparent penalties. But, the health system is very complicated. Small wounds like bullet wounds can regenerate over time, but falling without a parachute, surviving an explosion, and getting run over will not regenerate. You'll need to access a medical cabinet to fix everything. And gunplay itself is very interesting. You aim at someone, and the camera locks onto them. Then, you can fine-tune your aim to target specific body parts. The legs might disorient someone allowing you to escape or target another individual, but a headshot is instant success.
Vehicles are aplenty. You'll get to drive standard civilian vehicles, but also military ground vehicles, naval vehicles, airborne vehicles such as helicopters and planes. You don't get real-life names, so don't expect to go around like a military freak. So far, a Boeing 747 has been confirmed, so you can transport civilians out of the island? Who knows, but you can surely come up with some interesting scenarios. Weapons are plentiful, and an idea ripped straight out of Mercenaries called the "black market" allows you to call in weapons, ground vehicles, and air vehicles. Maybe extraction, because the third option doesn't show. You unlock more items as you progress. If you collect weapon/vehicle parts scattered throughout the game world, then you can upgrade your favorite items to have better accuracy, magazine capacity, or damage for weapons, and better armor, speed, and offensive capabilities for vehicles. A total of 104 vehicles exist.
Missions and mini-quests exist throughout the game world. By causing CHAOS, you can unlock more missions. CHAOS is unlocked by causing chaos. There was no real trick behind it. You can cause CHAOS in a lot of ways. The most common method is to destroy military installations. They're scattered all over the place. You can disrupt military garrisons within towns. You can visit small strongholds and wipe out the local resistance. Or you could go for the big prizes, storm a military base, and take out all their defenses, supplies, and offensive weaponry. One base in the demo has you storm a biological missile silo (or at least, that's what I think it is) and overload the core reactor. Then, you must escape before the gaseous fumes reach you and kill you. Using your parachute to first storm down, you take cover with the nearby crates as you eliminate local hostilities. Then, you overload the reactor, and you use your grappling hook to latch onto a metallic beam high up. As you reach the beam you look down and watch a massive explosion ensue. You then escape on a light attack bird and use your miniguns to cut down on ground troops, but a nearby SAM site manages to get a hit. You then use your rockets to focus on taking out the SAMs, where you succeed. But you hear enemy radio chatter on your stolen bird and ETA 3 minutes. What measly fool can take on your beast of a chopper?!? Minigun bullets rip through the air as another helicopter targets you. However, with your low damage, your helicopter begins to spiral out of control. Fearing death, you jump off, engage your parachute, and then latch onto the enemy helicopter and jack it. This is a typical storm-the-castle procedure.
So, it's fun and all. Feels a lot like Mercenaries 2, however less bug-ridden and a tad more overwhelming, especially considering the map size. This might've been long, but I go in-depth so you don't waste your money on some game that a game developer praised for being good. I describe each inch of it so you get a basic idea of what you're buying. I hope more people follow my contributions, so, yeah. This game is definitely worth a buy for third-person shooter fanatics or those who want a good time, or even those who just came out of Modern Warfare 2 looking for some thrilling experiences beyond the standard FPS games that litter the gaming world. Just hope they get some multiplayer soon...
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