Just Cause 3 Review - Destroy the World.

By Sam Coles:

Chaos is the word that can sum up Just Cause 3 with the over the top gameplay with the explosions and high octane violence that doesn’t take itself seriously with an action movie tongue in cheek attitude.  Just Cause when it first came out was a strange Grand Theft Auto clone and people didn’t know what to think about it, when the second game came out in 2010 it was clear what the game wanted to do. After five years we get the third game in the series and it knows what it wants to be despite some technical issues.

You once again step into the shoes of Rico Rodriguez a mercenary who sorts out regions that are under the rule of dictators. His adventures take him back to his homeland Medici where he is trying to help the local resistance take down the warlord who is ruling over the people. The story is fairly generic, but it has fun and quirky characters that will make you chuckle here and there, but to be honest no one plays Just Cause for the story it’s all about the gameplay. 

The gameplay has had some tweaks for better and worse but I’ll get into that later. You’ll  traverse Medici via cars, aircraft, boats and your grapple hook, parachute and wing suit combo which defy the laws of physics as you travel around the 400 square mile map, yes 400 square miles. The best way to travel the map is the parachute and grapple hook because you can build up insane momentum and insane speeds as you travel down the side of a mountain with the wing suits which makes all the other vehicles useless. In terms of the bad they have gotten rid of the dodge roll from Just Cause 2 and I ask why? Aiming down sights is an upgrade option as well that would be like if in Call of Duty unlocking the ability to fire your gun it’s ridiculous.  

The main thing you’ll be doing in this game is blowing stuff up and it’s so much fun to enter a military base and burn it to the ground with various of weapons such as rocket launchers, grenade launchers, duel SMGs and so much more. You can even you use your grapple as a weapon by tethering objects together causing some devastating effects. You can take down a base without firing a single shot which makes you think outside the box and get creative with the grapple hook by using the environment to your advantage and plus it’s fun to tether someone to a jet and fly off.

The map is split up into 3-4 major islands and within them there are several provinces to liberate and you do this by destroying propaganda within towns or destroying military bases which will liberate that area. The more provinces you liberate the more weapons and vehicles you’ll gain to help you get around and fight. I like this because it gives you an incentive to do the side stuff, however it does get a bit repetitive in the latter stages of the game because it forces you to do these activities in order to continue the story which can be a pain.

The graphics are beautiful it really feels that you’re in the fictional region of Medici with the lush fields of poppies to the breath taking mountains as you glide down it with your wing suit. This is one of the best looking games of the year.

The explosions are bright, vibrant and light up the darkness when you’re causing chaos at night coupled with the star studded sky.  Everything is colourful and varied you never really see the same landscape from the Spanish villas in the towns to the white sands on the beaches sometimes I’ll just stand there and take in the views because they’re so breath taking.

The main problem I have with this game this is only apparent with the console versions and not the PC, the game’s frame rate with drop to unplayable digits to about 20 fps or lower. This only happens when you really start tearing things up with lots of explosions which makes the game slow down like crazy. Avalanche Studios are aware of this problem; however they don’t know when they’re going to fix this problem with a patch.  There is also a problem with loading times because when I first booted the game up it took nearly four minutes to load.  When you are in the middle of the game and when you die it will take between 60-90 seconds to load again. This is unacceptable! It really sucks you out of this game because it’s fantastic when you’re playing but problems like this just in rage me.

Just Cause 3 is a game that doesn’t take itself seriously and is a great way to take out your stress on by blowing stuff up and causing absolute chaos after a long day. This is a fantastic game to close the year with and I would highly recommend it if you want a good open world game with lots to do.