Just Cause 3

This game is buggy, repetitive, half of the map is barren, the history is nothing to write home about, but it has the option to get a DLC with a Jetpack that you can use the rest of the game replacing most of the mechanics and that legitimately makes the whole game awesome.

At its base this is a third person shooter game, you use guns to destroy things and collect vehicles to go from place to place which so far is nothing great or anything of the sort, but it also has a hook to go from building to building a la Spiderman and also there is a parachute and a wingsuit that allows you to glide which starts to make things fun, it makes the gameplay focus more on movement and more dynamic.

With the Jetpack, coming from the Skyfortress DLC, the whole game takes a whole new level. Now with it you can not just glide but now you can use a boost every couple of seconds in the middle of the air to let you stay in the sky for as long as you want to and go all over the map flying and gliding. It is simply so much fun being able to go through the mountains and see the whole panorama, to destroy helicopters and jets with the air canyon while flying and blow things up from the sky, avoid missiles and shoot rockets into the ground parachuting once you have gained enough height.

A lot of things can be done with the Jetpack instead, going to a far away base in the middle the sea with a boat? You can arrive there with the Jetpack. Going from mission to mission using the cars found in each town? You can reach far away places with the Jetpack as well, instant fast travel with a great view to boost. Even the final boss goes from a game from hide and seek in the mountains to an epic battle in the skies going higher and higher into the stratosphere.

So, while this might not be the way the game intended me to play it, I am glad it allowed me to do so, since the whole reason I got it is because I wanted to feel like I could fly, to feel like a super hero, and in that this game totally delivers.

If you like GTA you'll probably like Just Cause 3. Just Cause 3 is similar to GTA - albeit with a story revolving around a mysterious McGuffin element named Bavarium and a ruthless dictator whose regime is being toppled by rebels - both of whose ideologies are kept mysteriously vague beyond just "one like freedom and the other doesn't."

In all seriousness, I like JC3. I think that its strengths overpower its flaws, especially in terms of gameplay. But the flaws it does have are glaring.

STORY

Note: This section is going to contain major, major spoilers. If you don't want to be spoiled for this game then skip over this section of the review and go straight to the gameplay or movement section.

Just Cause 3's story stars the main protagonist of the Just Cause games - Rico Rodriguez freeing his home country of Medici from the evil Sebastian Di Ravello. Di Ravello is an evil dictator - we know this because every citizen in Medici whines about how awful he is! This is the first problem with the game's story - how is Di Ravello still in power, and why do people support him? Why does he have a giant army willing to throw their lives away for him while simultaneously burning down his own cities for virtually nothing? Despite the fact that he burned down THE ENTIRE NORTHERN PART OF THE ISLAND? And, as is explained in the DLC, allowed hostile companies to operate on Medician soil? This man practically makes Kim Jong Un look like a saint! And why are the rebels isolated to tiny safe havens around Medici when they clearly have comparable, if not better numbers than Di Ravello's men - men who support him because...?

As for the rest of the characters it doesn't get better. Dinah has no personality, beyond having possible adhd. She's got the start of a character, but she doesn't have an actual arc. I won't go over the entire story, because if you've played the game you'll know how forgettable it is- the story is just a paper thin way to string along the cool explosions and badass action set pieces. While I suppose it does its job relatively well, it falls short in being an actual story. Rico is probably the best written character, only because his one-liners outside of cutscenes are hilarious.

MOVEMENT

The real meat of JC3 is in its movement. - so much so that I'm willing to put it before the gameplay segment of this review. The movement in this game is what in my eyes moves it from a middling 2.5-3 to a solid 3.5-4. Rico has more freedom (heh) to move wherever he wants than any protagonist in a Far Cry or Grand Theft Auto, and he has more options in combat as well because of this movement. The ability to use your wingsuit and grapple around like a madman gives you a myriad of abilities to deal with enemies. You can run and gun on the ground, you can snipe them from above, grapple onto their helicopters and make a quick escape, or you can use the grappling hooks you have to pin them to walls and objects. The possibilities are endless, especially with upgrades that give your grappling hook more strength and length. And, if you ever get bored of flying and grappling around, you can always steal a car from one of Medici's civilians or get one dropped in. A car that is made of glass, paper, and dynamite and that will explode for just about any reason provided Rico isn't in the driver's seat.

GAMEPLAY

The gameplay of JC3 is intertwined with its movement. You've going to be using your movement in just about any combat encounter, and it's a huge part of the game. But you've also got access to other weapons. Namely, guns. The guns are just... boring. Like, they work - they get the job done - but they all feel the same. The assault rifles have no difference between them, the shotguns all feel the same, and the pistols have no kick or oomph. The shooting mechanics are just.. meh. When you unlock the precision aim mechanic, you can aim a bit like you can in GTA - but why is this is an unlockable mechanic? Why is aiming a mechanic you have to unlock?

One thing I like about Medici is the mechanic of freeing provinces. You fly to an outpost, or a military base, or a town, you shoot some DI Ravello Soldiers, and you leave. It's like Far Cry but with no stealth. You just go in guns blazing, and if you want to space out and blow stuff up, you can do that.

The missions are not the same. The missions in Just Cause 3 are terrible. They feel like GTA missions but without any of the humor or fun that makes GTA missions fun. Missions like "of Cows and Wine" feel shoehorned in without any real care. Some missions also force you into small corridors filled with enemies - a formula that can work in a game like GTA where combat is based primarily upon firing from cover - but that falls apart in a game like JC3 where movement is the fundamental ingredient.

VERDICT

You like explosions? You just want to turn your brain off and shoot some generic bad guys with pistols and rifles? You'll love this game.

Overall though, JC3 is a game that could stand to benefit from better writing, gunplay, and missions. AS it stands though JC3 is the video game equivalent to a cheesy 80's action movie. It's not Die Hard, but it's got plenty of explosions and guns to give you a dopamine hit.

75/100

Just Cause 3 is at its best when you're flying around using your grappling hook, parachute and wingsuit throwing explosives at anything red. It's at its worst when you have to fight waves of soldiers using, ugh, rifles and pistols. The side missions that involve blowing up things in creative ways are easily worth playing but the dull main story and empty open world hold back the game from being as good as it could be.

(Originally written as a Steam review, Dec 6 2015)

I have to say I feel a little guilty reviewing this game a few days after it comes out, as if I have a complete understanding of the entire game so far, but I think that the Just Cause Formula for Fun allows me to give this game an accurate review after such a short period of time.

Here's the thing about Just Cause: You don't buy the games for the plot. In this game, even more so than in the last ones, the plot is little more than a pretense to either a) give you new ways to blow things up b) act as a glorified challenge mode where you blow things up in a specific way. The plot is only slightly more serious than in JC2, but I suspect that's accidental, the effect of giving the people in-universe half-Spanish-half-Italian accents instead of whatever the ♥♥♥♥ that was in Panau.

Not much has changed in Just Cause 3. It all looks so visually impressive, as JC2 did upon release and for such a long time after. The world is large and even more beautiful than in 2, although admittedly it feels a little smaller simply because the terrain isn't as ridiculously diverse as 2 was (large desert right next to a rainforest? what the ♥♥♥♥ is this?) but the depth makes the game more interesting. The "things you blow up" category has been expanded greatly, and now includes things such as entire bridges.

List of things the devs changed for Just Cause 3 to make it more fun despite many of them defying all logic:
Wingsuit makes traveling in the air less of a pain in the ♥♥♥♥♥ because, when combined with the parachute, you can now travel the entire map without ever landing on the ground if you have the skill.
Unlimited c4, but you can't throw it anymore. This isn't as big a deal, because the throwing range for c4 in JC2 was approximately 2 feet (.005 meters) so there's nothing of value lost
Melee is now a shoulder bash that you can do while moving, so it's not as complete trash as it was in 2.
Airdrops are now a beacon that costs you zero money and is refreshed by visiting safehouses.
Related: Now there are a lot more vehicles, including civvy vehicles, and you can get an entire loadout (guns and a car) dropped at once.
Fast travel is easy to do, it uses a "flare" (some arbitrary resource that vanishes when you click "fast travel" on the map) that is also replenished from safehouses but is only used up when fast travelling in occupied parts of the map.
Neither fast travel or airdrops require you to listen to Tom Sheldon go "How can I help you, hombre?," "What do you need?," or "Air Sheldon, at your service"
Multiple grapple tethers that you can now retract at will, meaning you can now take out a lot of outposts without even firing a single shot
Oh, and a lot of things can now be "modded" by completing challenges, including such things as "homing frag grenades" (yes, the ones you through) and C4 that acts as a jet booster before blowing up.

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At the time of writing, the game has only been out a week, week and a half. There are a good number of bugs with the game and the devs have announced they are working hard on a huge patch.

Gameplay: Vastly improved over 2. It's a lot more fun to get around the world and interact with the stuff in it, but it feels slightly more hollow. The terrain in 2 was ridiculously varied, to the point where you almost felt as if you were tearing up completely different countries. In this one that's kind of scaled back, but the amped up gameplay more than makes up for it.... Except for the current handling of cars, cars are atrocious at the time of writing. 7.75/10

Graphics/Visual Experience: The game is as visually impressive as 2 was during its release. The dev team shows that they're still good at creating breathtaking views. Immersion is negatively affected by that slight hollowness of the world I mentioned above, but not so much that it's a serious issue. Overall, a very stunning visual experience. 9.8/10

Sound: Explosions feel like they have impact, and the more imposing guns have more imposing sounds to go with them. Spanish/Italian music to go with the Spanish/Italian hybrid culture of the fictional nation. Not much to remark on here. 7/10

Replayability: About the same as always. Just Cause is not a game that's played for the plot. Some of the terrible controls from 2 have been fixed but for me personally, this does not affect replayability as much as it might for others. Also note that the category of "causing explosions because it's cool" might appeal to you more/less strongly than it appeals to me. 8/10

How it Runs: I fully expect this to change with the upcoming patch because this is the main complaint people have with the game: It's not very well-optimized at the moment and while most people can run it, it's hard to find a setup that runs it well. Currently most of the fixes come in the form of things like "disable Steam Overlay," suggesting that the demanding requirements might be from bugs instead of being from the game trying to be technically impressive.

This game isn't a great game (definitely doesn't deserve the rating it has on here. It's still pretty good), but god damn is it ever addicting blowing stuff up.

Just Cause 3 is pretty bad. The combat has a huge amount of potential, but everything from the parachute to the shooting and driving feels janky. The enemy AI is braindead. Then there is also the open world design that pads out the good stuff. Then the game also runs horribly on the ps4, and it keeps asking for loggin everytime i open the map, which is really annoying.