Just Cause 3

This game was always one of my favorites but after this last playthrough, not so much. The actual campaign feels pretty short. It requires a lot of side stuff (which is honestly more fun than the missions until you do it too much) just to unlock all missions. Some of the challenges to obtain new skills are completely absurd and some are super easy. The DLCs are actually outstanding and even make the base game more fun providing awesome new weapons and vehicles to mess around with. The game could use a better selection of weapons and equipment, maybe some cooler vehicles. Vehicles are basically worthless in this game because wingsuiting is much more efficient. The final fight is one of the easiest final fights ever.

Go to a province, blow shit up, liberate it. Go to the next one, blow shit up, etc. Repeat ad nauseum.

The core gameplay is fun for a bit, but there is no depth. This game is truly mindless.

With over 40 hours and having liberated every province and collected every car, I can say that Just Cause 3 is one of my all time favorites. However the story I feel is dragged out longer than it should be, but nonetheless its still fun and truly a great experience to explore.

Just Cause 2 is my (joint) favourite video game of all time. I played the fuck out of it when I was young, back then (and probably still now) I could tell you any fact about the game, and thus have strong memories and nostalgia associated with it. So, naturally, I was absolutely thrilled with the prospect of a new addition to the series, but when it arrived, my disappointment was immense. It feels like an entirely different series just with the same few gimmicky mechanics, it looks horribly different, the game feels weirdly clunky, it's very unrewarding and honestly quite boring to play. They took everything that made the game what it is out.

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.

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.