Just Cause 2: Physics Don't Real

Just Cause 2 represents something wonderful in the video game world.  At some point, video game companies decided that they would try for realism.  It was an okay idea, with graphics getting better and engines gaining the ability to have complex AI and huge advances in level design they figured that realism would make a more immersive and enjoyable game.

I somewhat agree, well thought out, story driven realism games are great, things like Metro 2033, Call of Duty 4, Spec Ops: The Line, that sort of thing.  But it gets taken too far.  If a game is going for realism then it starts gaining the same criticisms as action movies, there's no earthly way that any of the stuff is possible.  It becomes almost comical how unrealistics supposedly realistic games become and it takes out some of the fun.

Just Cause 2 is realistic in the ideas that you at least appear to be human and bullets kill you and other people, that's about it, but damn it's fun.

Fuck you realism

Modern sandbox games are going in a good direction in my opinion.  The whole idea of freedom is, well, to be free.  Making you completely human and fragile makes the game less fun.  Just Cause 2 understands this and made the game over the top, completely crazy and fun.  If I want to grapple hook a person off a motorcycle and then drive it off a bridge, free fall for a bit and then hijack a plane mid flight the game obliges me.  And no, I don't want to go bowling with my cousin, I don't care how "real" that is, it's fucking boring.

Just Cause's glue, the thing that hold the whole game together is fucking around.  You fuck around until you get enough points so you can go fuck around with some factions and eventually fuck around with the CIA.  It flows nicely and rewards you for doing what you actually want to do, nice and straight forward.

Mmmm, chaos

It's a good thing the fucking around is fun because the rest of the game is kind of terrible to be fair.  The story is god awful.  It's stupidly short, there's zero character development and no twists or turns, it's pretty linear and predictable.  The faction missions are a bit better but horribly arbitrary, nothing seemed to carry any weight at all.  Sure they were fun, but what was the point?  The dialogue is cringe worthy in some sections and has zero flow to it at all.

It also had some really strange balance issues.  The difficulty of the game is all over the place with some missions being incredibly easy, especially if you brought a helicopter to play with, while others are stupidly hard.  The upgrade system didn't seem to make much sense either, there's hardly any change in the guns when you do upgrade them and I didn't even bother with the vehicle upgrades because they only apply to the over-priced vehicles you order off the black market.  My average time in a car before it exploded, got flipped over or I ran it off a cliff must have been less than two minutes.  I'm not going to spend four missions worth of cash on something that I'm going to wreck the second I get it.  The fast cars are stupidly hard to drive in anything but a straight line and those would be the only ones I'd be willing to buy, aside from the fucking awesome single seat jet.

Wish they'd let me buy one of these

But I did have fun, quite a lot of fun actually.  Just ignore the shit story and go blow some stuff up and you'll get the full experience of the game.  The controls are nice, the weapons and most of the vehicles work well and the world is huge and fun to explore.  That and it often goes on sale for incredibly small amounts that is well worth it.  Now on to some of the best screen shots I've ever taken.

Homemade one-way jetpack

It is possible to land the planes, kind of