User blog:Brick425/Just Cause 3 is Good - A Review

Just Cause 1: A game that had great ideas, but they weren't developed enough and was more of a demo for its sequel.

Just Cause 2: Might as well have been called "Just Explosions 2" because races were useless and boring.

Just Cause 3: Best game in the world. Ever.

I don't care if you think GTA V next gen's lowrider customization makes it the best game ever, or that the hype and fantastic delivery of Fallout 4 makes it the best game ever.

The beauty of JC3 is that it takes the amazing gameplay of Just Cause 2 to the next level, but not by revamping the whole story or changing a lot about what the Just Cause series has always been and will always been about: Blowing stuff up, freeing countries with beautiful landscapes from their dictators in true American style, and just having FUN.

Don't get me wrong, Fallout 4 is great, and GTA V is... Well, they're both games. But Just Cause 3 is special, because it doesn't focus on story, depth, or edginess. You're thrown into a huge map full of explodable stuff (And more importantly, TRAINS WITH FREAKING JETS ON FLATCARS THAT YOU CAN TAKE OFF FROM THE TRAIN WHILE IT'S MOVING AND THEN COME BACK TO THE TRAIN, DODGE ITS MISSILES, AND BLOW UP THE BRIDGE AHEAD SO IT FALLS DOWN AND BLOWS UP MORE CARS BELOW), and told "See this guy? Destroy his army and his bases, but do it in any way you feel like!"

Destroying stuff with guns has been done.

As has destroying stuff with cars, boats, planes, explosives, etc.

But what's never been done is a grappling hook. At first it just sounds like a special tool for getting up high buildings. Not in Just Cause it isn't. It's your substitute for prescious ammunition to blow up water towers. It's your method of propelling you through the air via parachute or wingsuit. It's the thing you go to when you say, "Meh, I'm too lazy to take out this chopper by commandeering it. Let me just grapple it to this huge radio mast and destroy both."

The game REWARDS you with that sort of thinking. You get points for destroying both enemy vehicles and enemy structures. Why waste your time dealing with one and then the other when you could just deal with them both at the same time?

All this somehow feels right in such a beautiul place as the Mediterranian. Sunflower and lavendar fields, vast blue oceans, open skies. Then... Concrete walls. Barbed wire. Lead bullets. Wood stocks. Rubber tank (APC actually, but the game calls them tanks so whatever.) tires. The sound of a jet roaring through the sky, patrolling for anyone who hasn't taken 5 steps to the right. (Political joke, hee hee.)

This dictator, General Francisco Franco Ripoff, Esquire (But most people call him General Di Ravello for short) dares to ruin the land of the Greater Olive Ocean area? Not if Rico Rodriguez and his cocky friend Mario (Not the Nintendo character.) have anything to do with it! By blowing up everything! That'll show him, and it isn't ironic at all!

But getting around this land will be tough without transportation, and the easiest method of such to find around is a car. Lucky for you, unlike in JC2, you can actually drive a car faster than 30 miles an hour before bodyroll takes over.

Or, should I say 48.2 kilometers an hour? Because you're forced to use metric measurements. But for me this isn't a problem, as I have binge watched Top Gear on Netflix before. If you haven't, 400 kilometers is around 250 miles. (I know this from the Veyron SS episode.) 100 kilometers is around 60 miles. 60 kilometers is around 40 miles. There you go, that should work.

Now, boats have knots instead of kilometers, and I have no clue, so go ask someone who sails about that. But it shouldn't be hard to estimate your speed, so it's not that big of a deal.

Enemies are significantly more diversified, and you have two enemy factions now: The Medici Military, and the DRM. Before you go protesting Square Enix for including such terrible things into their games, a la Ubisoft and EA, learn that DRM actually stands for Di Ravello Militia.

These militia guys are nothing but legalized gang members who pretend to be the cops of the country. They don't even have two handed weapons like the military guys do. And they drive around in pickup trucks. Yeah, no joke.

But don't fret, for the DRM is only found in towns, and there are more challenging enemies out there. Go into bases and get heat level 3, and you'll be greeted by elite troops with body armor that drive around in Humvees instead of G-Classes, as well as choppers with two types of missiles.

Get to the insane heat level 5, and you can say hello to the Medici Special Forces. These guys are insanely strong and cool looking, with night vision goggles and sniper-style hoods. They use dual weapons like the DRM, but they actually know how to shoot them at you. They also to cool tricks while fighting you like rolling, so I like to either use explosives or just get the hell out. Seriously, some of these Captain [s]America[/s] Medici clones were in this one mission I played, and for a sec I thought it turned into Terrorist Simulator because they came at me like Seal Team Six.

Speaking of missions, there are actually more than 6 main missions in this game. (JC2's focus was in working with the three gangs. They were good, but there were more exciting and open ended ways of getting cash.)

All these missions make you feel properly hard and Bruce Willis-like, whether it's taking out jets with dual SMGs spitting rounds out at a rate of 1000 per minute from the top of a huge cargo plane, or sniping enemies from far away while protecting your friends in a base down below.

Which is what a game should make you feel like. In the end we're (Usually) all normal people just having some fun when playing a game, looking for a way to feel more bad than Jackie Chan with two gold Desert Eagles with infinite ammo.

And Just Cause 3 does that right.