I Finally Finished Just Cause 3 | Review
I Have Cause. It is Because I Recommend it.
I Have Cause. It is Because I Recommend it.
A really fun physics sandbox, that can be held back by its repetition and quantity of activities. That being said, if you enjoy the gameplay loop and the physics, there’s a lot of fun to be had. NameBrand.
While I do ultimately recommend this game for its brilliant physics sandbox and endless destructive fun, I have some additional context for this review, plus a few pain points, before I move into why I ultimately recommend this Just Cause 3.
The gameplay loop is very identical across your 40-hour journey working your way toward the end credits… go to a place, shoot the red explosive things, kill the dudes, and raise the flag, ending the mission. Doing so unlocks side quests where you interact with various aspects of the game world, be it vehicles, the wing suit, weapons, etc. These side quests rank your effort from one to six ‘gears’ per its category, and as you collect more gears, you unlock upgrades for the category of ‘thing featured in the side-quest’. Story missions are unlocked as you complete this loop at a much larger scale across the map, and these story missions, on completion, might unlock a new weapon or vehicle for you to use as you please.
It’s a tried and true gameplay loop, that is overall very fun — it worked great for me in its predecessor, Just Cause 2… but something about it here in Just Cause 3 is stale in longer play sessions. I would often find myself playing for shorter amounts of time than I typically do when gaming, 30 minutes to an hour. Then I’d get bored, and usually, play something else. Because of this… I’ve been playing this game on and off for almost 4 years now. Four years from the day I booted the game up, to today, where I saw the credits roll. Some weeks I didn’t even touch it, other weeks I played a little every day. Very much “here a little, there a little”. Which sounds like a negative point, and for some of you it will be, but for me, it worked! I like playing “breather” games in between other games that I’m playing more frequently, and Just Cause 3 has regularly hit that spot. If anything, it should show just how strong of a game it is, to consistently bring me back over THAT long of a time period.
I might have played more often and in longer play sessions if the game world was a bit smaller. An odd thing to say about an ‘open world’, right? Not to make comparisons again, but in Just Cause 2, the island feels just big enough to be interesting, yet was still small enough for me to enjoy exploring, because locations never felt too far away. While there are more tools, vehicles, physics systems, and weapons in Just Cause 3, because the objectives are so far away, I always felt the pressure to fast travel, or just use the most optimum method of travel, in order to constantly be moving towards my next mission. Not great for a game where experimenting in the open world sandbox is one of the main reasons I’m playing it.
Now, not only is the scale of the map bigger, there’s a huge amount of content, an almost overwhelming amount even. And if you want the end game abilities and tools… you’re going to have to subject yourself to a vast majority of the game grinding for them. Six gears on all activities, and all settlements liberated, to be exact. But that’s just for your parachute, wing suit, grapple hooks, grenades, and vehicle upgrades. If you want to drive every vehicle in the game, you’re going to have to spend the time tracking those vehicles down across the nation, driving each of them to a chop shop, and rinsing and repeating for every unique car (and boat!) you find. If you desire all the weapons on offer, you’re going to have to hunt down every single collectable, which will certainly take many additional hours even with a guide. There’s such a massive time requirement here for completionists, which contrasts Just Cause 2, where everything is obtained by simply making it to the end credits and going out of your way to do something a handful of times.
‘Padding’ doesn’t make this a bad game or a bad experience, but you can begin to see how it could get tedious the longer you play, and it's a tedium I don’t feel is necessary. To reiterate an earlier point, the main appeal Just Cause 3 has, is the physics sandbox. Limiting the entirety of it behind game completion feels out of place. Having the map be so enormous, that you even consider fast traveling, instead of driving a TukTuk down the tallest mountain in the game, is just sad. The scope of what a Just Cause game can be, has certainly evolved for this sequel. But I argue that it goes in a few directions, some so far that it does mar portions of your experience.
However, my gripes all out of the way… This is perhaps one of my top 5 all-time favorite open world physics sandboxes. I love messing around in it. It’s perfectly broken in every good way, and the hilarity that comes from the game engine desperately trying to understand what unholy thing you’ve done, is priceless. I can’t tell you how many clips I’ve saved of vehicles blasting off into outer space because they touched some object “wrong”, or of enemies randomly zooming across the pavement for no reason at all, and more. It’s always delightfully surprising and the complete lack of realism kills me in a bout of laughter every time something occurs, without fail. That’s pretty much why I always come back. This is a comedy game and I cannot be convinced otherwise.
The inclusion of the grapple hook that you can detach and attach to things, reeling two or more objects together… chefs kiss. Perfection. Helicopters mean nothing as a foe if you tether them to literally any other game entity, including the ground, and reel them together. Amazing stuff. With more upgrades for more tethers and stronger tethers, your creativity is continuously stretched over the course of your time with the game. For example, I once spent a nice chunk of time attaching a boat to my helicopter, because I needed to take the boat to the chop shop on land. It was an insane challenge, that eventually worked out. But it's weird stuff like that where Just Cause 3 truly shines. You can be creative in whatever ways you can imagine with the grapple hook, and there’s a lot of fun to be had there as you work on upgrading that tool set.
For what it's worth, despite how numerous they were, I did find a large majority of the activities to be fun and relaxing, particularly, the gliding activities. I always made a point to do those because they were really stunning, as you flew haphazardly through the scenic vistas across the nation, and were also fun to master. Generally speaking, the wing suit is an amazing addition to the game and gamified traversal in all sorts of excellent ways. It’s a major addition that deserves its own bravo.
The vehicles (with good stats) are a blast to drive and have the perfect amount of goofiness to them. Driving really fast cars to the edge of cliffs, then using the nitro-jump is insane, and seeing how far you can drive down mountains is every bit of fun as it was in JC2, with the added inclusion that you can be viciously ejected from vehicles and somehow gracefully transition into a wing suit activation… Even the jet planes are fun to mess with. Vehicles are top-notch here. But again, you definitely need to drive the right ones, which will require you to collect them.
Weapons feel deadly enough, I suppose? I didn’t really enjoy the primary or secondary weapons, but the tertiary power weapons always stole the show for me. Those are insanely powerful and a blast to use every time. Which had the unintended effect of making all other weapons forgettable. Speaking of forgettable, I couldn’t pinpoint the soundtrack if you played it for me today. It’s serviceable enough during gameplay, especially in times of solitude, like gliding around the island, but there are no tracks that deserve a spot in my ‘Video Game OSTs’ Playlist.
Perhaps one more forgettable thing, the narrative. I couldn’t care less to be honest. There’s a revolution… bad man in power… take him out… So much dialogue. At a certain point, I started skipping over 90% of all the cutscenes, because you get it. No amount of banter will change how I interact with the world. Which is why you’re here, right? You should be playing for the physics playground, and physics based comedy. Maybe I would have got more attached to the game if I had continued to pay attention, but I knew what I was getting into, and again, didn’t need any additional motivations to feel good about blowing stuff up, wreaking havoc.
As a brief aside, I haven’t tried it, but apparently the multiplayer mod is chaotic fun, and easy to install. Just in case that tips the scale for you.
Overall, Just Cause 3 is a good game, and even a great game at times. But if you’re not ready for the time sink to get some of the more powerful upgrades to your gear, or even the time sink required to roll end credits, then it might not be for you. Just Cause 2 might be more your speed, though. A good initial indicator is if you don’t like the gameplay loop within the first few hours of play, then it’s definitely not your thing (because there’s going to be a lot more of that). But, for those of you who enjoy the game loop, and have the time to mess around in the physics sandbox with some of the fun upgrades, there’s no doubt in my mind that you’ll have a blast playing Just Cause 3. For you, I recommend it.
Originally published at https://backloggd.com.