Just Cause is the type of game that is very popular with kids these days, and that is the so-called 'sandbox'-games. The goal of these type of games is usually to focus on the player's freedom to explore the world and do whatever he/she wants to. What shocked me is how well this game was received. If you've played the demo, you will notice the quotes of the many praise the game has gotten which the demo proudly shows you at the beginning. Personally, I always thought it looked like just another sandbox-game, but I never knew it was going to be even worse then that. In the time that I played this game I never noticed any significant storyline or at least something that is interesting enough to be mentioned.
The very first thing that bugged me when I started playing Just Cause was the horrible camera-control. Whenever you want to turn the camera to look around you, the screen does this stupid motion-blur that flatout completely ruins your vision. On top of that, the camera-control is highly sensitive, so you are going to get annoyed with this problem a lót. So after some time I hardly even used the camera.
Its not just the camera-control that is broken, your character Rico is the stiffest character I've played with in a long while. His animations are really poor (like most of the characters in this game), and he seems to lack the ability to run for some stupid reason which is very strange considering this is supposed to be a sandbox-game where moving from place to place is usually a crucial thing.
For what its worth, the graphics are at least okay. They set a nice atmosphere, although its nothing you've never seen before. The creators of Just Cause must have been aware of the broken controls, and thats why the game includes a auto-aim function. Basically this means that whenever a enemy is close to you and you aim anywhere near it you will get this big circle around him and from there you can just pull the trigger until he's dead. The funny thing is though that the targets you have to assassinate on some missions take longer to kill. Its obvious that the developers wanted to give the player more challenge, but the game gives no kind of explanation to whý those particular people can take so much more bullets then regular enemy's. This almost makes the game feel like an arcade-shooter, but the enemy AI is very laughable so its still pretty easy to take them out.
I never understood why gamemagazines and websites were stumbling all over each other to get a scoop of this game. Its just a very lackluster attempt at a sandbox-game that was probably rushed out the door which would explain the game's bad AI, crappy controls and overall technical flaws. My advice: stick to Mercenary's (2). Just Cause isn't worth your money and frustration.
