Just Cause 2 follows what can only be described as the first Just Cause (I'm really running out of ways to introduce sequels, fast). I'd like to preface by saying that the first Just Cause was not very good. I may even say it was downright bad. Besides looking pretty, it was so off-putting as to almost warrant its own retro-review.
The second game however came in to say it was sorry and it'll never do it again. If you've seen any of the outlandish stunts that take place in the commercials and videos of the game and wondered if you've already seen the best parts. You should know that those were only the best parts if you are not very creative. While the bulk of the environment is not too terribly destructible, pretty much everything can participate in some kind of explosion. There is rarely a moment in which you wish something would explode and it doesn't. Stuff even explodes when you've had nothing to do with it. Sweet.
And while the explosions themselves don't really look that great (there are moments that you can actually see the triangles that the fire is made from (yeah, 3D fire and explosions are all made of triangles)), everything else is phenomenal. The islands of the fictional south Asian country of Panau are huge and you can explore all of it. There's towns, mountains with snow, deserts, the whole gamut. And it's all believably far enough apart. From one corner of the map to the other is easily 20km. That's really far, especially for everything in between to be accessible.
Now you may be wondering, "Ja'far, you handsome man of color; how does one traverse all that real estate?" The answer is, with planes, boats, cars, an endless supply of parachutes... and a tether. You can tether just about anything and use it to pull yourself around both on land and when parachuting off of something. The tether itself is perhaps one of the most versatile tools in recent videogame history and most of the fun of the game comes from tethering one thing to another thing and watching hilarity ensue. You can tether a dude to a car and drag him. Tether a dude to a gas tank and fire him off into space (or around the room with hilarious results). Tether a dude to another dude and so on. The tethering possibilities are endless. Tether.
All this tethering and parachuting does come at the cost of accessible controls however, so if complex controls aren't your thing, you will find it hard to do probably half of the best stuff in JC2. You'll still have a good time blowing up all of the government's stuff though, and that's good since that's essentially what the game is actually about.
The story, while being paper thin, is actually somewhat deeper than it lets on. Probably because it waits until the final cutscene to reveal that there are actual undertones to all that tethering and exploding. Even the story being what it is doesn't mar the game as a whole though. What does mar the game is the length. While a good time is to be had with all of the above shenanigans, after about 15 hours, I was looking for the game to end. At that point I felt I had parachuted and tethered to my heart's content. There was however over 10 more hours to go. The fact that there are only 7 actual story missions and the rest of that time is spent on side missions really starts to wear thin. Go here, kill that dude is fun for a while, but why am I on this island again?
Overall though, JC2 is a mega fun game. Is it worth $60? Well, it'll keep you busy for a ton of hours and with the Mercenary Mode you get for completing the story so you can continue your tethering and uh, whatever else it is you do, I'd definitely say so. Is it game of the year? You do know God of War 3 came out this year right?
Played on XBox 360 on Experienced (Hard).
