Just Cause 2 - Page 2

I think you just turned on Panau Tourist realism mode. You have to take a cab everywhere, and it will get way too hot, which will prompt you to go back to the cruise ship and hit the buffet.

lol. Nice one trevor!!

Man, sorry to hear about that, Alex. I've gotten burned by the reliance on auto-save so many times, you'd be astounded how many times I continue to get burned by it. (As far as console reliability goes, I treat my 360 like it's a battering husband. Keep it happy and I won't come to any grief. I won't even let my wife clean near it. Pathetic, I know.)

I did the first (intro) mission and did it pretty slowly. I was taking my time trying to perfect some grappling combat techniques and combo grapple/parachute maneuvers. I tend to be a lollygagger when it comes to gaming. Absorbing atmosphere is a big thing for me. It's probably a result of enough games with tragically short main plotlines.

Gonna start stretching my legs later tonight, though. The stuff you've gotten to Trevor sounds great and hilarious. I'm jonesed that the designers have deemed it worthwhile to let players get their mitts on some serious elements petty much right out of the gate.

Apparently WalMart Canada has it for $39.99 right now.

I wish the cars would actually take hard damage when you tether pursuing cars to the ground or road side objects. They violently appear to get whipped around but are quickly on your tail after doing that move.

After getting the keys to the island I haven't bothered with missions or factions at all - just been zipping around aimlessly.

The cars seem immune to bullets. There's a limo hijack mission that has you driving 3 miles on roundabouts, and I must have taken five straight minutes of point-blank AK fire without suffering any damage. Weird.

I'm finding the scavenger-type base/settlement completion stuff more fun than the actual missions. It's more or less JC2's orb collection mode.

Played on Normal and got the kill 50 enemies without taking any damage achievement with my first fifty kills. Decided to start again on Hardcore. Loving the look and style of the game, it definitely feels more interesting than the original in terms of visuals.

It does seem easy. Does hardcore do anything besides make the enemies more resilient?

You seem to take more damage and they take a bit more damage, certain guys take like three headshots. The only issue on hardcore is ammo, I keep running out of bullets.

If it were possible to be offended by an American stereotype, the White Tiger might do the trick. His dialogue is just a random string of American-sounding words.

Rico: So who are we up against?

Tiger: BARBECUE UNCLE SAM T-SHIRT FOOTBALL

Rico: And just where do I meet this mysterious new contact?

Tiger: WHISKEY HORSE-APPLE FRIED FOOD! HOOOO-EEY!

Yeah the White Tiger's string of Uncle Samism was kind of hilarious. I kind of love how they've made Baby Panay possibly the gayest looking motherfucker ever. He looks like a fat, Vietnamese, John Waters.

Now that I've figured out that you can detach mounted guns taking over bases is a lot easier.

I actually thought Baby Panay was White Tiger's goofy personification nickname for the island.

The story isn't good, but I'll be damned if it isn't entertaining in the worst way. Every now and then, characters will drop a really funny turn of phrase that's so obviously a half-assed translation. Tiger calling people "hirelings" and pronouncing it SLOOOATH DEMON!, for example.

The only really bad thing about the story is that the main character is just nowhere near as fun as he was in the first game. In Just Cause 1 he is essentially El Mariachi, in this one he's just gruff.

But the game plays so well it's silly to get annoyed. I just love soaring around with the parachute and at certain times of day the game is stunning. The water and weather effects are pheonemnal, but it's the sunsets which make this one of the better looking games I've seen on the 360. The only problem is that Hardcore feels natural for the missions, but it makes the takeovers a lot more difficult than they need to be.

Also this game is fucking massive. 6 hours in, 3 of the 7 main missions done but I'm only at 5% completion.

I'm finding the missions really, really easy, but the takeovers and the base completion sidemissions are challenging enough on normal. I'm sure the completion percentage includes every single settlement and military base, which would probably take (me, at least) dozens of hours, at least. it took me around twenty minutes to clear out a random oil rig in the middle of the bay, and there are like ten of them in the game. I've fucked around for almost ten hours, and have completed maybe eight or nine missions - so yeah, it's huge.

I'm thinking this might be the biggest landmass I've ever seen in a game. I never played Fuel, which looks like a piece of shit, but I'm consistently amazed at the detail in the little river villages and cities and base structures in this game.

Yeah some of the little details in the game are great. The fact they've programmed shit underwater for such a large body of water is mind blowing and whilst the destruction is scripted it looks fucking impressive at night time.

I was taking a sea port and was in the process of hijacking a helicopter whilst an oil silo beside me went to explode, I threw the pilot out and watched as he fell down into the middle of the explosion. It's full of great little moments like that. It's also impressive that they've actually made the side stuff so interesting, I'm actually enjoying slowly getting 100% in all these little villages and military bases.

Yeah, this is all about the completionist scavenging for me so far. I typically hate the "get to 100%!" scavenger stuff in games, with the notable exception of Crackdown, but the diversity and detail in the camps is really making it fun. I'm finding myself extracting to the Mile High club, grabbing the plane in the back, and just ferreting out whatever unexplored settlements I find from there.

I stumbled across an unmarked beachside mansion in the southeast part of the map during what looked like a pool party. There were around ten girls (the same models from the Mile High club) dancing in the pool, and one lonely old guy in a fancy white suit standing on the patio yelling at them to stop spending his money.

Just wait till you start to realize how the layouts are similar in each kind of settlement... it gets a bit boring after you've gotten a few dozen 100%'s.

You'll like the "Three Kings" mission. It's just stereotype after stereotype. The Chinese boss says you're going to see how powerful Chinese fireworks are, and I even think the Russian says that he will break you.

Game is excellent fun, but like many sandbox games suffers from too much crap to do, and too much repetition. Sorta like Saboteur, but not as entertaining. (Finally got my game working again after deleting all the PS3 data- not going to mess with the video stuff anymore, cause I think that's what fucked things up.)

What difficulty are you playing on Alex? I’m finding that on Hardcore the sheer effort involved with each 100% is making me try different stuff with each one which I think is alleviating some of the tedium.

It’s silly but the setting itself is making me forgive a lot of my foibles with the game. It’s so nice to be playing in a sunny, bright, tropical gameworld. It’s almost making me want to book a holiday everytime I play the damn thing.

I took out my first oil rig yesterday and whilst it wasn’t quite as apocalyptic as Mercs 2 it was still damn impressive.

That's probably true. Still, clearing out dozens of side-missions in any sandbox game isn't something that would typically interest me, so Just Cause 2 is clearly doing something right. I can see the islands getting old after scrounging out my last weapon upgrade, and I can't see ever getting to 100%, but I think the game already justified its purchase price for me.

My new favourite thing in the game is using the grappling hook whilst parachuting to turn bad guys into mooring posts.

It’s hilarious to see them get dragged off the ground a few feet and it gives you a fairly rapid, and controlled, angle of descent if you can do it properly. I managed to land it so Rico kicked a guy off of a cliff before I finally hit the ground.

I do wish the music was a bit better, but I’ve found that a custom soundtrack of Ennio Morricone, Rodrigo y Gabriella and some QT/Robert Rodriguez soundtracks is really awesome. Nothing like racing from the cops, across the desert, with Don’t Let Me Be Misundersood blaring out, or the Grindhouse theme kicking in during a gunbattle with a colonel.

The action cues are crap, but the ambient exploration music isn't too bad. There's an obvious Morricone/Cooder western influence here and there.

The game marking everything on the map makes it all effective. Hopefully Rockstar is taking notes. Just parachute-grappling around the island ticking off the dots is a compelling experience.

I dunno, I've done 50-ish and am still marveling at the variety. The Sabotuer mashed way too much of the same into its world (although I still dug playing what felt like "Inglorious Basterds: The Game"). In JC2, I've fought on a zeppelin, the top of a mountain, in an ancient ruin, on an oil platform, on skyscrapers, wrecked tankers, the island from LOST, and so on.

You can also break up the gunfights with scavenger hunts, races, achievement-whoring, assassinating colonels, and just tooling around the world.

It reminds me of Saints Row 2 in that I don't really care about the story since there's so much fun to be had just going crazy in the environment.

True. When you hit bases with Colonels or snipers or heat-seeking rocket launchers on Hardcore, you really need a plan of attack. I parachuted right into the middle of a cluster of pagodas, hit the ground, and seconds later had 3 laser-sights tracking me. I think I got as far as, "Awww..." before I died. The "...sheeeeit" came on the death screen.

You see all of the reviews sort of said ‘great free-roaming, lame ass missions’ and I took that to heart. So when I did the side mission where you destroy a space programme and shoot down a fucking rocket, breaching atmosphere, in a Harrier Jump Jet I was sort of taken aback.

The fourth ‘main’ story mission is sort of kicking my ass. The fact there’s no checkpointing between the four whatevathefucks you have to destroy and the mountainside is literally covered with mounted guns and snipers and SAM Sites is impeding my progress somewhat.

Just Cause 3! Sort of. Not really. But I do love this game.

If JC3 does happen, maybe they'll add co-op to it. The first thing I would do is try to simultaneously grapple each other from opposite ends of a street and see if we crash into each other in the middle (or who parachutes out of it first). Also, grappling enemies from opposite directions would probably result in something goofy and awesome. What about grappling up to your partner while they are floating around in their parachute? Co-op base jumping contests? Helicopter duels? Parachute duels? There is just so many things that would a hell of a lot of fun to try if co-op existed in Just Cause.

Also, if JC3 does get made, it should allow you to have stunt positions on sharks or something. I mean, who wouldn't want to sneak into a heavily guarded base by hitching a ride on the back of a shark? It's just so absurd that it might work!

The end of Mission 4, where you fight a squad of ninjas and then engage in a high speed pursuit with more ninjas in a humvee and then hijack one of the ninja humvees as it's driving across ice, which is being destroyed by an atomic submarine giving suppressing fire, made me almost deleriously happy.

Oh yeah, I forgot to add that if the shark scenario made it into my hypothetical Just Cause 3, the game would also have a "shark jumping" achievement/trophy.

Add alligator sky surfing, and Im there.

I'm glad I kept playing, cause I would have said the same thing. The faction missions are where it's at, though. Pretty varied and fun- I really dug that one where you shoot down the satellite.

I was doing one of the Jet Races and it sort of takes you over the mountain region of the game. Flying over a snowy ski-resort, at sunset, just looks amazing. Considering how great the frame rate is and how lush the game can look I’m surprised that Avalanche don’t have other developers wanting to use their engine. It’s up there with Far Cry 2 for me in terms of creating a beautifully realised world.

Also that Jet Race is the devil. It’s apparently a 1 out of 3 star race, but it’s more difficult than the two 3 star races I’ve done.

So... I still love this game, but a word of warning: a few of the missions are bugged to hell. The third or fourth "Three Kings" agency mission dumps you into a boss fight without access to your black market dealer, and autosaves if you're killed, which you probably will be. If you're not armed to the teeth, you'll be shit out of luck, because the game loads during the rooftop boss fight - and you can't leave the area without failing the mission. It's a game-breaking bug.

There's also an oil rig faction mission that bugs out if you die after destroying parts of the rig. You can finish the mission, but the game won't let you get 100% completion on the rig. Not a game breaker, but it will drive the completionists nuts.

I'm sure there are more. Keep multiple saves.

Also, the Japanese boss in the Three Kings mission looks like he came straight out of a WWII propaganda poster. The only way that could have been worse was if they had him gnawing on an American baby carcass yelling ME SO SOLLY. Just... woah.

Yeah that Three Kings mission was a fucking headache. I ended up having to run around and murder the Japanese guys goons, whilst avoiding his death ray, just to get ammo for my super upgraded SMG.

And then he took 2 minutes of gunfire to the face to die.

I'm finding the SMG to be pretty much crap. The upside is that there's ammo for it everywhere, but compared to explosives (especially the upgraded grenade launcher, which feels almost like a cheat), it's weak.

Finished the game on Hardcore. The fourth agency mission is so much harder than the missions after it that it's kind of ridiculous.

I've restarted on Casual to get 75% and get the damned Kill 20 Dudes in 60 seconds achievement. I still <3 this game though, it's actually so much more fun on Casual that I'm kind of hating myself for making me go through it on Hardcore.

Have you had Rico madly singing Ride of the Valkyries yet? He started doing it whilst I was in a helicopter gunning down a military base.

Hahaha, no - and I've spent probably a cumulative hour blowing up base structures with helicopters. Maybe it unlocks after a certain point.

I've only heard him do it once so maybe it's just very rare and it was in Mercenary Mode.

Normally I'd feel a little bad about taking down soldiers and cops (GTAIV, I'm talking to you!), but on a drive on a motorcycle through the countryside(I love just driving, the game is beautiful) I saw that the soldiers are actually Death Squads that go after farmers, so fuck those guys and I'll kill as many as I can.

I like playing motorbike leapfrog. Just driving down the road and bouncing from bike to bike.

25% complete. Thanks to the flight races, I'm coming to the slow realization that there's no way I'll ever be able to 100% this. If I can't complete the three-star race with my upgraded Apache, it simply can't be done without Guitar-Hero-II amounts of rote practice.

There’s a race in Panau city which requires you to fly a plane underneath the main bridge and then sort of fly around the thing. Even with a Helicopter it’s near enough impossible.

I’ve got 2 out of 5 wrecking ball kills, but I’ve not got close to 20 kills in 60 seconds.

I had an awesome moment in the airport where I jumped from a motorcycle onto the wing of a jumbo jet that was about to take off. I hijacked it mid flight and then smashed the thing into a colonel in the heart of Panau City. I don’t think I’ve heard such a loud explosion.

I’m at about 12% complete on my casual playthrough and thus far I’ve been in entirely different locations than my other playthrough. Love the snowy mountains and the desert, makes me wish I hadn’t devoted my first playthrough solely to that Ular island in the East.

It can't be possible to get a 100% on this game. It just can't. The person that does it should be embarrassed that he never leaves the house.

Thankfully the achievement/trophies don't require it! You get what- .01% every time you pick up a crate? Ridiculous.

Also ridiculous- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFX3_...layer_embedded

Y'know what can go fuck themselves? Helicopters.

It seems that completing the game grants the Panau military infinite helicopter spawns. They call the fucking things in even with a slither of heat and by the time you've destroyed one another has been called in. I'm spending the entire game just being followed by squads of the damn things at the moment.

Had a pretty fun time with the demo. In fact, I would say the demo satiated every urge I had to play the game, as I have feeling it would just be more of the same, but with different foliage, enemies, and MOAR EXCITEMENT!

Fascinating.

Don't you have some helicopters to go destroy? Please, keep us apprised of the scintillating developments on that front.

Picked this up over the weekend, and I'm having a blast just roaming around. I tried to ride a motorcycle up on a helipad, and somehow fell off. Since the helipad was at the very top of a mountain, I did a comical cartwheel/slide down the entire mountain without being able to regain my balance (similar to what happens when you get too close to an explosion). I was annoyed for the first second or two, and then just laughing my ass off about 3 minutes into the everlasting slide. By the time he got to the bottom (on the beach!), he let out a comment along the lines of "let's not do that again!"

My friend & I were laughing a good couple of minutes after that...