Early on in Just Cause 2 a peripheral character describes the South East Asian island of Panau as a “playground” and from the player’s perspective that is absolutely bang-on the money.
With 1000 square miles of land to cover, countless buildings to infiltrate and an abundance of military installations to blow to high heaven, it’s incredibly easy to eschew the focus of your top-secret mission and simply indulge in a spot of highly-addictive mass-destruction.
Read the rest of our Just Cause 2 for Xbox 360 review
Just Cause 2 for Xbox 360 review: Overall Verdict
Just Cause 2 for Xbox 360 review: Must See Hotspots
Just Cause 2 for Xbox 360 review: Weapons and Vehicles
Throughout the game you’ll be encouraged to cause as much chaos as possible, disrupting Panauan Government facilities by blowing up gas stations, destroying military bases and generally making a nuisance of yourself.
Your main aim is to find out why your former partner has turned on his previous employers and you’ll need to take part in story-centric “Agency” missions to ensure that the plot moves forward. However, to gain access to many of these assignments you’ll need to go on errands to increase the influence of three local criminal gangs; proving your worth to these groups will make them more receptive to your demands for information regarding your former ally’s whereabouts.
Like other sandbox titles such as Grand Theft Auto and Mercenaries, Just Cause 2 drops you in a world packed with often overwhelming possibilities. You can drive or pilot every single vehicle in the game – from the most humble moped to the largest passenger aircraft – and such transport is essential if you’re going to get around the island in a timely fashion.
As incredible as the selection of vehicles is, arguably the most impressive new addition to Rico’s arsenal is the new and improved grappling gun, which was present in the first title but enjoys a more expanded role this time around.
Using this arm-mounted device you can perform a wide range of different tasks. The most obvious is scaling tall buildings, but it’s also possible to latch onto passing cars, bikes and other ground-based vehicles. Once you’ve done this you can hurl the driver out and take control of the vehicle yourself; it’s even possible to grapple and hijack attacking aircraft.
The grapping gun is also handy when it comes to bringing Just Cause 2’s enemies down to your level – this feature is especially helpful when you’re being fired upon by snipers in watchtowers – and use the cable to create a tether between objects and enemies. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as grappling two opponents to one another and watching them collide comically in mid-air, or securing a foe to the back of your sports car and taking him for a drag around the rough and undulating Panauan countryside.
Amazingly, that’s not the end of the grappling gun’s usefulness. Whenever you want to get unfriendly vehicles off your scent you can attach one end of the grapple to their bumper and the other to a passing tree and watch with malevolent glee as the pursuing vehicle is violently ripped asunder, dashing its occupants to the four winds.
Such crazy stunts really task your imagination and it honestly feels as if the game has almost limitless possibilities; you can approach a situation from several different ways and this glorious demand for experimentation is at the heart of Just Cause 2’s long-term appeal.
For example, when you blow up an oil refinery do you choose to go in all guns blazing and set remote charges or do you take the more grandiose approach and fly a jumbo jet into the vulnerable silos, making sure you parachute out of the diving plane before it touches down in flames? In Just Cause 2 the decision is very much yours – and you’ll have an absolute blast making that choice.
strong>Read the rest of our Just Cause 2 for Xbox 360 review
Just Cause 2 for Xbox 360 review: Overall Verdict
Just Cause 2 for Xbox 360 review: Must See Hotspots
Just Cause 2 for Xbox 360 review: Weapons and Vehicles
