“F$%k you missile!“, Rico shouted with his gruff European accent. He was hundreds of feet up in the air, riding a goddamned missile headed for the rebels he was a part of. I was on the edge of my seat, clutching the controller tightly in my hands. I couldn’t believe it, I was actually cheering for Rico Rodriguez.
You see, the Just Cause games might have been widely acclaimed for their over the top action sequences dipped in a hot boiling pot of Michael Bay, but they never offered much in the line of likeable characters. I thought Rico and his crew, which includes Sheldon, was a bunch of trope ridden anti-heroes spouting uninspired and meaningless lines. To be fair however, playing the Just Cause games for storyline would be the equivalent of going to eat healthy at KFC. I mean sure, there are various healthy options that you can try out, but that isn’t what it is about. Papa Sanders is proud of his finger licking good chicken, and is ready to shove it down your throat, as developers Avalanche are ready to throw you down the action hole (see now that kinda came out wrong), and this is really evident in the third outing of the series, where everything right and left around you has the tendency to blow up in spectacular fashion.
However, this time, they actually managed to make Rico likable. He actually has an identity, one that comes in form of spewing out badass one-liners as you grapple stuff together to blow-up. I honestly thought that Rico’s one liners were one of the best parts of the game, and were genuinely funny. It not only managed to make the game more fun to play, but also gave Rico a kickass personality, that matched with his heroically gruff voice acting, and super-powered grappling hook truly makes him something he was always supposed to be… A Superhero. That’s right, Rico Rodriguez is nothing less than a superhero in this game. In fact, you will occasionally see people cheering for you when they see you, calling you a hero and their saviour.
Just Cause 3’s main focus is its open-ended destruction, and it prides itself in giving you full control of a destructive playground, where how you reduce everything to ashes is up to you. In order to make that more fun, the game has tons of interesting weapons that you can use, ranging from a missile launcher that simultaneously launches multiple rockets to a Bavarium nuke launcher that can decimate an entire city with its lethal mushroom cloud. In case you are wondering, Bavarium is a fictional mineral that drives the story of the game, and there is a chance it is inspired by the Tesseract, which is found in Marvel’s cinematic universe.
The game’s main plot revolves around an evil dictator who plans to mine every last bit of Bavarium from the island of Medici, and use it to power a super weapon that he can use to leverage power from various countries because of course, that is in the daily job description for a dictator. Unfortunately for him, Medici is the birth town of Rico’s mother, and bringing down evil dictators is something Rico does as a hobby. However, in order to get to him, the game tasks you with destroying most of his settlements and army bases in order to reduce his grip over the people. The game is divided into different provinces and each province is split into different parts, which each have various settlements. If you manage to take out all the areas in a province by liberating it’s settlements, you manage to free the province. Most missions only unlock once you have liberated various settlements or provinces.
Now I was originally a bit wary, because even though I am a huge digital pyromaniac that loves burning down everything in a game, it does have a tendency of getting awfully boring, awfully quick. Luckily with this game though, it has a good variety of weapons and vehicles that both keep you engaged and challenged each step of the way, ultimately giving you almost unlimited possibilities. Not only that, but I have yet to get tired of Rico’s signature tethering hooks and the developers have to be applauded for how well they have designed them. For example, if you were to tether something quite heavy or strong like a sniper tower in the game to the ground, you can hear the wire coming into stress due to a library of great sounding effects, and then when it feels like it can’t take anymore and is about to split, down comes tumbling the structure. This makes the experience really tense and block-buster in my opinion.
One thing I kept noticing when I was playing the game was that each time I destroyed a settlement, a British sounding radio announcer popped up, making up excuses for why different settlements were getting destroyed, like “We heard the radio tower was giving people bad signals so our generous ruler has decided to destroy it.” The voice acting was outstanding, and it turns out that none other than the immensely talented David Tennant voiced the propaganda announcer. He is just a plus point to everything he is in.
To top it all off, the game looks absolutely beautiful. Avalanche has always managed to crank up the graphics each time they release a Just Cause entry, and the third one is definitely no exception. The game has got a great amount of foliage and shadow points with a good colour vibrancy setting that truly makes everything look outstanding, especially if you are playing it 4k on a PC or just on a vivid 4k TV. Even the explosions and combat animations have little details added to them that truly make them immersive.
Furthermore, the wingsuit may just be the best thing in this game, as it opens up travel possibilities for the player, one that positively affects the gameplay as well. What makes it really fun to use however, is how easy it is to transition between parachuting and gliding. It is all done at a press of a button. There are several abilities linked to parachuting, and gliding which you can unlock by completing various challenges located throughout the game. Depending on how you perform in a certain challenge you will gain around 1-5 gears which help you unlock different abilities.
The only thing I do not like about this upgrade system, and it is featured in many other games as well these days, is that you have to complete side challenges in order to unlock really cool abilities. Meaning, you have to probably get the highest score in all of them before you can even think about unlocking everything. I understand that all of this is part of the game, and power to those who love this content, but I just don’t have that much time to keep playing trial and error.
Still, minor hiccups overlooked, the game overall feels like it has a solid identity this time, as I mentioned with Rico before, and you have to hand it to one aspect for making it truly work, which is the music. I absolutely loved the first game’s main theme, as it was memorable and exciting, but the second game’s original music was seriously uninspired and generic. However, this time around, they managed to grab one of the best composers of this age, Henry Jackman (Wreck it Ralph, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Uncharted 4) who has truly given his best to the game’s soundtrack.
I will be honest, when I first started playing the game, I had no idea who had composed the soundtrack, and I was expecting it to be just as generic as the last one. It was only when the music actually kicked in and I realised how outstanding it was that I even decided to search for the composer. There was no way it could’ve been an unrecognised composer, and I was right.
To truly portray the beauty of Medici, when you are exploring it, Henry Jackman has utilised beautiful acoustic melodies and warm string textures to truly show the peaceful side of Medici. However, when things get going he surely isn’t afraid to use a hectic and sweeping ensemble of percussion, strings and brass to elevate tension. It isn’t your usual action fare though, as even during the loud overtones, Jackman manages to sneak in some memorable tunes. I am absolutely gutted that the game’s release wasn’t accompanied by an original soundtrack as this is one of the games that definitely deserves it. I honestly cannot wait to see what he does with Uncharted 4.
Overall, I had a lot of fun with this game, and I can’t remember when the last time a videogame was felt so… videogamey (I guess). Over the top action, badass one-liners, Michael bay-esque explosions, huge set pieces, and a powerful soundtrack to boot, this is a game that you really cannot afford to miss!