I have had Just Cause sitting in a variety of places for a while – in the PS2 games box in the loft, in my Steam library on my PC, and on my Xbox 360 shelves – but despite the fact that I’ve heard it to be great fun and the sequel is an amazing sandbox experience, I’ve never played it. Until now.
I decided to play the PS2 version, since my PS3 (which is backwards-compatible) was set up and my 360 wasn’t (due to the Wii being plugged in to the component inputs for Luigi’s Mansion; yes, it’s complicated). The opening cinematics looked pretty awful, but once I got control of my character I was quite impressed by the scale of the game and its vision. Parachuting down to the island was a pretty spectacular start, and once I transitioned into running along the beach and stealing a car, I could see that there were clear open-world GTA influences at play
.Unfortunately, the PS2 was a bit underpowered for such a grand vision. The framerate was, at times, awful – to the extent that I actually had to run away and stand still for the console to catch up. This was not helped by the controls which were not nearly customisable enough, and felt very imprecise.
That’s not to say I didn’t have fun. After a while I was given a grappling hook, with which I could grab onto cars and paraglide behind them. That was good fun for a while, and useful on a mission where I had to destroy a car and take the place of the now-dead dignitary. The main issue with the game was a lack of a sense of urgency; you are going to kill a dictator and free the island, sure, but there was little spurring you on to do this, and the game was almost too non-linear with no clear sense of direction.
If I go back to it it would be on the 360, but I may skip to the sequel.
Tim's Gaming Diary 