Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: game review, JC4, just cause 4, Square Enix

Just Cause 4 Adds Some Necessary Gravitas to the Series

Published Sun, 10 Feb 2019 11:10:47 -0600

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Just Cause 4 is many things, hammy, addictive, and with far more open-world capacity than any single game needs. It has a functioning physics model for most things a player will encounter: buoyancy, propulsion, wind, even combustion engines. What it doesn't have is total graphic integrity. Every now and again, you'll enter a cutscene with some of the worst lighting I've seen in a 4K game. Sadly, one of those cutscenes is the game's opener. Industrial lighting at night is not the best look for Rico Rodriguez, but I guess he had to have some kind of weakness.

The game's difficulty, even on higher levels, isn't the most punishing. It's pretty hard to kill Rico on most settings, because he is pretty much an acknowledged superhuman. However, this time, Rico has people to work with and that adds a level of drama and responsibility that has been missing from the series prior to this. Sure, you still want to cause an unconscionable amount of chaos, since that's what your army thrives on, but you are no longer an army of one. You have people to coordinate with and to save, and that makes a significant difference to the campaign.

It doesn't put a damper on your wanton destruction, though, so its only a net gain as far as the series goes.

In some ways, Just Cause 4 is Spider-Man with guns, thanks to that grappling hook and wingsuit. While Rico's had a grapple prior to the release of Insomniac's Spider-Man, the comparisons are inevitable. Both games feature superhuman protagonists with the ability to traverse massive open-world environments due to technology. For Rico it's a grappling hook, for Peter it's webshooters. However, the unrelenting chaos you cause as Rico is the key difference.

As always, the vehicle controls are a little bit wonky. Because Just Cause 4 is open-world, the controls for vehicles are never going to be absolutely perfect, however they're serviceable. Certainly better than the controls in Ghost Recon: Wildlands, at any rate.

But still, the fun in Just Cause 4 remains the same: finding new and different ways to maim and destroy. It really is a game created to indulge your inner nihilist.

The game does absolutely shine when it works well. Which is surprisingly more than you might expect from a massively overengineered open world game.

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