Just Cause 2 is a massive sandbox game from Avalanche Studios, Eidos Interactive, Square Enix London (which I assume is a studio of Square Enix Europe) and Square Enix. If you’re a bit confused right now down be, only two developers made the game but Square Enix does like to remind everybody of their name.

 

There isn’t much of a story in this game and believe me you would do well not to pay any attention to it but here it is anyway. The fictional island nation of Panau, located in Southeast Asia, has recently had a regime change. Replacing the American friendly dictator ‘Panau’ is his son, Baby Panau, who is also a dictator but seems to want to have relations with countries other than the good old US of A. So it’s up to Rico Rodriguez to find out why he doesn’t want to return the US’s phone calls, and also meet up with an agent in the country that has gone missing. Along the way he joins up with three different revolutionary factions; who all want to take control of the country and pay you a lot of money to blow things up for them.

 

 

Now when I said sandbox you either thought of something you would find in a playground or GTA, GTA IV of course being the benchmark of Sandbox games this generation. GTA IV was based on reality, bland grey buildings, rain, traffic and the occasional drunk Irish person who you may or may not have killed. Just Cause 2 is none of those things; it’s set on a tropical island for a start; everything is bright, colourful and completely detached from reality. Everything in the game is completely over the top, if you’re not jumping from an exploding water tower with a smirk on your face, you’re not playing the game correctly.

 

Rico Rodriguez has a magical grappling hook, this will pull him to any location within range, allow him to surf on top of vehicles, highjack planes, climb walls, pull enemies to their deaths or drag them behind of a car. Coupled with his equally impressive ability to regenerate his parachute supply and you’ve got one hell of a way to get around. Use the grapple hook to latch onto an object then open a parachute in mid-air and you’ll be fired in the general direction, keep doing this and you can cover ground with ease.

 

 

Of course this isn’t the only way to get around; there are 101 different types of vehicles throughout the world. These are highly varied and include; motorcycles, trucks, sedans, sports cars, mopeds, garbage trawls, fishing boats, SUVs, speed boats, helicopters with varying levels of weaponry, jets, limos, fighter jets, quad bikes, armoured cars and more. Needless to say there are plenty of ways to get around and getting access to these vehicles has never been easier. Simply use your grappling hook on the vehicles and you’ll go rocketing towards it. You’ll then surf on top of it giving you the chance to hijack the vehicle if you so wish. This works on anything so those attack helicopters that have just been called in to kill you, well grapple up to one, throw out the pilot and then proceed to use it to blow everything in sight, before piloting it on a collision course with a massive gas canister and jumping out with the resulting explosion in the background.