Just Cause (16+)
Verdict: Too much smoke, not enough mirrors.
Platform: 360, PC, PS2, Xbox
Rating: 3½/5
Thrusting you into an over-saturated world of acid pastels, panoramic vistas and enough over-the-top action to make James Bond jealous, Just Cause chucks you out of a plane into free falling, car jacking, island liberating fun.
As Rico Rodriguez you’re the CIA’s secret weapon, a latino warhead with a mullet and a one man regime change working to overthrow the unsavoury government of San Esperito.
With the lush equatorial island providing a massive playground, you can go where you want in predictable GTA style as the graphic engine does stunning work at rendering vast draw distances, populated roads, detailed foliage and gorgeous skies.
Separating Rico from every other action hero is his handy ability to open a parachute at any opportunity. Base jumping and paragliding are also par the course and used in conjunction with a grappling hook, the opportunity for ridiculously impossible and unlikely stunts becomes the norm as every vehicle becomes a ticket to the skies.
With obvious potential for imbalance, the relative ease of some missions caused by paragliding appears to be offset by the crazed homing missile A.I. of the self replicating cops and robbers, tipping the scales the other way.
Despite some thoughtful design like the vehicle drops, extractions and forgiving checkpoints that ensure you’re never stuck in the middle of nowhere for long, Just Cause rests a little too much on it’s flashy showmanship and overwhelming size to cover up its flaws and thin veneer.
With stiff controls, twitchy vehicle handling, a dumbed down auto-aim, intrusive way points and enough blur and bloom to make me never want to drink absinthe again, it lacks the final tweaks and that certain something that turns a game from average into awesome.
Where it works well it does it with great panache and even as a tech demo it certainly demonstrates what the graphic engine is capable of with great verve but it’s depth of experience fails to convince of more than that.
San Esperito - its a nice place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there.