And yet, thanks to some sparing
improvements—mostly in the way of
chaos-causing gizmos—Just Cause 4
is still capable of charming me. For all
its annoyances, it still says to me, with
a mischievous twinkle in its eye,
‘Yeah, but do other
games let you do this
high caliber of silly
stuff?’ Which of course
they don’t, unless you
count previous games
in the series.RIGHT AS RAIN
The premise is familiar.
You are Rico Rodriguez, a freelance
super-agent, and one-man flashpoint
for revolutions on seemingly every
dictator-run tropical island he drops
into. This time, Rico’s helping liberate
the South American island of Solis, a
vast paradise of several beautiful
biomes whose people are oppressed
by dictator Oscar Espinosa and his
Black Hand army. It ties into the
plots of the previous games (for
anyone who actually cares), and has a
dash of light intrigue, too, thanks to a
connection to Rico’s father, who
inadvertently helped the dictator
harness the elements and weaponizethe weather. It’s lightweight, but good
humored and well written enough to
tick along with.
It’s on you to wrest back control of
the island. Where in previous games
you did this simply by causing
enough destruction in a
given region, this time
Avalanche has
attempted to inject a
bit more depth into the
process. Each region
has a specific mission
you must complete,
and once you’ve done
that you can call in
squads of revolutionaries—unlocked
by destroying enemy infrastructure
and capturing certain regions—to
take control of it. The whole map is
open for you to explore from the
start, but you can only move these
squads into regions neighboring
those under your control, making
that map-painting process a little
more focused than before.
This macro-scale layer gives an
appearance of strategy, with the
numbers of squads in regions and
frontline markers teasing the
possibility of a kind of Risk-like
territory game, but it never followsthrough. Head over to the frontlines,
and you’ll see skirmishes between
your squads and the enemy, but it’s
all for show, as the enemy can’t
actually retake territory from you,
and your side’s progress is dictated
solely by Rico’s renegade activities.
It is, of course, these activities, not
the pseudo-strategy twaddle, that are
the real reason people play Just
Cause. The series knows now that it’s
dependant on the kind of all-action
spectacle that makes Mission
Impossible look like the most stolid
of John le Carré novels.
So it’s expanded the player’s
arsenal with everything from
drone-firing railguns to weather-
harnessing superweapons, which
include a wind cannon that lets you
invisibly blow away whole squads of
enemies and structures, and the
lightning gun, which not only zaps
enemies but can create a mini
lightning storm that fries everything
in its perimeter. You can also now call
in several planes simultaneously to
drop a vast array of weapons and
heavy artillery, giving you the
freedom to turn Just Cause 4 into a
vibrant warzone of ragdolls and
explosions whenever you like.HOOK UP
Then there’s the all-important tether:
The tool that single-clawedly set the
series on its path of physics-based
excess. This lets you attach objects
and people to each other—creating a
showcase of physics silliness—and it’s
received a welcome upgrade. There’s
still the retractor which lets you, say,
string two or more helicopters
together and send them twirling into
each other. Joining it now is the ‘Air
Lifter’ balloon tether, which enables
you to attach several balloons to
objects and send them off to orbit, as
well as ‘booster’ tethers that send
their hapless targets fizzing around
uncontrollably like cheap fireworks
from your local mall.
The old upgrade system has been
largely replaced, with many once-
unlockable abilities now availableNEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
A silly physics sandbox
in South America.
EXPECT TO PAY
$60
DEVELOPER
Avalanche Studios
PUBLISHER
Square Enix
REVIEWED ON
Core i7-6700HQ , 16GB
of RAM, GTX 1070
MULTIPLAYER
None
LINK
http://www.bit.ly/
just_cause4Progress is
dictated solely
by Rico’s
renegade
activitiesT
he Just Cause series has a knack for holding your attention
in short bursts. It can cause you to grit your teeth as you
wingsuit so close to mountains that you can taste the snow
spray, and grapple-hook up to helicopters to escape the
mushrooming flames of exploding bases. It also gives you the
freedom to tether a goat to a balloon, hook yourself onto it, and float off
into the stratosphere.EXPLOSION MAN
JUST CAUSE 4 has enough new hooks and tethers
to keep up the adrenaline... just. By Robert Zak
IT’S A GAS The best upgrades for your balloon
LOCOMOTION
Balloons float up
by default, but
can be set to
follow you like a
flock of sheep.PEAK
ALTITUDE
Sets the height
your balloons
float up to. The
sky’s the limit!PEAK EFFECT
Should your
balloons keep
their cargo up
there, or simply
pop on arrival?GAS
Do you want
your balloons to
go out with a
pleasant pop or
a big bang?ARMOR
Make balloons
invulnerable to
your bullets,
enemy bullets,
or both.Each of the
three tether
mods—air lifter,
retractor, and
booster—can be
tuned to attain
the level of
silliness you
want. Here are
the air lifter’s
balloon tweaks.REVIEW