The original Just Cause was fantastic... as a tech demo for a new game engine. Has the sequel built upon this impressive piece of programming, fleshing out the massive open world with the magical ingredient that was sorely missing from the first game - fun?

Like the original, the tech behind this game is without peer. The game world is vast, covering several massive islands, and each is populated with dense detail, ranging from small villages to large cities to hidden military installations. It's not flat either, with soaring mountains peeking through the clouds, and deep valleys and underground bases waiting to be explored with extreme prejudice. It looks stunning on a decent PC (we ran all settings maxed on a 3.8GHz i5 with a 4870x2 video card, at 1920 x 1080 4XMSAA), but the console versions aren't far behind. Scattered throughout this massive world are literally thousands of power-ups and vehicles to discover, unlocking new weapons and improving your character's vital statistics. It will take hundreds of hours for compulsive completionists to hit the magic 100% mark.

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Getting around this massive world is easy. When you're not busy flinging the dozens of different cars around corners and over cliffs, or doing loop de loops in jet fighters and gunships, all of which have fantastic handling, you'll be floating through the heavens on an infinite supply of parachutes. Combine this massive floating contraption of fun with the grapple attached to your arm, and you've got a quick and enjoyable way to traverse large distances. If you need to travel even further, your friendly neighbourhood arms dealer offers a cheap taxi service.

The grapple does much more than just get you around though; it's a core piece of technology developed to extract maximum mayhem from the open world environment. It can attach two objects together, opening up a massive range of connective craziness. Getting chased by cars? Attach a cable from your pursuers to a nearby tree, and watch them fly through the air when they hit the end of the line. Sick of that guy shooting you from behind cover? Stick him to an exploding gas tank and watch him impersonate a Saturn V rocket.




Like any good sandbox experience, it's in the experimental and explorative moments that Just Cause 2 shines. The game encourages this, with core missions unlocked by blowing up key parts of the scenery. It's such a shame then that there isn't a lot of variety in what you can blow up. You'll find that a large part of your time will be spent hunting down fuel tanks and SAM sites, contributing a tiny amount to the "Unlock next mission" bar. It all gets a little bit grindy.

While the core missions are well designed and offer plenty of variety, they're not perfect either. They get rather hard later in the game, making a straight blast fest the safest way to beat them. Fool around with your grapple during these missions and you'll watch your ragdoll-animated character doing the limp death animation over and over again, forcing you to fall back on the rather standard shooting mechanics to beat these missions.

Despite these issues, Just Cause 2 delivers a massive amount of pure, simple, stupid fun. You'll spend dozens of hours exploring its beautifully crafted world, blowing stuff up and pulling off ridiculous stunts. It's such a vast experience that it's more of a full school playground than a mere sandbox. With the second game improving so much on the first, we can't wait to see what the third in the series will have to offer.

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