Just Cause 3 is the third expansion in the Just Cause series, aptly named due to the entire ethos of the game that allows you to blow shit up, attach people to telegraph poles and demolish bridges that happy vacationing families are trying to cross and then ride around on tractors for twenty minutes, running over farmers.
Why? Just 'cause.
You play as Rico, a Spanish revolutionist trying to overthrow a corrupt dictator called Di Ravello who owns Medici, a hypothetical country that has a strong Sicilian/Greek/Albanian spirit.
It plays very similar to the second game, in that you are allowed free roam of the entire island but with two noticeable differences.
1. You have a wing suit.
2. You have multiple grapples.
In the second game, Rico navigated the world by throwing himself off of cliffs, deploying a chute and rappelling onto terrain to pull himself across the landscape.
You can now deploy the wing suit if you're near a sheer drop which gives you added speed the closer you are to the ground and is quite a rush to use.
The multiple grapples were originally a mod for the second game that the developers s̶t̶o̶l̶e̶ borrowed for the third instalment.
It allows you to attach things together and use the tether to smash them together which leads to hilarity.
Tether a screaming person to a gas station pump and slowly pull him into the volatile square of gas and explosive as they try to get up and run. Tether two people to each other through a chain link fence and pull them together. Attach a helicopter to your car and then drive off a cliff and jump out. Attach an explosive barrel to a Di Ravello dictator statue. Person to car, vroom vroom. Person to person, shoot person in leg, watch them hobble off dragging a hapless person behind and try to stop laughing.
Basically, it's Psychopath: The Game.
You progress by taking over settlements, made up of destructible buildings, gas pumps, gas cylinders, electricity generators that need the panels shot off, speakers that need all the megaphones knocked off, billboards that can be pulled down and police stations that need to be overrun. The more you destroy a place, the more of your allies turn up, the more the tables turn and the more likely you are to take over the settlement.
The only problem is: If you die, nothing gets reset and there's absolutely no drawback to dying whatsoever.
Whilst this encourages the player to be near suicidal, it's unfortunately very poor game design to not reset the place, offer save points or otherwise a life system.
Otherwise you're just throwing yourself at the problem again and again until you inevitably win. And there's no fun in inevitability.
You can upgrade Rico's capacities by getting mods that are given to you by completing side challenges. Whilst this offers some nice RPG elements, it unfortunately isn't expanded upon.
For example, as you blow things up you get Chaos Points which is a number that just goes up and up and up and up to millions and billions and trillions and does nothing.
With a bit of work, the developers could have made certain fortresses and towns impenetrable unless you had a certain number of Chaos Points which you could spend upgrading your weapons, grapple strength, wing suit span, etc.
It's a little bit of a shame to see such an opportunity squandered.
The main thrust of the story involves the army and a weaponised mineral called Bavarium which can by synthesised into unlimited energy OR weapons grade shields for tanks and planes that made them essentially invincible.
"The person who controls the Bavarium, controls Medici."
However it's hard to get involved in missions when running around just fucking about is so much more fun.
For example, holding down "O" (No clue what button for Xbox Ones or PC's) the player rag dolls. If you hit something, the player will continue flopping around until you stop holding circle, even laying completely motionless when they hit the ground.
This sounds like a small thing, but when you fail at wing suiting, crash into a building, hit another building, fall off of that one, smash through a bus stop and roll out onto the road and lie there, looking dead whilst pedestrians remark "You should be more careful." and cars either honk their horns at your still body or drive around your cadaver, it's sort of morbidly funny.
Another point I like about this game is the lack of immediate loading screens. For example, as soon as you put the disc in, the player is placed on "Boom Island." which is a tiny map without citizens, cars, police or much else but racing dirt tracks, explosives and sheer drops on the furthest corner of the game, unable to get to the main game area.
Since Medici is so big (No, seriously, it's absolutely huge. It would take over half an hour to fly to the other side of the map in the fastest jet you can find.) it takes a while to download. In the meantime, being sent to a pre-loaded demo area to just mess about in is a god send.
The menu also seamlessly transitions into the main game, which is also sort of neat.
Unfortunately, the game does have a number of bugs and my save game file was unfortunately corrupted after a good ten cumulative hours of gameplay which is irksome.
Some bits are also a bit strange. If you wing suit directly into the side of some constructs like military towers, you'll be absolutely fine but the entire stone fifty meter mini-fortress will crumble because of the impact made with your head. You will also find it a bit repetitive in parts if you're not a simple creature like me.
If you're looking for a game to play after work, for five minutes, to relax and unwind, I'd recommend this game, currently down to £29.99 on the Playstation Store as their Deal of the Week.
But at the same time, if you wait about two more weeks it'll be down to fifteen. And I'd understand waiting two weeks too.
Like, 8/10. 6.9/10 considering the unfortunate corrupt save file.
