Just Cause 2

Okay ... I don't just play MMOs ... I enjoy a good stand alone game from time to time, and my wife and I recently picked up Just Cause 2 on the 360 after kicking around the demo on Steam for a bit. We decided to go with the 360 version rather than Steam mainly because it requires Windows Vista/7 to run on a PC ... and well ... I'm still running XP until I upgrade my system.

So what's the deal with Just Cause 2? You are a US Operative set loose in a small island nation to look for a rogue agent. The key words there are 'set loose' ... you can go, drive, shoot, and blow up just about anything and the only repercussion is that you get paid and the local police/military will shoot back.

First things first though ... if you are looking for a strong story based game, or a realistic shooter, keep on walking. The first sentence in the paragraph above pretty much tells you the whole story, the physics are superhero cartoon physics at best.

So why did my wife and I drop down the money and buy the game? Simply put ... it's fun. It's not a serious game, but it's a great game to get home from work and blow off stress and frustration with. It's a game that if you don't play for a bit you don't have to go back and figure out where you were in the story, or try to remember what you were doing .... you can load up the game, pick a random direction from your last save point and be shooting things and blowing things up in a couple of minutes with no goal beyond 'create chaos'.

In any case here are some preliminary observations about the game from my short time playing:

Controls are solid ... even if I do frequently throw grenades when I meant to use my grapple but that's my own addled brain, not because the grapple is hard to use.

Graphics are great ... the mountains, the forest, the scenic coast line. It's a tropical paradise and even just running around to admire the scenery can be a relaxing time. Though in most cases I expect bullets and explosions will follow before you get too far.

Story and missions ... they're pretty much what you expect - go over here and blow things in this area up for various reasons. As I said earlier, this isn't really a story game so don't go in expecting much in the way of story or reason behind what you're doing ... it's not really what the game's purpose is.

It can get a little repetitive as areas tend to have the same general 'goals' but I don't think that this is a game that they really intend for anyone to sit down and play from start to finish in a single play session, I think that the game's strength is as a casual 'stress relief' pass time in the true sense ... that is to say that its something fun with which to pass time ... if you start trying to make it something more than that then I think you're probably better off looking for a different game.