TOM FRANCIS
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What’s Wrong With Just Cause?

I don’t think I wrote about it here much at the time, because it wasn’t publicly out when I was really into it, but Just Cause is one of my favourite games. Open world games don’t seem to have much trouble making a great open world – most of the big ones like Oblivion, Far Cry 2, World of Warcraft and GTA IV are all wonderful places I want to spend time in. The difference with the islands of Just Cause, which are as pretty and inviting as any of those, is that you can fling yourself at them.

I’d just finished a mission, one which left me exhausted and bleeding on a beach miles from anywhere. The next place I needed to get to was on another island entirely, and there were no boats or choppers nearby to hijack. So I called the agency to have them drop me off a motorbike.

When it came, airdropped unceremoniously in a heavy wooden crate, I ignored it and fired my grappling hook at the agency helicopter that had dropped it off. It’s one of the only things in the game you can’t hijack, but there’s no rule against hanging on to it. I reeled in and took hold of a tailfin as it thundered off – in completely the wrong direction.

It lifted me all the way over an inland mountain range, through a lashing storm, up through the cloud layer (the clouds you see in the sky can all be reached), and into a grey limbo where the island below was just a dark smudge. I let go.

Just Cause is the only game I know with a key for “I’m not falling fast enough, make me fall faster”. The heights involved are so sickeningly vast that even freefall can take minutes to drop you. So you can make yourself more streamlined, steer with your body, and choose when to open – and when to suck back in – your parachute. Mixing them to toy with your momentum vector gives you a wonderful freedom in that massive cold space, and I had so much height to work with that I was able to steer all the way back to the coast, then over it, then to the next island, and finally to my objective.

I like to come in fast: chute open, but angled downwards to drop through the air; then pull up at the very last minute and spin 180, toes whipping the shrubs. Finally I cut the chute and land in a commando roll, stand up and punch my boss in the face. This may be why he goes AWOL in the sequel.

People really didn’t take to it, not even most reviewers. EGM complained that it was ‘unrealistic’ (…), Eurogamer said the terrain was ‘uninteresting’ (!), and GameSpy claimed Saints Row 1 gave it ‘a wedgie in graphics’ (;). Other than the glitches (which seem minor on PC) and the rudimentary shooting (which would be a problem if it were a hard or large part of the game), most complaints seem to stem from the assumption that open world games are obliged to provide five to twenty times as much hand-scripted content as linear ones. Certainly some of them do, but the sense of entitlement baffles me. They don’t cost more, and they seem if anything to be more replayable rather than less.

I’m writing this because I’ve stopped playing it, and I’ve stopped playing it because a mission was pissing me off. It has some sublime ones, and the last may be the greatest final mission I’ve ever played, but quite a few fall into obvious scripting pitfalls. My excitement about the sequel due next year is getting me thinking about what precisely they need to fix, because it’s not the weird quibbles its press critics decided to mewl about.

Infinite helicopters. No good can come of infinite helicopters. If I try to concentrate on the objective, I’m constantly being shot at or rocketed and thinking “Fuck, I need to stop concentrating on the objective and do something about these infinite helicopters!” If I’m concentrating on the infinite helicopters, even perfect one-shot kills with a stash of limitless ammo doesn’t let me take them down faster than new ones arrive. Worse, it cheapens the value and significance of the most sacred bit of military hardware.

Health. When fighting infantry, a trivial task for which you rarely need healing, healthpacks spew from them like medicinal pinatas. When fighting vehicles, which rip through your health mercilessly, there’s no reprieve. In multi-stage missions getting too worn down on an early objective can leave you incapable of proceeding from the checkpoint immediately afterwards. The risible regeneration system takes nearly a minute of utter tranquility to restore a useless 10% of your total health, and will never nudge it beyond that.

Get on the gun, Rico! Hardly the only game to be guilty of these sections, but seriously, they’re so easy to avoid. It’d be great fun to grab a mounted weapon and tear through a huge army of pursuers if it were an option. When it’s forced, and the pursuers triggered by stage queues to show up in a convenient place for you to shoot, it starts to feel too much like a fairground ride.

Get the truck to the waypoint in one piece! No.

I’ll probably be back here adding to this list once I’ve got a few missions further in, but for the most part I’m having even more fun than I remember. If you’re tempted, it’s £9 on Steam and a Universal Resolution Changer lets you run it widescreen.

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