Interestingly – to me – the impression I get is that Just Cause 2’s mindshare actually does derive from pleasing the entitled dullards Tom was semi-reacting to there. JC2 doesn’t add huge amounts of hand-scripted content, but I get the impression that it reached some critical mass of ‘any’ content outside of the missions – different places to go and things to find.

Either that or people’s brains just needed two tries to get it.

Also, after tl;rambling wishlist;dring it the first time I read Ninja’s actual comment. ‘I loved Vice City, and IV’s physics and other things were better[…]’ implies to me that he has in fact played it.

JC2 is better, not the best though.

I also hadn’t thought about screwing around as being an especially relaxing activity, which is pretty funny in retrospect. I guess sometimes you just want to float down on a parachute for half an hour, and when that’s what you want it’s nice not to have Mr. Story ringing your cellphone.

Especially if you could attach grapples to teammates. And with the Multi-grapple mod, you could do some serious damage.

From what I’ve got from the game so far, they need to add a LOT more easter eggs. They’ve got easter eggs, and that’s great, but they need to add some more really difficult achievements. one thing in San Andreas that disappointed me was the lack of Bigfoot. There were rumors going around that he was in there, and I was young, willing to believe anything. I spent almost 2 days, more or less non-stop gametime, searching for a nonexistent creature. And I had fun while doing it. Walking around, constantly looking around, rocket launcher in hand in case worse came to worse.

I think if nothing else, Squeenix should be adding stuff like that. The game world is so massive, that for people who get bored with grappling and blowing stuff up, they can explore it. The world feels empty in some parts.

Basically, the world feels like it has people who are indifferent to you, people who are your “allies” and people who shoot you on sight.

But what if there were various things out in the mountains, desert, forest, deep water that were just there to be discovered. No special achievement for killing them. They simply run away. In order to make it seem like a real feat to see them, they’d probably have to have various spawn locations, and switch between them every so often. Even though I don’t believe in a lot of the “bigfoot, Chupacabra” stories, I love the idea of them.

The game setting is so varied that you could have various ones. Bigfoot here, Yeti or group of yetis there. Maybe a giant Nessie locked away in some body of water. Maybe looking up you’ll see a Mothman flying overhead.

Regardless, enough of my odd desires for a game.

As for GTAIV vs San Andreas, SA is easily my favorite GTA game. I loved Vice City, and IV’s physics and other things were better, but the world San Andreas had made for a setting more…realistic than a simple city. Maybe it’s because I live in a somewhat rural area, but the world is more than big cities, and there are GTA like problems everywhere. Weed is usually grown in rural areas, and GTA San Andreas touched on that.

I’ve yet to buy GTA 4, and won’t buy the next one unless they decide to make it a more varied area. The idea of San Andreas combined with the gameplay and physics of GTAIV makes me happy though.

Soon after ordering JC2 I was thinking “Why have I bought another sandbox?”. After stealing a fighter jet and climbing as far as I could into the sky then jumping out and free falling for what felt like atleast 5 minutes before landing in a lush flower carpeted meadow, it all clicked.

Any game that lets me attach a Jeep to my chopper and spin the occupants around while they’re still firing at me, and then smashing them into another chopper gets two thumbs up from me.

Much better then BC2 where the method of taking a helicopter down is to shoot rockets at it and pray imo.

That said the grappling hook is probably the most fun way of moving around since the portal gun or Faith jumping about.

GTA4 was so damn restricting, They sucked all the fun out of the game for “Realism.”

The whole point of the GTA games (For me, anyways) was the over-the-top crazy things i could do. SA is the pinnacle of the series in my book.

Just Cause 1 was a decent game, it was generic, but it had a huge world. I sensed that the dev’s wanted to do a lot more with it than they were able to. Just Cause 2 improves 1000% on the original. It’s great, It is one of the greatest fuck-around games of all time.

If they incorporate the elements Tom was talking about in a previous post about it, for the third. Then it will be the greatest sandbox game of all time (for me).

That said, as of right now, Saints Row 2 still takes the cake (for me). Oh man, If i had the Dual Hook in Saints Row 2, that’d be madness.

I got the game for pc and it being a console port trying to play with a keyboard and mouse was absolutely horrendous. The controls were so frustrating. I gave up after and hour and a half of gameplay. I just couldn’t take it

@Nerfball
I don’t think JC2 is shithouse, it has numerous redeeming qualities which I failed to mention, I was pointing out how false Tom Francis’ view was.
Just Cause 1, however, was epicly shithouse.

Quite simply, I haven’t hid this much fun in a sandbox since San Andreas, and that was a LONG time ago.

Now what I want to see is the complete destructive nature of Guerilla (I still have no idea how to spell that properly =P) and the massive world of Just Cause melded together, it would be glorious. And of course the power of hammers and grappling hooks would be united at last. A wonderful union to be sure.

Oh, and @Gamergeneral: You sir, should be a game developer, a visionary in your field you will be.

@CheeseLord: Surely there should be an “in my opinion” or “I think” in front of your statements, rather than just decreeing that Just Cause 1 and 2 are terribad. And Rockstar? Feh, Realtime Worlds: Crackdown, a better game than any of the GTA’s. *is controversial, yet to lazy to back up his opinion*

Yeah, I was a bit harsh on GTA IV, I was just a bit disappointed by the level of freedom compared to San An, I never got the same feeling of ‘Let’s do stupid stuff’ that I did with the earlier GTA’s. It’s a great world, I just feel that that’s all it was, there was never that much to do with it.

Now, if you put a grappling hook in it then I would be happy.

Now I’m interested in the fuck-it-up game: something where I’m allowed to break what they can’t easily replace, and throw a spanner in a machine so large it does something more violent and terrible than explode and respawn.

Has anyone done this as well as Bethesda with Fallout 3? I can’t even think of any other examples right now, let alone good ones.

Also, at this point, the civillians indifference towards me is comical – I’ve probably made life much harder for them than I have the government.

All that said, when I do blow up a pipeline and Rico says “take that, pipeline jerks!” all is forgiven.

To be honest, I think JC2 alone is going to persuade me to get Win7.

The grapple hook is nice, though.

The only reason I haven’t bought it yet is that I’ve got a university degree to mostly finish over the next month. Roll on May…