Just Cause 2 is Just Bottomless

After playing Just Cause 2 for hours upon hours at a clip, jumping from location to location and not leaving any until I have 100% complete of that area, I'm hesitant to believe that this will ever, in fact, end.  This is despite direct knowledge that it will - it simply feels that way because no matter what I do, it's simply a drop in the ocean.  Strangely enough, it does not discourage, but encourage further playing, since I do realize that it adds up and I do know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  Still, it's quite an imposing thing, having as big a map as the one in Just Cause 2 with as much to -do- in it, since it is far and beyond what other games would logically have.  I suppose I could say this as a positive and a negative thing, whereas some other aspects of the game unfortunately come across as merely negative.

One of these aspects is the rather lop-sided reaction of the Panauan Army, which I have come to loathe tremendously through my experiences with location hopping, as it directly interferes with my ability to do so in an enjoyable fashion.  You see, to explain my circumstances, I feel I have to explain the game a little, so allow me to do that really quickly.  The locales of the game can be categorized pretty easily:  you have (Military) Communication Stations, Military Bases, (Military) Harbors, (Military) Airports, Cities and Towns.  (I might be forgetting something, but if I am, it's not important right now.)  Now, as you might realize, they're fairly differentiated by what you would expect the most military resistance from and what you wouldn't expect a lot from.  As in, if I were going to storm a Military Base to blow stuff up, or run into a town and blow up a solitary Propaganda Truck, I would expect the former to be the more difficult task.

Just Cause 2 thinks otherwise.

I can storm a Military Base and spend ten to twenty minutes looking for everything contained within, and not have so much as a call for reinforcements come across the radio.  Even as I'm shooting guard after guard in the face with my Super Shotgun and blowing up giant tanks of gas and shit, nobody thinks I'm causing enough of a problem that they can't handle it themselves.  Or....something along those lines I guess.  The point is, from start to finish, I can 100% a Military Base with no problem, getting, at most, Level 3 Heat for my troubles.  I guess, on its own, this isn't too surprising, nor is it something to seriously consider or worry about.  After all, level 3 in a 5(?) level system is pretty high after all, and the upper tiers are likely reserved for story purposes and times when you just do not stop causing chaos.  At least, that's what you might think.

The problem comes in when I see a Propaganda Truck in a town or a city.  It is a problem because they are usually flanked by a couple of soldiers which, on their own, isn't too bad, or barely any resistance if you have a fully upgraded shotgun.  However, approaching said truck invokes a reaction that confuses and infuriates me, as I can literally watch the Heat Gauge go from one to two to three before I even throw a grenade inside of the truck and when I do and it explodes, I have level Five Heat out of fucking nowhere.  Because I brazenly blew up a truck that was spewing a recording of the President to the townsfolk who, by all accounts, have probably learned how to tune it out, what with having to live with it and all. 

From this moment after the truck detonates, the game harkens back to the days of yore, the days of Grand Theft Auto III, when the commonplace was to cause chaos until you had a five or six star wanted level and make a dramatic last stand because there was no fucking way you were surviving that.  While not quite that impossible, Level 5 Heat has afforded me plenty of experience in hijacking helicopters (one session giving me nine hijackings, on top of the likely half a dozen helicopters I simply shot down from my own copters) simply because they will not stop fucking sending them after me and the whole while I am simply left in shock of the fact that I am getting shot at by three military helicopters at the same time because I blew up a truck.  There is something wrong with this.

As you might imagine, this exercise in frustration has given me pause when it comes to completing Villages as locations as, if there is a Truck present, I simply have to destroy it, and of course in doing so, it means that I will then be stuck spending the next fifteen or so minutes fighting and evading my way out of a level five heat so that I may continue playing the game without having helicopters trying to examine my head with rockets.  Conversely, I exhale a sigh of relief every time the next undiscovered location turns out to be anything else, as it means that I will simply not have to deal with that awfulness, but rather, I look forward to the eventual cat-and-mouse game that surfaces at 92-97% completion, wherein that last piece of something beckons me from its hiding spot, as if some perverse game of Hide-And-Seek, wherein the goal is to find and consume or destroy, depending on that which is sought.

Still, the important part is that Just Cause 2 is fun, even after all these hours I've put into it.  I may have, in anger, once exclaimed at my television, "THIS.  SHIT LIKE THIS IS WHY YOU'RE TWENTY DOLLARS!", but I do consider it a success for gaming if just because it has raised the bar in crafting an open world that is truly that, as well as giving you the means to explore every inch of it in a way that is both enjoyable and interesting.  While the world isn't bursting with life, it has its own quirks and it has raw size if nothing else to make it feel like something worth celebrating in this particular way.  In many ways, I look at Just Cause 2 as something to show off potential more than anything else, since where the game isn't tight enough for me to consider it 'great', it's good enough to be quite fun, and it offers me plenty of times to say "Man, if only someone who churns out top-shelf quality could get a hold of this", to drool at the possibility therein.  If only, indeed.

More Time With Just Cause 2

I spent more time with Just Cause 2 today and while the in-game counter told me earlier that I was at a little over 9 hours it certainly felt like twice that, but in a good way.  As I figured, the world is a lot more open than AssBro, so I find that I'm completely unimpeded by invisible walls (per se, as they are quite visible) on my ongoing quest for discovery and destruction.  What has been impeding me, however, is apparently poor sight, as I can't exactly blame it on anything else.  Twice now, I've come to a point where the HUD and map tell me I'm a scant few percentage points away from clearing the area and for the life of me, I cannot find the last thing or few things that I need to round it out to an even 100%.  Which is as frustrating as you might think as a base, and even moreso for someone with a little bit of that 'gaming OCD' that may or may not exist in conjunction with seeing numbers next to numbers that aren't the same.

I guess, conceptually, it's not quite as different as scanning areas for ubiquitous MacGuffins of any sort of variety that the game tells you you want to collect for a variety of hastily-crafted reasons (which Just Cause 2 also has), but at least there's the pay-off of blowing it up once you've found it.  It's just different enough, for me at least, to not find it a chore to look for these things which I think makes all the difference in the world.  And it helps that the actual collectibles seem to be perpetually marked on your PDA so it's merely a matter of getting close enough for the in-game HUD to show you that you're near it.  Of course, that makes me wonder why it's not that simple for these destructible buildings and other such structures, but I guess that would just make the game too easy.  Since the good thing about Just Cause 2 is that it's a game about blowing things up.  But there's a case to be made for saying the bad thing about Just Cause 2 is that it's a game about blowing things up.

I've discovered, moreso than I initially thought, that there isn't a whole lot of meat to Just Cause 2 beyond causing chaos.  The story is rather slipshod and poorly acted out, since apparently they wanted to challenge Chrono Cross for the most use of poorly-done and unnecessary accents.  There is a hook that I won't spoil that I came across today that, in most other games I would likely find it so absurd that it was funny for it.  However, here it just felt a little....forced.  Or underwhelming, perhaps, since my reaction to it was basically ".....really?  We're having this?  Well....okay.", rather than a chuckle at it.  Of course, my lack of amusement could've come from having to do the mission prior to the hook three times because of -terrible- checkpoints and a cadre of bullshit soldiers at all four of the locations I had to destroy without getting killed in the meanwhile since even if I was on the last one and died, I would have to do all four all over again.  Which isn't an isolated problem, unfortunately.

I've found that the HEAT system is as finicky as it is bad (likely because the former part of this) since it basically means that, no matter where in the world you are, if you piss off the government, you will never see the end of them unless you parachute slingshot several kilometers away or hide behind the magical 'one building they won't look behind' or something.  It's reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto 3's system of "Six stars means make a grand last stand because you are going to die." which isn't wholly great, unfortunately.  I can sort of see it in some situations, but I was on an oil rig in the middle of the goddamn ocean at one point, systematically destroying everything on it and soldiers kept coming.  Yes, I understand that they can sail/cruise boats there and get on that way, but that doesn't account for just how they -always- managed to get the higher ground on me, especially since I never saw a single helicopter.

It's only mildly annoying until you find yourself in that position of constantly being at low health and having to zip around frantically to avoid damage long enough to regenerate to just past being critically wounded only to get hit with a magic bullet that starts the whole circuit over again.  Then you find yourself with a strange feeling of immortality that is also accompanied by a fear that you are, in fact, not immortal.  Because you're not.  But after you've just come back from the brink of death five times in the span of three minutes, you start to wonder if you -can- die.  And of course, then you do die and it's either mildly irritating to rage-inducing depending on whether or not you're in a mission since, as stated above, dying during a mission generally starts it over again negating that precious, precious progress that comes with making stuff explode.  Then again, the upside is that you get to blow it up -again-, so it's something of a wash, I suppose.

Still, Just Cause 2 is an exceedingly fun game and I guess it's telling that the only complaint I have about it is that it, in fact, sometimes allows me to relive the fun of destroying certain things.  And that I don't have an indicator of where things are that I can then blow up.  And that everything that isn't about blowing stuff up is B-movie quality at best.  Still, I think it's more important for a game to be fun than for it to be technically impressive, so even though it doesn't have both boxes checked, it has the most important one checked.  For the one last day I need between me and the Vita, it'll serve my purposes quite well I should say, and past that we'll just have to see.  I'm not saying I won't play it after the Vita just...likely with lessened frequency up-front.  Until such a point that I'm ready to jump back into the Chaotic land of Panau.

The Merits of Mindless Fun

By this point in the game's lifespan, you've either heard of or played Just Cause 2, assuredly, so you pretty much already know what it's about.  Until today, I was only in the former category, but with scant few days before the Vita is in my grasp and boredom ceases to exist for months, I've got a little blank area with gaming.  While I am still pumped to start a new game in Alpha Protocol, I know there's no way I'd be able to get through it in four days of playtime, so yesterday and today, I decided on simply trying out a few of the games I either haven't played or have neglected for some time.  Yesterday's time was spent with Sengoku Basara 3:  Samurai Heroes and today was spent with Grapple Hook:  The Game.  Because honestly, who goes ten seconds without using the thing once you finally understand just how to use it?  I didn't, at the very least.

Just Cause 2 doesn't pretend to be anything beyond what it is; good ol' mindless fun, and good for it on that, because there's absolutely no way the game could be taken seriously.  While there's a story with....questionable voice acting, it merely exists as a backdrop for the carnage you're going to create on a large scale over your time with the game.  When the first mission entails you jumping from a helicopter to catch up to a flying dead body (which would not work) and then parachuting into an enemy base that you are expected to not only collect items from, but kill everyone there and blow up a few buildings or installations for their trouble before using a grappling hook to fly away in a helicopter, you know what you signed on for.  Added to that is the fact that not only is the above carnage encouraged and fun, but it's required in the sense that you have to do so to fill up the 'Chaos' meter which, at certain levels, will unlock Story-centric missions as well as a few other random things.  And if there was ever a case to make for "Required doesn't always mean not fun", it would be this, since I am more than happy to tool around until I can tear down a statue with nothing beyond a cable and a vehicle, or blow up a gas station by bailing out of a speeding car heading into one of the pumps.

In fact, after the short story missions that the game opens with, that's all I did.  I'm sure there was other stuff I could've done, found missions to do for one of the factions available or something, but I just wasn't interested which I fear might become a hurdle in the game.  Much like how I loathed not being able to just explore as I wished in Assassin's Creed:  Brotherhood, I imagine I'll feel a similar annoyance at ending my destructive shenannigans to actually play the game, though I suspect it's quite a bit more lax on that than AssBro was.  I am a little unimpressed with how far the destructible elements seem to be spread, however, as I flew all around the starting island with the grappling hook and parachute and, aside from a few spots with a few Fuel Tanks and the like, the majority of my findings were simply water towers.  Which were great to blow up and in fact it was fairly funny to watch as my character (who might just be referred to as Scorpion/Scorpio?) flew off of one after it violently exploded, but I want more.  I suppose I might have been spoiled by my time with Red Faction:  Guerrilla, in the sense that I want to level all of the things and I know that's just impossible.

When I wasn't looking for things to blow up, however, I did enjoy some time simply playing around with the double-hook function of the Grappling Hook which, and I say this with only minimal exaggeration, might have been one of the greatest ideas in anything ever.  There's something immensely funny about sticking these digital crash test dummies, essentially, with a grappling hook and then attaching the other end to a moving vehicle to watch them get dragged.  As well as being chased by a squad of cars who suddenly watch one of their own fly up in the air doing flips simply because a cable caught them and a part of the road that they just passed at 80 Miles per hour.  Or using that same ideology to send a car flying off a bridge, instantly neutralizing any danger it might possess.  Or even just sticking an enemy up to swing about impotently from a lamp post as you fill him with lead flying from a sub machine gun like a sick game of pinata.  I could go on and on, I'm sure you realize, and with good reason because it is just that versatile.

Even minus all that fun you get, it is as incredibly potent as a navigational device as you might expect since not only does it zip you, near instantly, from Point A to Point B with minimal fuss, but it also has another use in conjunction with your backpack that apparently has an infinite amount of parachutes in it.  I'll admit that not since Grand Theft Auto:  San Andreas have I ever tried to control a parachute in a video game (at least, that I remember) so it was a bit strange and I'm sure the physics for it also exist outside of reality, but both tools in conjunction with one another offer you near-super hero levels of traversability which is a word, I don't even care Firefox shut up.  Not only that, but it's insanely intuitive for as complicated as you think it might be.  Eyeball a location you want to get to and if you can't just zip there, look at somewhere you can zip to.  Zip and slam X while you're in the air to slingshot out with your parachute and from there either guide it with more grappling shots or zip to your desired location, should you be within range of it.  It's astounding.

If I could complain about the game at all, which I find that I can, quite easily so, it'd likely be about the fact that I am dying a hell of a lot.  I'm only playing Normal since I threw it in to show off to some others and even with that, it seems that the health system is not quite up to par since there's rarely any feedback from being shot or hit aside from when you're critical and the screen starts to pulse red.  Afterwards, if you manage to not get hurt for a few moments, you'll regenerate to -just outside- of critical and no higher, meaning that even a single shot will bring on the red screen pulse again until you happen upon a Med Kit.  On top of that, the duration of the double-hook is unfortunately a little shorter than I would like.  While it's fun to hook someone to an already moving vehicle, I wanted to hook someone to a vehicle that I could then drive, dragging them along behind, but I find that before I've even begun speeding up, the hook has undone already and I'm towing nothing.  Similarly so, people just do not hang for long enough from structures that I want them to swing from.  Still, little troubles with a game that more than makes up for it with fun.

I imagine it's going to be a quick few days with Just Cause 2 as my day-filler, so let's hope for that, if just so I can shut up about not being able to wait anymore.  I'm almost annoying myself with it.