In most games, when someone says, "I'm going to skyjack a jet airplane, tie three guards to it, and fly it into a super poor village" people would ask, "Why?" But in Just Cause 2, the answer would be, "Why not?"
That just about sums up what Just Cause 2 is going for. It's a water-cooler game in every sense of the word. You can tell this because when I first told my friend about it, my phraseology was something went this. "So I needed to unlock a new mission, so I stuck a whole bunch of plastic explosives to a sports car and drove it into an explosives compound. The explosion killed me, but I kept all the rewards!"
The story follows a CIA agent named Rico Rodriguez. He is sent into a small southeast Asian island country to locate his mentor who may have gone rouge. Instead of just following leads on his whereabouts, Rico decides it would be best to destabilize the country by blowing up as many military depot's as possible.
Just Cause 2 is an open world game, but saying that Just Cause 2 is an open world game is like saying that Stalin went a bit too far. There are literally 400 virtual square miles of world for you to destroy. Now, most open worlds feature non-linear gameplay in which you generally need to do something a certain amount of times. This is sometimes the case in Just Cause, but the world is so huge that some of the missions can take on a linear feel. One problem that comes up in many open world games is that it releases you into a world in possibilities to steal cars and crash them into soup kitchens, and then punishes you for it, some games that are guilty of this are Grand Theft Auto, and Oblivion. This is not the case in Just Cause 2, as the game actually rewards you for blowing stuff up. To unlock story missions, you need to do stronghold missions, to get them, you need to do side missions, to do them, you need to cause chaos. Causing chaos is easier than you may think, because someone went all around the island and dropped explosive cans of oil everywhere.
The interesting gameplay mechanics the game offers are that of transportation. Rico has the ability to pull unlimited parachutes out of........ I don't know where he pulls the parachutes out of. He has no pockets! Where does he get the parachutes from? Either way, the parachute is really handy because landing anything besides a helicopter is incredibly difficult, and base jumping is really fun.
You also have a "grapple hook" that lets you grab onto anything within range. Using it to zip around is a good way to get places, but you can also use it to attach two things together. This includes people. One of the most satisfying things I have done in Just Cause 2 is grapple a guard to a car, then drive the car off of a cliff, or into a gas station, or off of a building.
The only thing I don't like about the game so far is the accents. There's one character whose accent is so terrible that every time I hear it, all I want to do is throw my shoe at the TV.
At the end of the day, Just Cause 2 is really fun because I can re-create historical disasters.
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