Just Cause 2 Video

Just Cause 2 Video

Publisher: Eidos
Platform: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
UK Price (as reviewed): £39.99 (incl. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): $49.99 (excl. Tax)

More than any other game we’ve played in the last few months, Just Cause 2 is at once the most hilarious and addictive. The storyline might not have the complexity and craft of Mass Effect 2, but who really cares about that when you’ve got the chance to tie your car to a helicopter and pull it off a cliff?

Certainly not us, that’s who – and that’s why we’ve been playing Just Cause 2 pretty much solidly ever since we finished our initial review. We’ve been running around the fictional islands of Panau, blowing things up and tying things together with reckless abandon. We love this game.

Unfortunately though, as was pointed out in our initial Just Cause 2 review, it’s not easy to explain exactly why we love it. Any discussion of Eidos’ epically explosive shooter gets bogged down in comments about the inanity of the plot or the monotony of the missions, when the reality is that none of that matters.

So, we prepared another little gamecast video to show any lagging unbelievers exactly what Just Cause 2 is like and to demonstrate just why we like it so much.


Joe and Harry sat down late last week to narrate the video and provide a bit of commentary, but the explosions and grapple-hook tomfoolery do a good job at speaking for themselves too. The video itself comes in three flavours - you can download the full-fat version, all 750MB of it, which shows the game running at 720p; you can watch the same video embedded as a YouTube clip, or grab the very lithe and light mobile version.

In the mean time, here’s an excerpt from our Just Cause 2 review…

“While Just Cause 2’s openness and freedom are definitely it’s biggest selling point though, it’s also a bit of a critical conundrum. Boil it all down and the major design elements are shallow and poorly done; combat especially, but also the quick-time driven vehicle hijacks and samey majority of missions. At the same time though, well…you’ve got a grappling hook and infinite parachutes!

What makes Just Cause 2 shine is the fact that players are innately anarchic and that the weapons function as a toolbox for embracing that – not the level of polish with which the game has been assembled.

There are far better story driven shooters out there if you’re primarily interested in fighting, but if you’re willing to step away from the beaten path though and motivate yourself to see what Just Cause 2 has to offer then you’ll have a lot of fun. It’s far better to be driven by the curiosity of what’s on the next island than the barked orders of a Texan stereotype and it's far more fun to spend time messing around with the grappling hook than actually trying to follow the storyline.”

In the end we awarded Just Cause 2 a 9/10 and a Recommended Award. You can check out the full Just Cause 2 review for more information, but we’d still love to know your thoughts in the forums.