Grappling with Chaos: Just Cause 3 Review
- Ben Stembridge
- Mar 2, 2018
- 5 min read
I have neither spent time with the original Just Cause nor it’s sequel, but I have spent a ton of time with the third installment in the series, Just Cause 3. I’m not sure what you know or don’t about this game from Square Enix, but let me tell you that it was a remarkable experience diving headfirst into it with very little preconceived notions on it. The incredibly fun open world game struck me with its confidence and relentless accessibility - I’ve quite simply never played a game like it, even though there are so many games that are similar to it. My review is comprehensive, and comes a few years since the games release in 2015. Let’s go already!
The Just Cause series puts players into the agile boots of Rico Rodriguez, a spy, soldier, and destroyer of all things. After a string of merry misadventures across the globe, Rico is headed home to the beautiful Mediterranean island of Medici. The gorgeous Greco-Italian paradise is under the vicious control of General Di Ravello, who is, for lack of a better term, a total dick. Rico flies to the island to meet up with some childhood friends and former associates, and then proceeds to blow stuff up. Literally, that is how the game starts. It sets the tone immediately by having you stand on top of a moving plane firing rockets at tanks and missile sites. Just Case 3 knows exactly what it wants from the player, and it makes it perfectly clear very early: chaos.
Gameplay is introduced within the first five minutes, which had me acquainted and proficient with Rico’s trademark Grapple instantly. This incredible tool fires a tow cable that can latch onto any item in the game world, and propel you to it. Pair this with Rico’s redeploy-able parachute and wingsuit, and players can generate serious lift for gliding and suspending themselves above the battleground. Just Cause in third-person, with an interesting approach to combat gameplay. Partially because of Rico’s ability to quickly grapple out of situations that become to strenuous, there is no cover system. Even more interesting is the lack of aiming - firing any weapon comes from the hip. Thankfully, there is a simple lock-on system that assists when in a shootout.
I found that the game springs you into action with little care on why. Sure, there’s an evil dictator and a cliche band of capable rebels, but it’s all rather trite. However, I didn’t find that my lack of interest in the narrative hindered my experience. In fact, it actually enhanced it. From the getgo, Just Cause 3 is pure, belligerent chaos. I found my first hour of gameplay skipping missions to shoot for the moon and liberate the towns of Medici. Half of it was because I wanted to wreck some bad guys, the other half is because I couldn’t easily navigate the mission list on the game map. It’s not a bad map, just a little complicated and vague. That echoed in another issue I spotted immediately when wingsuiting to village after village: the objectives for freeing towns are not obvious. Soaring into a beautiful coastal town, I had several icons pop up on my screen, evidently representing stuff for me to blow up. I was a bit confused, as the icons didn’t always show up on the map. At a gameplay view, I’d see markers direct me towards objectives, but they would only show up when I got close to them. While not an uncommon design characteristic, it was difficult to get a hang of what the game wanted me to do. I eventually knew what each icon meant - destroy this statue, this fuel tank, this propaganda van, etc.
The world of Medici is big. Not The Witcher 3 big, but pretty damn big. I spent my first few hours of my play-through liberating the province that the intro places you in. I mentioned that Just Cause 3 knows what it wants from the player. That something is easily attainable. I found myself breezing through a lot of the settlements on the first island, while completing some actual missions here and there. The game tracks your “chaos”, and that’s exactly what I caused without difficulty. That’s not to say that the game is super easy, but the degree of maneuverability that it affords you makes for a pretty easy time. Attack helicopter targeting you? Hijack it. Tank has you in its sights? Fly out of view. The player has an array of reactions to every possible enemy action. Also, the enemy’s AI are pretty dumb, which helps a lot.
While gameplay technically has some cons, I still loved traveling from island to island, ripping Di Ravello several new ones. I noticed similarities to games like Far Cry 5 and Red Faction: Guerrilla. Players have the freedom to go settlement to settlement, blasting away objectives at their leisure. What makes Just Cause 3 stand out from those two games is its insane accessibility. Just freed a town? You can wingsuit over to the next one in 45 seconds. The game knows you just want to blow stuff up until the whole map is blue, and it is going to let you do so.
The game world environment of Just Cause 3 looks incredible. Fields of lavender, bright blue waters, and pretty Italian towns litter the entire nation. It even has some impressive world-building details, such as intricate town layouts with store fronts. There are even tourists and backpackers from out of town admiring the view. These are things you could easily miss while rocketing from each location liberating towns. At first I thought that this was an oversight on the developer’s part, but then I realized that everything in this game is deliberate. Just Cause knows that you’ll likely miss some of the details during your rampages, but they’re there for you if you want them.
Like I said, the game is unadulterated fun from start to finish. Sure it’s not perfect, but I didn’t pick up Just Cause 3 for it to be perfect. I picked it up because I wanted to blow stuff up and fly around like a gosh darn squirrel. This game’s got character, fun gameplay, and all the goods you need in a chaotic open world game. A solid stamp of approval from myself and others here at Game Chop.
Ben Stembridge, Editor-in-Chief
Ben leads the reviews and news coverage for Game Chop. He also offers opinions on games and the industry, covering a wide range of genres and platforms. Ben especially enjoys discussions on game narratives, design styles, and independent titles.
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