I’m interested in extreme sports. Not to the extent that I’d ever give them a go, god no, I’m way too much of a coward for that. Particularly parachuting. I mean, that involves throwing yourself from huge heights, praying to God that the bag on your back will open up and take you to safety. Eugh. Instead, I play video games with these things in. So I’m sure you can imagine my excitement when the Just Cause 2 demo dropped.

Ok, I lied, I wasn’t excited. The original Just Cause wasn’t exactly a masterpiece, and did manage to get repetitive pretty quickly. What it did have, however, was the parachute, which many people managed to use to waste several hours of their lives away. So Just Cause 2 can just take that parachute and make it even better, right? Well… not quite.

The major new thing in the game is that the grappling hook now has its own button, so you’re not switching between guns and hook mid-combat, making the whole thing a lot smoother. The grappling hook has also been turned up to 11, as you can now attach it to basically anything, including the floor (useful for parachuting over long distances, but more on that later) and enemies (useful for… laughs). You can also use it to attach to two things at once, although the actual applications for this seemed limited to me in the demo, other than for yet more laughs.

Another pretty major change is the mission structure. Instead of the classic “complete one mission to unlock the next” structure that was adopted by the first game, Avalanche Studios have decided to take a Saints Row approach to missions, and you now have to complete side missions and destroy key targets (a la Mercenaries 2) before you can move on to the next mission. Why, you ask? I haven’t got a clue. I guess it means people are more likely to actually go off and do side missions now, but for people like me, who like to do the story missions one after the other and maybe stop for a side mission break, are forced to do these bonus missions just to progress through the game. It’s a structure that ruined Saints Row for me, and now it’s gone and ruined Just Cause.

Also new to the series is the inclusion of money, which is the worst idea ever and I hate every second of it and every idiot who thought it would be a good idea to implement it. Allow me to explain. In the first Just Cause, you could get the Agency (the guys you work for) to drop off a vehicle that you could just climb on to and ride it off the nearest cliff for some major hang time. It wasn’t perfect, but it made proceedings a lot easier and more fun. Now, you have to spend hard earned cash each time you want a vehicle drop, so you’re much less likely to throw it off the nearest cliff, since you’ll be screaming “all that money!” as it bursts into flames.

The actual combat itself isn’t that great either. There’s a vague kind of auto-targeting system in place, where if you look at an enemy, you can look slightly away and still shoot them. Enemies take stupid amounts of ammo to die as well, so half the time it makes more sense to run away, since there will always be more of them than there is of you. Even a melee attack takes two hits to kill a guy, which is pretty dumb when you think about it. Add to this some frigging merciless helicopter pilots (they will never, ever stop chasing you) and the fact that the enemy AI is thicker than two planks of wood nailed together and you’ve got some pretty lame gameplay going on.

Really the only saving grace of the game is that the environments are pretty spectacular in their scope and beauty. The draw distance is very impressive, and the quality of the graphics, combined with beautiful lighting and the concept of a tropical island in the first place makes Just Cause 2 a very pretty game indeed. How can I pick a fault with it? There is still WAY too little in the way of actual places to go. Yet again, half the map is purely forest and field, with very little variation as you go. That’s why it’s a good thing you can hook onto the ground; you’d have nothing else to keep yourself going otherwise.

One of the worst things about Just Cause 2 is the voice acting. The most prominent voice within the game is the female leader of the resistance, whose name escapes me. The woman playing her is quite clearly British and, despite her best efforts, her accent comes across as nearly stereotypical it’s so badly done. Combine that with a change of voice actor for our man Rico (another Brit putting on a bad accent, compared to the cool Mexican who did it last time) and a black market merchant who attempts to be some form of American (pretty sure he’s British too) and you’ve got a whole host of characters with irritating voices who you’d rather be working against than helping them out. The guns sound like guns, I suppose, and the environment sounds add to the… environment, but aside from that, there’s nothing even remotely worthy of mention.

It’s really disappointing to see a game that could have been so good turned into a mess of too many features and lack of care. The final product will probably still be good fun, but only because of the screwing around grappling on to things and parachuting away. Which, I guess, is the only reason anyone bought the original.

Just Cause 2 becomes a possible rental title on the 23rd of March.

Think I’m being too harsh? Totally agree with every word? Let us know in the comments!