Freeform Chaos: Hands-On With Just Cause 3

Some games craft a tight narrative experience and then usher players through the story like it was a ride at Disneyland.

Some games craft a tight narrative experience and then usher players through the story like it was a ride at Disneyland. Avalanche Studios' Just Cause series, on the other hand, opts to drop players into tropical islands without artificial borders and then hands players the tools to start blowing things up. Games like this have to be experienced before they can be judged. Fortunately, two GI editors had the opportunity to jump into Just Cause 3’s open world and cause some havoc. Here is their tale.

Ben: Bryan, we both just got back from a trip to New York, where we sat down with the Avalanche staff and got to play their game. I don’t know about you, but I had a blast. The first thing I did was grapple a member of the militia to a flagpole and watch him fly into the air using the new tension feature that pulls two grappled objects together. Less than a minute after getting my hands on the controller, I was using passing cars to parasail through the air and dodging gunfire from a grumpy police force.

Bryan: I made sure to fire up a bunch of Just Cause 2 before we went on the trip to refamiliarize myself with the series and was surprised by how rough the controls were. It came out in 2010, and there have been a lot of advances since then. When I picked up Just Cause 3 for the first time, the leap ahead was readily apparent. I was also drawn to the cars and grappled on top of one. Instead of being stuck in the center of the roof you can now walk around on the tops of vehicles freely. They also cut the ability to hang off the sides of the car, which I never thought worked very well anyway.

Ben: I agree, it feels like a more modern shooter now. I was also impressed with how intuitive it is to switch between the wingsuit and the parachute. If you grapple onto a passing car, you can launch yourself into the air and then deploy your wingsuit to soar through the air, then switch over to the parachute to get some extra stability while aiming, and then grapple onto the side of a building to gain speed before launching into the wingsuit again and repeating the whole process. During the trip, the guys kept saying that you’re weaker when you’re on the ground. I found that to be true, because Rico is so light and agile in the air, and it’s actually pretty easy to keep that grapple/wingsuit/parachute combo going so you can stay in the air indefinitely.

Bryan: The parachute controls much more naturally now so it’s easier to circle around a base and shoot and chuck grenades on all the chumps below. Another big change is the infinite supply of C4. You’re never stuck shooting at a fuel tank with your crappy pistol when you’re out of everything else. You can set up to five of these explosives at a time and detonate an entire base. Did you get to see the big spherical fuel tank? It’s like an enormous EPCOT globe, and when you blow it up it makes a huge flaming mushroom cloud.

Next up: We dive into the grappling system, talk about vehicle handling, and blow up a military base.