Just Cause 2 Preview [360] page 2

13 Nov 2009 at 16:57:51 by Richard Walker

Which leads us neatly onto the massive environmental variation you'll encounter across Panau, from golden, sandy beaches and lush, verdant, jungle to inhospitable deserts, snowy tundra and craggy mountain regions. It's admittedly all very lovely, but it's the havoc you can wreak in these pretty locales that sets JC2 apart from its competitors.

Unlocking missions revolves around your ability to create chaos, and anything bearing the symbol of Panau's dictator, Baby Panay should be destroyed with extreme prejudice. Whether it's a gas station, propaganda cart, water tower or radio mast, all are ripe for destruction and can be eliminated mid-mission to count towards your chaos percentage if you so wish.

Causing 100% chaos reveals a waypoint on our map, which leads us to our first objective - destroying a facility built deep beneath an enemy compound. Calling in the weapons merchant (borrowed from Mercenaries) using a deployable beacon, we're able to purchase a helicopter or light jet aircraft to reach our destination, where we jump from the cockpit to skydive straight into the area, attracting masses of unwanted heat as we do so.

Getting to the lower level to plant a charge proves to be fun yet challenging, whereas escaping to the surface with the grapple is a tense race against time before the whole installation becomes a smouldering crater. We make it just in time, stopping only to turn and admire our handiwork. Mission accomplished.

Our next task takes us to one of the northernmost points on the map, which means calling in an extraction helicopter to transport us across the immense distance. Of course, you can make your own way if you're so inclined and there are hundreds of different vehicles you can hijack - on the move using your grapple if you like (a la minor PSP classic, Pursuit Force) - but extraction is the quicker, more convenient choice.

Dropped at our location, we skydive into position, unfurling the parachute and landing safely on Rico's superhumanly sturdy knees. A speedboat is waiting for us at the end of a pontoon, which we duly steal and race to the next target - a gargantuan skyscraper, home to several huge broadcast satellite arrays. Like the helicopter before it, we toss the speedboat aside, jump from the driving seat to open our parachute, sending the flaming carapace hurtling towards the shore. Knock knock. Boom boom! We're here.

Scaling the building is a simple case of jumping on top of an external lift to hitch a ride to the building's summit, where we're instantly set upon by hostile soldiers. Getting creative with the grapple means we end up using our ammunition sparingly, instead opting to hang enemies from nearby masts, rotating satellite dishes or precarious precipices, which is innately comical.

Having dispatched the hostile threat and rotated the four dishes into place, we climb the last hundred or so feet to the main broadcast dish, where we plant charges at two weak points before clambering to the edge, ready to make good our escape. Rico springs forward, diving as the explosive detonates behind him in cinematic slow-motion. It's a genuine moment of Bond-aping brilliance that leaves us desperately wanting more of Just Cause 2's fantastically overblown action. It's going to be a long wait.

Just Cause 2 is tentatively slated for a Q1 2010 release.

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