Just Cause 2 is a sandbox style game set in the fictional island country of Panau, which is situated in the Malay Archipelago. Just Cause 1 was a really fun game despite having really naff graphics so I thought yeah I’ll get the new one when it comes out. The demo was fun and you got a good 30 minutes of wanton destruction out of it, which is great when you’re just after a no-brainer style bullet fest.

After about fifty hours of game play, I actually managed to complete the main storyline as I usually manage to just run off and cause havoc because I generally can’t be bothered to whiz through the game in ten minutes flat, plus it’s more fun just to liberate random settlements from the oppressive military…but the game trips itself up repeatedly as I shall explain.

• Panau is essentially a third world country which is largely rural apart from pockets of civilisation, so why on earth does the military mobilise so fucking quickly?! I mean come on, if you happen to walk within the vicinity of a soldier, the ladyboy fucker randomly goes postal on you and before you know it you’ve got Airwolf shooting holes in your arse and you’ve been turned into a flesh coloured colander in 20 seconds flat! No army on earth can mobilise that quickly! It suffers from the same cock-wrenching stupidity as Mercenaries that every single soldier has telescopic eyesight which largely rivals Bravestar and an itchy trigger finger to match.
• Soldiers are borderline G-nome project as they have the detection ability of the bastard lovechild if a predator had an extra-marital affair with Google maps. Not only does your wanted rating not decrease if you manage to fly the other side of a mountain but attack helicopters spawn out of the ether and start attacking you when you know there is absolutely no way that they could triangulate your position.
• Staying with the super-Soldier stupidity, soldiers also have the ability to pretty much shoot through solid objects as I regularly find myself taking damage from hiding behind stone walls or driving armoured cars. I mean seriously are all the armoured cars in Panau built by Renault and just have ancillary layers of Coco Pops boxes for armour?
• The car handling is terrible. As soon as you manage to commandeer a vehicle the first thing you notice is that the acceleration is inconsistent and trying to ascend a slope higher than a 10% gradient causes the car to slow down to a speed which would struggle to overtake a glacier.
• Destroying communications towers does not disrupt any communications like it reprehensibly says. Especially when you’ve KILLED every single soldier in the remote outpost they manage to call in air support, despite a) having no antenna and b) they’re all DEAD! Fuck sake!

I honestly feel that Just Cause 2 is the game that could have been amazing but is flawed by horrendous implementation. The game is billed as being quite serious yet the constant waves of ethereally generated soldiers sucks the fun out the game making it borderline ridiculous. I’m not being funny, but controllers have been thrown throughout the tenure of the game. Don’t get me wrong, it has it’s good parts and it is entertaining (why else would I spend 50+ hours if I didn’t like it!) but I constantly feel that it could have been better. Oh yeah and there’s over 5000 collectibles…get bent! Plus what’s wrong with multiplayer? It was the one thing that made Saints Row 2 better than GTA4 because you can maraud through with your mates and certainly us with A-Team childhoods, that makes it more appealing.

So in summary, Just Cause 2 is the game that could have been amazing, but will just remain good but infuriating

p.s. The Baby Panay statues you have to blow up are twice as amusing if you plant C4 on the statues rude bits…