JUST CAUSE 4
Rico’s back doing what he does best, blowing *blorp* up – but is it enough?
Unless you live on a tropical island year-round, you’ll be used to putting up with a spot of bad weather. And if you live in the UK, said ‘spot’ is nine months of torrential downpours briefly punctuated by a couple of semi-sunny days in July when you might be able to brave some shorts. Still, as sucky as Blighty’s climate can be, it’s got nothing on the ultra-aggressive atmospheric conditions Rico Rodriguez has to endure. Just Cause 4 has finally discovered weather is a thing. Well, cataclysmic weather, at least. If GTA V is defined by its trio of swappable crims and ambitious heists, and Assassin’s Creed by its obsession with hoodies and leaping off huge cathedrals, then this madcap sandbox separates itself from the open-world pack with its megadestructive meteorological events.
WINGSUIT YOU, SIR
Not that landscape-wrecking tornados are its only party piece. Rico’s brand of open-world chaos is as OTT as ever. Give gravity the bird in daft stunt races. Dart through the air like a 12-stone flying squirrel as you complete wingsuit challenges. Liberate outposts by introducing every building, antenna, and satellite dish to the business end of a grenade launcher. With joyful movement and dizzying destruction, the series’ penchant for rat-a-tat thrills hasn’t faded a jot.
Back to that showstopping weather. In Just Cause 4, these destructive elements can radically
“LANDSCAPE-WRECKING TORNADOS ARE FAR FROM THIS MADCAP SANDBOX’S ONLY PARTY PIECE.”
impact how easy it is to slingshot around the South American state of Solís with Rico’s returning grappling hook and wingsuit. While general traversal is a breeze in fair weather, get caught in the bellowing, blinding gusts of a sandstorm and you’ll be tossed about like a pound coin in a washing machine.
These forces of nature are also a weapon that can be manipulated by the game’s opposing factions. As the story plays out, both the Army Of Chaos the dreamy despot-killer is building and the nefarious Black Hand militia group Rico is trying to topple vie for control of the elements thanks to various sci-fi doodads.
As you blitz your way through the overly repetitive campaign, tornados, sandstorms, and bolts of lightning can all eventually be summoned with a few button presses at consoles in select bases you liberate. Turns out snowhaired X-Men aren’t the only ones who can control the weather like a little (tree-flattening) lapdog. Eat your heart out, Storm.
WIND-WIND
The game’s headline missions all centre around the battle to control Solís’ climate. Operation Windwalker sees Rico and chums attempting to harness the power of a tornado, as the Black Hand does its best to blow your fun with special wind turbines that can knock your precious twister off course. Then there’s the Sandstinger campaign trail, which whisks the action to the desert with the gravity-defying Latin hunk using a heavily armoured train to negotiate the fury of an all-encompassing sandstorm. Rounding off the climate carnage is Thunderbarge: a set of missions that culminate in Rico harnessing lightning like a less beardy Zeus. Just make sure you keep close to that specially insulated boat or Rodriguez will end up with a frizzy new ’do courtesy of a 10,000-volt strike.
These showy story quests have ludicrous set-piece spectacle to burn, so it’s a pity the vast majority of objectives Rico is saddled with outside of these missions are so humdrum. Feeling like a demigod while swirling around a colossal tornado in your wingsuit is swell and all, but when so much of your time is taken up with samey region strikes, the appeal of all that fancy weather ultimately proves fleeting.
I’ll get to the relentless repetition of flipping switches to conquer enemy bases in a little while, though. In the meantime, let’s celebrate Just Cause 4’s other big new addition: the freshly spruced-up tether. Now, while in previous games Rico could string enemies together by holding o to tie them up with his grapple hook, the bad guy-roping possibilities have blossomed this time out.
Unlike Just Cause 3, Rico’s tether now comes with a set of wonderfully goofy attachments. The default retractor setting works much the same as before – point your grap-happy tool
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Rico Rodriguez is as happy in the air as he is on good old terra firma. at two targets, then let the physics fun commence. It’s the addition of boosters and the Air Lifter that really mix up the mayhem. The former add mini-rockets to your tethers – useful for when you want to, say, send a jeep or APC flying into a posse of goons. As for the latter, picture Metal Gear Solid V’s Fulton recovery system… only less kidnappy and with more suspended goons flapping around helplessly in the air.
GOD’S LIFT
The Air Lifter is a gloriously stupid tool of destruction. Master its enemy-launching ways and you can whizz through entire battles without ever firing a bullet. Watching as Black Hand goons sway in the air, usually plastered to the side of a crate or vehicle, is a guilty pleasure that never gets old. Even after 30 hours the joys of tethering dudes to bits of scenery and watching them float away raises a smirk.
There’s actually some depth to the tethering system too, though you could argue Avalanche has slightly overegged the grappling pudding. Just Cause 4 gives you three different grappling hook loadouts, and as you build up your Chaos level – we’ll talk more about that shortly – and amass perks, you can stack different tether modifiers on top of each other.
Mixing and matching boosters and Air Lifter powers gives plenty of scope for bespokely tailored slaughter, and there are a wealth of parameters to mess with. Example? You can give the Lifter’s balloons armour, tweak how they float, and even attach a skill called Peak Effect that lets Rico hover on top of a tethered object indefinitely. The menus are confusing, though, and you’ll likely have just as much fun with the default tether settings if all you’re after is unfussy balloon buffoonery.
If you really need a story to justify all that tethering, you’d better set your expectations low. ‘Leisure Suit Larry’ low. Just Cause 4’s story is so thin, it could comfortably be summarised on a Post-it note… a Post-it note designed for ants. The plot is utter nonsense. Every previous entry in the series had throwaway narratives, and that’s exactly the case here. Rico wants to liberate Solís from the clutches of the Black Hand, there’s a bad lady called Gabriella Morales, and every now and then someone mentions Rodriguez’ dearly departed pop. Fin. Lawrence Of Arabia this ain’t.
Of course, going into a Just Cause game expecting narrative finesse and multi-layered characters is the equivalent of stumbling into a kebab joint at 3am and demanding Michelinstar foie gras. Chopping Rico down to size because he can’t tell a Last-Of-Us-rivalling tale feels uncharitable in the extreme. This is a game where you create your own stories in the minute-to-minute chaos of constant explosions, helicopter raids, and parachuting out of a fighter jet milliseconds before it crashes into the side of a mountain.
“THE SHOWY STORY QUESTS HAVE LUDICROUS SET-PIECE SPECTACLE TO BURN.”
IT’S SOL OVER
As an open-world map, Solís is pretty hard to pigeonhole. Pieced together from humid forests, stretches of dusty desert, and chilly mountain ranges, it’s less cohesive than Just Cause 3’s Medici. The flipside is this more scattershot approach to world building leaves you with a sandbox that’s more varied than any of its predecessors. Yet while Solís’ hodgepodge topography makes it a diverting enough space to lose yourself in, it feels generic and lifeless next to the sprawling world of The Witcher 3, or Red Dead Redemption 2’s effortlessly alive New Heartlands.
The tech that brings this chunk of South American real estate to the screen isn’t exactly stellar, either. While Just Cause 4 is a smudgy, distinctly plain-looking game at the best of times, its cutscenes and character models really take the vomit-worthy cake. Most cinematics seem to be pre-rendered, running at subpar resolutions with a tonne of unpleasant artifacting. As for the cast? Talk about falling out of the Ugly Tree and hitting 27 branches on your way back to terra firma. Rico himself looks just about passable, but