Just Cause 3 Review

Technical issues galore hold back a joyous action movie experience

By: Ryan Ramakrishnan

Reviewed on PlayStation 4

Avalanche Studios’ goal to let players explode everything in sight makes “Just Cause 3” an extremely fun game to mess around in yet the developer’s failure to fix plentiful bugs and glitches create a less than stellar experience post-opening despite that exciting gameplay.

“Just Cause 3” was always too ambitious with its ideas of triggering explosions in every possible way, causing ultimate destruction to everything from vehicles to water towers. The game at its best is like living out your favorite action movie, playing as a charming killing machine in Rico Rodriguez. At its worst however, “Just Cause 3” will lose your interest through lengthy loading screens, significant frame rate drops and bugs in general, all far too unfortunate due to the quality in sheer entertainment Avalanche Studios offers in its gameplay.


Story
“Just Cause 3” is the type of game you play for the fun, mindless combat and not the plot. Save for a few thrilling moments in the plot’s execution, Avalanche Studios’ story of a dictatorship being overthrown is fun and relatively interesting on paper but with every cutscene, despite them looking and sounding pretty good, I just wanted to get back in on the action. Rico Rodriguez’s adventure of overthrowing said dictatorship with his friend Mario’s resistance is overall fine; it isn’t the most amazing story I have experienced in a game but it’ll do.

Gameplay
Where “Just Cause 3” succeeds when it’s not experiencing technical issues is the entertaining action. It is a joy to play once getting behind the somewhat odd controls and aforementioned technical issues.

“Just Cause 3” is all about taking the action to new levels by focusing greatly, if not entirely, on explosions. First and foremost, Avalanche Studios provides the player with an unlimited amount of C4. With the ease of a button press to stick your C4 anywhere and then another click to explode it on your cue, you’ll be able to blow things up anytime anywhere.

Besides the C4, “Just Cause 3’s” artillery of weapons and explosives include but are not limited to multiple assault rifles, machine guns, shotguns, rocket launchers, grenades and grenade launchers. The weapon variety is fairly open overall; however, with those options at hand, I rarely wanted to change it up.

The problem is the gunplay doesn’t feel as good as the rest of the action “Just Cause 3” offers. Aiming by pushing in the right joystick and an oddly lacking amount of power you feel with standard guns make it far less ideal than you’d hope.


Fortunately the explosives you can throw have quite the impact and quickly too, similar to that of the C4. Coupling those with your ability to pull things down and break them apart using tethers makes for some of the most fun an action game has offered me. “Just Cause 3” lets you attach two tethers to enemies, vehicles and plenty of things in the environment. From there, you can easily pull them to wherever you wish and more often than not, thanks to the game’s decision to make everything fragile, blow them up instantly.

These tethers work alongside the grappling hook and wingsuit, making for some amazing experiences in the game’s world. You have the ability to launch yourself from anywhere, using distance and height in the world to your advantage to get a nice gliding trip in instantaneously. The wingsuit allows for some smooth gliding, which is great for a multitude of reasons. For starters, it allows for a beautiful flight over the waters of Medici; however more importantly and progressively, wingsuit gliding lets you escape a tough firefight or explosion quickly or get from point A to point B in a decent amount of time in comparison to more traditional means of travel like cars.

Speaking of cars, there are vehicles driving around “Just Cause 3” all of the time that you can steal easily or call in for yourself. Once speed is picked up, driving can feel pretty good; however, in comparison to many other open world games with driving, it is just fine. I rarely wanted to be in a car though thanks to the pure fun that gliding around the world brought, acting as something a lot more fresh than driving average vehicles.

“Just Cause 3’s” mission structure is, as you’d expect, all about blowing things up more often than not. You will be tasked with tackling the militia and their strongholds, liberating outposts and towns and more. Most in-mission tasks, especially those of the outpost liberations, call for things like blowing up radars, towers, radios and propaganda posters, all resulting in some glorious explosions should you so choose to, and you’ll more than likely choose to do just that. Unfortunately this design of missions and things to tackle in Medici will grow repetitive with long, frequent play sessions. It is simply the case due to how any of the same things you’re asked to do, despite how fun they are at first.


One other kind of mission in “Just Cause 3” is the side activities in which you are tasked with doing anything from racking up explosive damage or kills, gliding through checkpoints or beating a clock in a helicopter or even your wingsuit. These activities can be a fun time-waster but also add to the thrill that is the open world to play with. I liked trying to get the best scores on each of these when I wanted a break from getting killed by the tough A.I. or when I wanted to lay off the explosion for a minute.

It is also worth mentioning a problem I personally ran into at a regular basis. I found the A.I. to be quite difficult, even at a lower difficulty setting. Unloading full clips on enemies left them alive and standing yet they’d barely shoot at me and I’d see myself nearing death and desperate for cover, something hard to find in an action game like this.

The gameplay that Avalanche Studios crafted in “Just Cause 3” is overall a lot of fun to partake in, even when the guns seemed off and the mission structure grows repetitive. All of this is unfortunately not permanent in your play sessions thanks to some technical problems. More on that next.

Graphics
Visually, “Just Cause 3’s” world of Medici is beautiful in its natural appearance through small towns and large bodies of water. With that being said however, the game doesn’t exactly maintain its beauty when the intense gameplay truly kicks in. “Just Cause 3” struggles in the scenes and instances of greater action. As everything around you explodes, said explosions start to slow things down. Watching the frame rate drop in a game is sometimes hard to notice by default; however, “Just Cause 3” proves it can be a really important factor when it drops enough that the game feels like it’s actually slowing down. “Just Cause 3” also comes with its fair share of glitches, ones you’ll never see coming but once they do, you’ll have no way around them besides closing the game.


Sound
A soundtrack fitting for all of the action that comes with playing “Just Cause 3,” the music certainly helps add to the immersion of said action when the game isn’t experiencing technical difficulties. I oftentimes found myself all in on the action thanks in part to the way the music plays out; however, “Just Cause 3” is by no means a quiet game what with all of the gunshots, towers crumbling down and things blowing up in general. Because of this, the music isn’t always as apparent.

The sound effects of “Just Cause 3’s” most prolific action movie-like sequences of sheer insanity, as mentioned previously, are loud. Explosions sound as they would, as do the guns. Very much so in the vein of what Avalanche Studios was going for, “Just Cause 3” sounds a whole lot like an over-the-top action movie might.

The voice acting of “Just Cause 3” is fine. Rico Rodriguez’s charm comes from his voice-work from Kevin Collins. Other characters have some of their own moments to shine in this department, though never enough to be as recognizable for the better like Rico. If the story was given more prominence in its execution and narrative overall, the voice actors would have stood out more; however, due to the lack of focus on story that “Just Cause 3” sacrifices for gameplay, no voices stood out for more than a moment or two overall.

Content
With a large amount of settlements and enemy bases to tackle plenty of objectives within, “Just Cause 3’s” map of Medici is not one you’ll cover in its entirety very quickly. The game has everything from stunts and challenges to earn the most stars in to a seemingly endless amount of explodable towers, signs, buildings and more. Personally, it was exploring the world by way of the wingsuit that brought with it the most satisfaction and time thanks to the, once mastered, natural flow of said traversal.

Conclusion

“Just Cause 3” ultimately fails to maintain the excitement and thrills its gameplay provides thanks to the poor technical performance. When it does work, the joy “Just Cause 3” provides is quite a thrill indeed though. With unlimited C4, a grappling hook and wing suit and seemingly endless aspects of the environment easily destructible, if it isn’t slowing down or freezing, “Just Cause 3” can be a fun time-killer. The open world adventure is at its best when ignoring the average story and just escaping reality with a mindless action-packed ride.

What was the worst glitch or bug you experienced in “Just Cause 3?” Did you enjoy the game’s emphasis on blowing everything up? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.