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By Keith B (23rd Mar 2007)

Picture this: a special operative, Rico Rodriguez, is dropped from an aeroplane and skydives down to the fictitious island of San Esperito, somewhere in South / Central America. Upon landing, another agent in a Hawaiian shirt meets him, and immediately after, a van pulls up with eight or so hit men in it. A shootout ensues; Rico slicks his hair, steals a car and drives into the forest.

All this happens in the first five minutes of the game, and it is so relentlessly over the top it's hard not to let out a few audible laughs as you complete some of the craziest stunts yet seen in a video game. It's an ambitious debut from the Scandinavian developers Avalanche Studios, but one that works quite well.

The plot is very weak, which is both good and bad. Good, insofar as it allows you to approach your objectives from a variety of different angles without ruining any story; bad as it can tend to leave you confused as to what to do next.

The island of San Esperito has 250,000 acres of land to explore, populated with cities, villages, mountains, beaches, rivers, and forests. It is huge. The unrestricted approach works well by allowing you complete control over Rico and where he goes, what he does, and who he shoots.

Who's gonna drive you home

Once you get into the run of the game, you'll find that there is a mind-boggling array of vehicles you can take as your own. Cars, boats, planes, helicopters, motorbikes - they're all here and all can be stolen. The bad side is, the handling is poor. Trying to control a motorbike on a dirt road at 180kph would be hard in reality, and in the game it is too. The only thing is, when you get onto tarmac, the bike handles the same. Cars have the same problem - beach, dirt, tarmac, water, hillsides - terrain appears to have very little influence on the handling of the vehicles.

Also, every time your car leaves the ground, you get a cinematic cut-scene. Even when you roll off a little hill and flip on your roof. Cut scene. Bounce off the road? Cut scene. Rammed by another car that lifts you? Cut scene. Sure, when you drive your Fiat off the side of a mountain and do a dramatic dive out in the air, and then parachute to safety, you want to see it. But not all the time, and with this physics model, it's going to be a lot of cutscenes.

Once you get moving though, you'll find that Rico can use a parachute in ways you never would have thought possible. Need to get to the other side of a mountain? Shoot your grappling hook onto a passing car, release your chute, and glide up, taking in the beautiful scenery as a muggins in a vehicle ferries you along. From up here, why not cut loose and drift over the map? Why not? Try it all. What you can do with Rico is very entertaining. Imagine shooting your grappling hook at a chopper, then mounting it, throwing the pilot out, and taking control. No problem. Rico's here.

And while you're up there, take in the wonderful scenery, because it is wonderful. Voluminous clouds, a sea of green surrounded by an ocean of rippling blue, it all looks superb.

I'm poor

It really is a shame that I have to say this, but Just Cause, despite the entertaining antics and smart visuals, is a poor game. The gunfights are tame (I don't think I died once in a gunfight in the many hours I played to write this review), and the animations of the enemies are pretty lame. When you try to capture a village (you can control sectors to sway public opinion, but really, this isn't a big deal, trust me) the enemies just respawn for a certain amount of time, and if you run to one end of a village, they all follow you, down the open road, like chickens, so you can just turn around and mow them down once you've herded them together.

It's also very difficult to make out who's with you and who's against you. The entire game, you'll rely more on the fact that someone is shooting at you to know they're not you're mate, which doesn't allow for much strategic manoeuvring.

Finally, back to the plot and Rico. As I said earlier, there is no real plot of note that provides any reason to keep playing other than unlocking vehicles and whatnot. And Rico, that loveable lad with the solid gelled hair and the tight black pants, started to really agitate me later in the game. The smarmy git. I thought I'd love the Latino lad, but it dawned on me that his character could have been plucked from a B-grade soap and dropped in here.

A tale of two cities

So, in effect, Avalanche has both done themselves proud, and left themselves open for awful criticism. To me, trading off character development, a reasonable physics model, believable quests, and a good story for an open ended ‘experience', just didn't work. The good elements are certainly good, and what you can do with your character in terms of physical exertion and dramatic entrances is second to none. It's just a shame that's on top of a game that actually had me scratching my head as to how such blatant errors could have been overlooked.

I'll never see the Young and the Restless or the Bold or the Beautiful again while channel surfing without thinking of Rico and his amazing parachute of wonder.