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You say you want a revolution? Just Cause re-purposes the GTA model to tell a tale of Caribbean political turmoil. The main man is Rico, set on toppling a dictator with the aid of guerrillas and a drug cartel. As Rico, you'll assassinate leaders, instigate strife between factions, and generally sow mayhem and discord on the small island of San Esperanza. Thanks to a great location and outrageous stunts, this Molotov cocktail almost ignites, but lame scripting and missions ultimately snuff the flame.

This is entry-level action, as the gunplay is ridiculously easy thanks to an always-on targeting system. Point a gun in vaguely the right direction and bullets will be on target. Much more interesting is the stunt system, which incorporates a magic parachute that can open only feet from the ground, then instantly disappear, as well as a grappling gun and loads of vehicles.

Steal a car and hit the 'stunt position' button to leap out onto the hood while it's still moving. From there you can leap to the ground, to other vehicles, or deploy the parachute to parasail. Once the grapple gun is in hand, you can snag a car (or boat/plane/helicopter) from hundreds of foot away, then open the chute to sail around the island, or simply crawl up the line to commandeer the vehicle. The controls and animations are a little wonky, but the actions remain entertaining.

Just Cause gets one thing spot-on perfect: the jungle island setting. Sure, when the first mile-high red missions beacons light up, you'll think it's a cakewalk to get to the mission point. And in true GTA fashion, feel free to make a beeline right for the beacon. Oops! Didn't plan on that ravine/lake/mountainside/yawning chasm of death being there, did you?

Most of the game's best moments are due to such unexpected terrain. A simple chase by the absurdly aggressive cops turns into a real jungle adventure as soon as you turn off the road, if you can even find the road. And the first time you seamlessly fly off a mountain on the hood of a Cadillac before leaping off, grapple gunning to a speeding guerilla truck on a bridge, then leaping off that to parachute down to a cop speedboat where you land like a hero before turning around and capping the driver so you can ram the boat into some explosives…pants will be wet.

If Just Cause could maintain even a fraction of that excitement as you plodded through the missions, it would be the best game ever. Perhaps in the interest of not setting too high a bar, it doesn't. Purely to keep the playing field level, you understand, most of the game is fairly mundane.

After five GTA games and Saints Row, these missions and object quests feel totally shopworn. Oh, look, another chance to find ten objects scattered through the world! And when Just Cause does find a vague new twist, like the 'liberation' of enemy territory (read: lots of shooting and explosives) it beats that twist into the ground like a matron trying to get the dust out of a rug.

If the missions don't get you, the story, scripting and acting will. There's a way to make this stuff fun, fresh and thrilling, but this ain't it. The movies running behind the scenes at Avalanche must be those of Jean-Claude van Damme, not Tarantino.

The lighting may be the most distracting game element. Just Cause looks as if it was created for the first Xbox, then given massive motion blur and highlights to make it 360-appropriate. Along the way, the contrast was blown out of proportion. In dark areas -- even daytime shadow -- detail can be impossible to make out. But the highlights are so hot that tweaking your settings just blows out the bright spots. Argh! Just Cause can often be really gorgeous, but most of the good stuff is lost behind this unbalanced contrast ratio.

There's also a truly pedestrian HUD and menu design. Weapon-swapping prompts are hard to read, as are the bars that display your wanted status. While the entire island streams seamlessly, pulling up the options and PDA info screens takes several moments. And the controls lack finesse, with the default requiring a slow flick of the d-pad to switch weapons while a face button goes unused. Hardly gamebreakers, but they contribute to a rushed feeling.

Then there are the bugs. Like the guerilla side mission where you're handed explosives and told to scrap an entire apartment block. We got to the doorway, puzzled by the gunfire hitting us from inside the building, then noticed we could walk right into a huge empty space -- all the walls were phantom textures. How to complete the mission? No idea. Most of the time we just saw terrible clipping, but this sort of bug did crop more than once.

The island setting and fun stunts make Just Cause worth a look, at least as a rental. But it needs a lot more work to truly be a revolution -- maybe the sequel will eliminate the trouble spots and topple the GTA regime.

Article by: Russ Fischer
Video produced by: Mark Fahey