Just Cause 3

"I have an island and i will blow it up!" Just cause 3 is a symphony of explosions. Action scenes make you feel good but missions get repetitive after a while.

Just Cause 3 is quite a good game, but it would have been better with more attention to detail.

Frustrating technical issues are never far away. [Issue#265, p.78]

At this point, around 20-30 hours in, I might have spent more time watching Just Cause 3‘s loading screens than playing some of the smaller indie games that have released on the PlayStation Network.

It’s a fun ride even if it does not make much sense. In other words, never underestimate how much a good explosion can make up for other shortcomings.

Like me, fans of the predecessor will still enjoy playing this game, and the true sandbox nature that promotes tinkering around with nearly endless possibilities will ensure that some people will continue to play it even after the story is completed.

Without compelling characters or inventive story missions, all that’s left to keep the audience entertained is destruction, repeated ad nauseum. There’s value in the small-scale satisfaction each explosion creates, but an empty feeling lingers after every plume of smoke has cleared.

On a base level his (and by extension Just Cause 3's) explosive areas of expertise remain impressive, but his application falls well short of expectations and ultimately becomes inert. What good are the world's greatest explosions when you stop caring to see them?

For all its booms and bangs, Just Cause 3 is never quite the unrestrained fun-maker it threatens to be. Whenever Rodriguez dons his wingsuit, however, it positively soars. [Jan 2016, p.88]

Just Cause 3 may offer a metric ton of content, a ridiculously huge world to roam, and some unbelievable aerial acrobatics, but none of those things are enough to save the day because the writing is phoned in and the game's core is too rooted in the last generation. Apart from the traversal, everything here has been covered time and time and time again, and it absolutely wheezes without anything more interesting to sustain a player over the long haul.

It’s not fun to learn the mechanics in this restrictive setting, less fun to restart over and over because of Just Cause’s lengthy load times. For a game that offers so much freedom, it’s a shame that many missions rob you of that by forcing you to work under time constraints.

Just Cause 3 could have been so much more than it is. Even though the action scenes and the destruction are fun, the game is dragged down by its faulty AI, its bugs, and its framerate and loading issues. Just Cause 3 is enjoyable, but only for a little while.

The additions of the wingsuit, dual tethering grapple hook, unlimited C4 and regenerating health system are all fantastic additions that would've made Just Cause 3 a breakout game in the franchise, if not for the dull story, repetitive story missions and technical issues ranging from long load times, to poor framerate and to constant disconnections for a single player only game.

At its best, Just Cause 3's over-the-top action and physics-based mayhem has me laughing out loud on the regular. It’s a damn shame so many performance problems and punishing load times keep cropping up, because I love what Just Cause 3 does. But for game that’s so heavily dependent on action to run this poorly is no laughing matter.