Just Cause 4

I had a lot of fun with Just Cause 4 and I’m sure you will too. If you have played number 3 don’t expect a lot more but if you haven’t then you are going to love this. I recommend giving it a shot as a title that will see hours of play over the summer holidays.

Taking more of a narrative approach while not really offering all that much narrative but definitely adding a little more marvel in the form of cataclysmic weather events as the major antagonist, Just Cause 4 is a shade more than just another Just Cause game. The major gameplay loop of orchestrating chaos remains true to the series but it is meted out just a bit more slowly while unlocking the goodies to perform your opus just a bit more freely. The real shine of the game comes from just whipping about the game world transitioning between grappling, wing suiting, parachuting, carjacking, plane-jacking, and inviting the player to turn the entire island into their own X-games playground on steroids.

Just Cause 4 is a very funny game but with a shallow and very repetitive story. A game with lights and shadows that does not manage to be outstanding despite trying.

My time as the god of Solís was highly dependent on the anecdotes I created, enjoyed, and suffered in my thirty hour conquest. I was joyously bemused by the world around me. I was incredulous at the state and scale of circumstances I was in and the solutions I was allowed to produce. The joy doesn’t boil over, it erupts with fanfare at the ridiculous set of circumstances enabled by a simulation that is concurrently shattering apart and performing as designed.

While it misses some of the best features from its predecessors, Just Cause 4 is a captivatingly fun experience, with enough new mechanics to be a staple for action fans.

Overall, Just Cause 4 is a fairly big improvement as an experience compared to the third entry. It doesn’t quite reach the heights of the second, which felt like the franchise’s peak at the time and has remained so to this day. This game lacks the thrill of “wow, the series is truly finding itself” – akin to Saints Row the Third doing that for the Saints Row games, and while it is better than the third entry, that’s a fairly low bar to fly over given how many issues plagued the console versions of the game. It performs a lot better, at the expense of the core graphics suffering a bit. The core gunplay and frantic action are better now than before though, but something still feels missing in the overall experience.

Just Cause 4 feels old in its mechanics, but it is incredibly fun to play. The extreme climate effects, the hook, the parachute and the flying suit allow us to develop some crazy combat maneuvers.

Just Cause 4 is an enjoyable ride with a memorable and exciting campaign, full of thrilling gameplay moments. However, the rest of the game is a compilation of outdated mission design and poor technical performance. My advice: stick to the campaign for a fun fifteen hours and forget about everything else.

A shallow yet occasionally thrilling sandbox that doubles down on explosively stupid antics. The campaign is too grindy for its own good, and Rico's looks are fading, but this B-tier open world can still charm. [Issue#158, p.78]

Just Cause 4 is neither a revolution nor a weak entry in the series, but it is actually the most complete Just Cause title yet. JC4 gathers everything positive from the previous games, adds some other things on top of that, and despite a repetitive gameplay and some story telling issues, still manages to at least satisfy the fans of the series.

Just Cause 4 has so many good systems in place, but it seems to have lost sight of what to do with them. While it’s a relatively decent game in its own right, it continues the series’ decline.

Playing with possibilities of the physics engine as you zip across Solis, trying to take down yet another dictator, is as much fun as ever, but that ‘more of the same’ sentiment is present everywhere in Just Cause 4, from the technical issues to the repetitive mission structure and generic story.

Just Cause 4 is just a better Just Cause 3, and that’s not a bad thing, but it feels that many elements were added just ’cause rather than seeking to revolutionize Rico Rodriguez’s many revolutions.

Just Cause 4 it's a very entertaining game thanks to its nature and concept, but fails to deliver a new entry with major improvements as fans and gaming market may expect.

Just Cause 4, on consoles, is a totally free sandbox experience, suffering from technical issues. Unluckily, the repetitive aspect of missions objectives will disappoint those who seeks more than a physical playground, even if combat system has evolved.

Just Cause 4 has some enjoyable moments when you're playing around with the grappling hook to create explosive mayhem or experiencing the weather events, but the problem is that outside of this there's a lot of repetition and hamstrung gameplay that make the game feel like a grind.

The series just needs a massive boost, and adding a new physics playtool in different types of weather just isn’t it. What you play a Just Cause game for will determine whether or not you grab this and how much you’ll actually invest in it from a time and gameplay perspective, but as a product that is more than just the fun, silly physics experiments part of itself, it’s difficult to glow at it beyond the “sickly” fun I mentioned in the intro. At the end of the day, what we need from Just Cause is, well, just cause; purpose to play beyond tethering baddies to boosters, each other and exploding barrels. As fun as that is.

Despite the negatives regarding plot, the weather elements, visuals and some ui issues, there’s still a very large and fun sandbox found in this title. I still will start the title to just to tackle the hundred plus challenges as well as trying to ensure I am on top of the leaderboard against my friends on the feats the game tracks. I’m sure Rico will still have more countries to liberate and hopefully the team will have gotten a handle of the Apex Engine.

Just Cause 4 is just another sandbox game that brings nothing new to the table. If you are looking for mindless destruction with a terrible story, this is a game for you. If you’re looking for something deeper, look elsewhere.

Just Cause 4 feels uninspired and lacks anything new and exciting enough to keep players hooked. While the moment to moment gameplay is fun and refined, the lack of variety in both setting and structure makes the game fade into the background in a year packed with so many impressive titles.

Rico is back, in a technically stable adventure that unfortunately lacks an interesting story, varied mission design and state-of-the-art graphics. There's a lot of fun to be had in the world though and perhaps that's enough.

After the forecasted storms turn out to be little more than hot air and the sedated story fades into bland repetition, you’re left with little more than effective new ways to customize your grapple abilities and the same gratifying destruction that the series has nailed from the beginning. Just Cause 4 clearly didn’t get as much briefing as it should have before deployment. It’s rough edges are unmissable, and its structure weighs too heavily on the simple pleasures of blowing stuff up and funneling your own creativity into how you use the chaotic tools at your disposal. It’s still fun to start a revolution, but it feels like this series can do so much better.

Just Cause 4 delivers a truly astounding open world that lacks much to do beyond “blow up more gas tanks.” A shallow story, an absence of interesting NPCs, and frustrating mission design make for an uninvolving game that sometimes feels like a job to play. There is fun to be had in Just Cause 4, but only if you stage a revolution against what the game wants you to do.

An open world game needs to be engaging and exciting for dozens of hours, and JC4 doesn’t manage that feat. It has amusing moments, but it isn’t $60 worth of fun unless you really love the series. If you’re interested in this game, I suggest you wait til it drops to $25 on sale. It’s a nice distraction, but not much more than that.

Just Cause 4 is a big, dumb and lovely action game that offers hours of great entertainment for those willing to look past its blemishes and technical faults.

Just Cause 4 more often than not feels like an average open world third person shooter than it does the explosion filled bonanza that it should be

Fun as it may be using the Swiss knife-like grappling hook, the same can’t be said for the extremely repetitious nature of the missions. Unfortunately, the Just Cause series seems to have stagnated from ideas after its second entry and a myriad of explosions (albeit exciting for a bit) cannot alleviate that feeling.

Calling in powerful weaponry and vehicles to blow up bases of enemies rarely ever gets old. Traversing the distinct biomes while swapping between the wingsuit and parachute remains a fun way to get across the world. On the other hand, the terrible enemy AI quickly turns combat into a real bore and the redundant objectives strip the game of what makes it a blast in the first place. It also doesn’t help that, aside from the supply drops, the game’s signature features never live up to their potential.

There’s explosive fun to be had in Just Cause 4, but it’s mostly a rehash of old ideas.

Just Cause 4's traversal system can be wonderfully entertaining, and the chaotic, explosion-sim physics in play are frequently exhilarating, but they're manacled to a game that has absolutely no idea how best to use them. What's the point in giving players an array of tools that lets them cause wanton destruction on a gargantuan scale, and then designing a campaign full of drab, copy-pasted missions that barely require you to use them? It's a bit like getting the coolest BMX on the market for Christmas, but then your Mum tells you you're only allowed to ride it around the garden where she can keep an eye on you. Cheers, Mum.

It’s an improvement on the last game but as a franchise Just Cause is still squandering the majority of its potential with its banal mission design and dull storytelling.

Just Cause 4 is a fantastic playground of chaos, giving players the tools and creative options to sow seeds of complete mayhem. It’s only when you step away from that mayhem, following the path of the campaign put ahead of you, that you’ll find repetition, lack of character, and a disappointing open world.

There's no denying that Just Cause 4 is a disappointing game with its generic gameplay and embarrassing graphics. There is some fun to be had in its action-packed world but I would have much rather played Renegade Ops 2 instead.

It pains me to speak ill of a series I’ve thoroughly enjoyed in the past, but Just Cause 4 is a disappointing extension that needs to aim a lot higher and is, frankly, kind of boring. In the climate of exceptional games that have preceded it this year, it simply does not hold up.

This series simply hit its peak eight years ago, and has been struggling to stay relevant since. Just Cause still has the potential to stand alongside power fantasy franchises like Earth Defense Force and Dynasty Warriors, but this latest entry just feels old, sloppy, and phoned in. The formula can still work and I was kinda-sorta entertained by Just Cause 4, but nothing about it was impressive in the least.

Just Cause 4 feels very familiar. In our opinion way too familiar and a bit too old. Especially when it comes to the technology behind it, Just Cause 4 is a real letdown.

There are times when Just Cause 4 is amazing, but the final result is a game that loses parts of what made Just Cause great in the first place. The new mission structure repetitive and causes the series' staple destruction to take a backseat. The tether customization is top notch and the new weapons are a winner, but things like throwable C4 are gone. And the extreme weather, which is exciting when it appears, doesn't make its presence felt during most of the game. I had fun with Just Cause 4, but it's a game I want to love more than I actually do. Temper your expectations.

Just Cause 4 is more or less of the same. It's still good to play Rico and use its usual stuff, but it lacks strong new features, and with its redundant secondary quests system, its dated visuals and all the bugs, it just feels like a average game.

If it continues like this, the series will die.