Just Cause 4, our review

Avalanche Studios returns with the fourth installment of its series of rudeness and destruction: the never old Just Cause 4.

Version tested: PlayStation 4

There are times when you play Just Cause 4 and you almost certainly find yourself smiling from ear to ear in almost the same way you might be watching a ridiculous 80s action movie. It doesn't matter that the characters are cliché personified - or that the plot is shoddy and mundane - because you just tied four balloons to a car, then attached a rocket to the back of it and sent it flying into an enemy helicopter. The retinal explosion that lit up the sky, consequently, only needed The Final Countdown in the background and would have been a glorious moment more likely than ever in a video game.

Just Cause 4 is meant to be taken, as usual, lightly. The fourth version of the explosive sandbox looks and feels very tempting when flying over the jungle, blasting waves of enemy troops from a helicopter. When you take a closer look at what you actually do minute by minute, hour by hour, you notice how the package is far less inviting than it might seem, even for a game called upon to evoke a carefree shrug.

Although it is the fourth game in the series, Just Cause 4 feels more like the second part of a series that began in Just Cause 3. After learning that his father had once worked for the longtime enemy - a mercenary militia called the Black Hand - series hero Rico Rodriguez heads to the fictional island nation of Solis. His goal is to eliminate the Black Hand (whose leader is also the local dictator) and dismantle the doomsday weapon his father helped build: a weather machine called "Illapa Project", which unleashes storms. of snow, tornadoes and swarms of lightning at will.

Just Cause 4 Rocket Helicopter

The plot as a gameplay side dish.

The main components of the story - a personal vendetta, free explosions, a time machine - have all the prerequisites for a classically trashy action movie sequel. It looks perfect for the franchise's B-movie opera, but Just Cause 4 falls into the trap like the films that inspired it: it lingers on its characters longer than they can bear. Rico Rodriguez is an avatar for tough behavior - he never needed an emotionally weighted reason to unleash unbridled destruction before, so it sounds hollow now.

Of course, you can always skip the cutscenes and jump straight into the action. Like its predecessors, Just Cause 4 is structured to give you excuses to blow things up. Solis is divided into more than 30 regions, which Rodriguez must wrest from the Black Hand by creating enough confusion to fuel the flames of revolution and draw people to his "army of chaos". What kind of chaos? Run over enemy soldiers, crash a jet into an oil tank, tie a tank to a zeppelin, etc. - you know, the usual.

This is the heart of the Just Cause experience, and it remains compelling in Just Cause 4. There's a childish joy to be gained in blasting a row of fuel tanks through the roof, even if you've done it a hundred times before. Likewise, gliding above the jungle or in the desert using the parachute or wingsuit often offers some beautiful panoramic views. You can always find a new way to make things interesting in the moment, especially if you want to be creative. And as long as you go fast or something breaks, it generally gets credited to you.

Conventional guerrillas, military training and… ignorance, a lot of ignorance.

Rico can use a vast arsenal of guns and explosives in his quest for political upheaval in the Third World, but it is his grappling hook and parachute respectively that are the true heroes of this title. The second can be used and withdrawn with a quick tap of the X button (A on Xbox); the first, on the other hand, requires the use of a targeting reticle to be placed on any structure - wall, ceiling, tree, innocent spectator - and, with a pressure of the left backbone (L1 or LB), will allow Rico to hang on to things and people to generate cinematic or comic effects or both.

There is also a wingsuit for flight, so combining the three allows you to traverse the map quickly and in style, playing "the floor is lava" to your liking, without ever having to travel on foot like some kind of citizen. any; you are absolutely not, and any mechanics in the game tend to remind you of that. It can be a lot of fun; one of those healthy and carefree, at times childish, amusements.

However, a missed opportunity ...

Sadly, Just Cause 4 rarely leverages these strengths within the confines of its own story mode. Its many regional acquisition and story missions almost always provide the occasion for madness, but they focus on far more direct tasks. In fact, many missions require restraint: multiple missions require escorting AI-controlled allies from point A to point B; another set requires you to safely find a vehicle to a scanner, which unlocks access to a generator to blow up or a terminal to hack. Forgetting the fact that these missions offer boring gameplay patterns, the vast majority fail to embrace or encourage the Jackass-style madness inherent in the game's DNA.

Escort missions where you have to drive cars instead of destroying them by throwing them into the jungle could, perhaps, be less damaging if the game wasn't so repetitive. The vast majority of missions are repeated at least three times, often more, with only the smallest variations. You can, of course, make these missions as wild and insane as you want if you are committed to making things more interesting, but flights of fancy often get in the way, as missions don't necessarily fit Rodriguez's destructive abilities.

Weather as a natural and artificial enemy.

There are a handful of breaks in the routine, coming from the pivotal missions in which Rico destroys the "weather cores" that control Project Illapa. Each mission features a certain type of weather - lightning storm, tornado, sandstorm, blizzard - that forces you to change the way you play to mitigate the conditions they bring to the table. In the lightning storm, for example, you have to use your grappling hook every few seconds to avoid being struck by lightning. In the presence of a tornado, using a parachute is equivalent to instant death, which makes it more difficult to land accurately. These missions ultimately don't vary much from their more mundane counterparts, but chasing a skyscraper-sized tornado in a wingsuit sounds as crazy as it sounds, and that's enough at the moment.

Unfortunately, these insane weather missions are few and far between. It is much more common to set a mission area and ask "is it possible for me to make this more interesting?" Even among games that deign to call themselves "destructive sandboxes" few allow you to break and blow things and people like Just Cause, but Just Cause 4 doesn't dare unless you force it to.

Conclusions.

Just Cause 4's gameplay can be wonderfully fun, and the chaotic explosive simulations are often hilarious, but they're run by a title that has absolutely no idea how best to use them. What's the point in giving players a set of tools that allow them to wreak unbridled destruction on a gigantic scale, and then design a campaign filled with dark, copied missions that barely require you to use them? It's like having the best wine on the market locked in the pantry because Mom doesn't want you to drink. Greetings, Mom, we open the pantry anyway, and we blow the stuff up in the air like tokens at the carnival.