I never played the original Just Cause, but heard of its disappointing side missions, buggy (and short) single player and a next gen game held back by its previous generation counterparts, you can safely assume I wasn’t very excited about a fully fledged developed-for-next-gen sequel. However, if the premise of Just Cause 2 had been explained to me as thus – Grand Theft Crysis Collectathon, I would have been a damn sight more psyched.

Set on the fictional island of Panau, South East Asia the environment reeks of Crysis. Lush tropical rainforests surrounded by clear blue ocean complete with pockets of civilization, which take the form of residential villages, sprawling cityscapes and hi-tech military bases. These are all open for exploration as the player steps into the shoes of stunt man extraordinaire and US agency man Rico Rodriguez (obviously a distant relative of Bender Bending Rodriguez). Rico comes equipped out-the-box with the most fun mechanic in the game; the grappling hook, which allows you to latch onto almost any object and either pull yourself towards it, or pull it towards you.

This basic mechanic comes with so much versatility that it really becomes the lynchpin of the game. Its most obvious application is to gain height in order to reach previously inaccessible areas but it quickly becomes apparent that the most fun is had when using it with vehicles and AI. Aim at an enemy and they’ll be yanked towards you, target a moving car and you’ll swoop in and land on the roof. The real sadistic pleasure comes when you play with the grappling hook to attach one object to another – did that driver give you the finger? No problem! Park up in front of him and attach his vehicle to yours and drive away whilst keeping a keen eye on the rear mirror to witness his car careening across the road as it is forced to follow you. If for whatever reason you decide you want to end this poor guys suffering (yeah, I’m sick, I know!) you could drive off a cliff allowing enough time to jump out the car mid-air and parachute down in relative safety. Mwahaha!

This brings me on to the next feature of Just Cause 2, the parachute. At any point, upon reaching a certain speed (whether that be through falling or in a vehicle) you are able to open a parachute in order to glide safely to the ground. While using the parachute you can disconnect it at any point to resume free falling. Rico seems to have a never-ending supply of parachutes as you can switch between free fall and parachute an infinite number of times during a fall, which doesn’t make any sense but allows for some very enjoyable game play and to that end – who cares?!

After arriving on Panau you quickly discover the island is no longer under the control of the US and is instead under oppression by an evil dictator (hardly a new concept in the world of storytelling!). Your goal is to remove this dictator from office whilst sourcing out a suspected mole from the US. You progress the story by doing ‘Agency’ missions which you unlock through earning ‘Chaos’. Chaos is earned by doing missions for one of three rebel gangs, all of which claim a right to power on the island. In conjunction with the gang missions you can earn chaos by doing pretty much anything that involves death or explosions. The amount of chaos earned is shown each time you commit one of these actions and you’re also shown your progress towards unlocking your next Agency or gang mission. This mechanic brings with it my first gripe with the game which is that NPCs refer directly to your chaos. After completing an Agency mission you’ll receive a cut scene which pulls the story on a little further and at the end of the cut scene you’re instructed to go back to the island to continue causing chaos. It’s like an in-game character telling you to press A or X to jump, referencing a game play mechanic so directly completely negates any immersion gained from the mission or the cut scene (which are flaky at best due to possibly some of the worst voice acting in a game I’ve ever heard).

Aside from this minor niggle the story missions are very fun and often serve as a funnel for all the abilities you’ve probably been toying with in the gang or collectible areas of the game. Time spent in between your next Agency unlocks can be filled in any number of ways which leads me onto the next integral part of Just Cause - collectables.

Scattered very liberally (there’s about 350 locations to find) across Panau are the aforementioned pockets of civilization. Imagine that each of these could contain a combination of any of the following: weapon upgrade tokens, vehicle upgrade tokens, cash, named base colonels, radar & SAM sites – and that all of these contribute to a completion percentage for that particular location and you might have a vague understanding of just how much ‘stuff’ there is to collect. The collectible meta-game is both a curse and a godsend, upon entering any settlement/military base you’ll immediately be shown your current completion percentage and when you destroy or collect any object this increases on the fly.

Conversely, while the collectibles serve as a brilliant way to keep you occupied between Agency missions, it’s heartbreaking to enter a brand new area and pick up one item only to see the percentage increase by one. ONE?! Just imagine how much stuff you’re going to be searching for if obtaining one item gives one percent, compared with the majority of settlements where collecting an item gives about a 7-10 percentage increase. At one point I had a mission in a rocket launch station (think Cape Canaveral) where three individual rockets were set up for launch several kilometres apart. After completing the mission I decided to stick around and hoover up all those shiny collectibles but found the expanse between each rocket so large that gaining one additional percent for each one just wasn’t worth the time it took to find them. Personally, I don’t have the patience for that volume of collectables but for those who enjoyed Crackdown, Psychonauts or Assassins Creed I’m sure you’ll get a kick out of this particular part of Just Cause 2.

The upgrade tokens I mentioned earlier serve as the game’s currency (although you do gather dollars too). These tokens are traded with the black market dealer in exchange for upgrades on your weapons and vehicles (because paying him money isn’t enough?!) The black market dealer sells a large array of weapons and vehicles but one massive oversight is the inability to purchase ammo for guns you already own, I lost count of the amount of times I ran out of ammo during a mission and was forced to use the melee kill. When Rico runs out of ammo he has two choices, kill an enemy and take his weapons (if he hasn’t exhausted all the ammo himself) or purchase an entirely new gun from the black market dealer. The weapons from the black market dealer cost considerably more than you would imagine an ammo drop to be and because of this I would estimate I spent over 75% of my money on new guns.

All in all the wide variety of mechanics deployed in Just Cause 2 are highly polished and very enjoyable. The campaign kept me amused for close to 20 hours at which point my completion percentage of the entire game was only 25% - which gives you more of an understanding of just how much collecting there is to be had. Sure the voice acting is terrible and there’s some questionable side missions (time trial racing?!) but there is nothing here which detracts too much from the overall experience. If sandbox games are your bag I strongly recommend Just Cause 2 – if only to find the zeppelin mile high nightclub and skydive from it!