Viva La Revolution ! (Just Cause (Xbox 360))

Member Name: Recon

Product:	Just Cause (Xbox 360)
Date:	26/02/08 (71 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Stunning scenic graphics, Extremely fun, Great music, Huge island, Loads of weapons + vehicles

Disadvantages: Repetitive side missions, Few glitches

'Viva la revolution' - a common quote you will hear throughout this brilliant game. This game should be advertising the Xbox 360. Why? This game has the most incredible, scenic, picturesque graphics I have ever known a game to have. The gameplay is just wild, and so unique with stunts being a natural part of the game. If you like jumping around and performing stunts, then this is more than the game for you! With your very own parachute equipped the whole time, the ability to perform crazy stunts is almost always at the push of a button! The size of this game is enormous as the islands cover a total of 1024 km², making it around 16 times larger than Grand Theft Auto, and also enabling you to reach extreme heights with flying vehicles.

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~ Story ~
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The story follows a CIA Black Ops. Agent called Rico Rodriguez in a war to overthrow the government. The dictator is thought to have weapons of mass destruction that are a threat to San Esperito, the island on which the game is set. The story actually originates from a real invasion of Panama in the United States. The aim here was to overthrow the leader Manuel Noriega. You play as Rico Rodiguez, as you travel through story missions, side missions and more to overthrow the government and succeed in a revolution. With your very own weapons of mass destruction and your ability to perform a large variety of stunts, it won't be long until you complete your mission! With just 21 story missions, the main game doesn't take long to complete. However, there are side missions

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~ Gameplay ~
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The gameplay is extremely fun at first with such a large variety of stunts to perform and places to visit. The story starts out, and you have to begin gaining some attention and power. You will go through 21 story missions in order to complete your task. Each story mission is pretty fun and different to any other side mission in the game. As you could imagine with such a vast game, there are special areas for each mission, which are unique. For example, you may be set on a mission to infiltrate a prison and rescue someone. You must get there by boat at a certain time of night, and you must enter killing everyone in your path to rescue this one guy. The prison is a bit of a maze with enemies everywhere, but they are easy to knock down so you can move on. Other missions include taking out people.

The final mission was extremely fun, but hard to do. You went on a wild chase in effort to take out the government himself. In the end, you boarded his plane in mid-air thousands of feet above ground, where you searched for him. After a little fight in the aeroplane, things get a little worse when the president jumps out the plane. With your objective being to plant explosives on him by getting near enough, the end results are fantastic! Not only do you defeat the president, but he is in pieces all over his once-owned land!

As well as missions for the main storyline, there are loads of side missions and more to keep you going. The thing that drops this game in quality is the fact that the rest of the game is so repetitive! There are infinite side missions that you can do, and you earn points from them. These points will go towards promotions depending on which gang you have completed the side mission for. Promotions mean new weapons, vehicles, and bases with save points! Side missions are really repetitive, but funny things seem to happen every time I set out and do one. Side missions include things mostly as killing people, but you must also collect secret weapons and objects and bring them back to base alive! They are normally pretty easy if you know how to do it, and I have worked out some good strategies for them such as taking the small chopper to the objective point, killing who I have to kill or taking what I have to retrieve, and then getting the heck out of there!

Beside the so called side missions, you must perform a number of liberations to free the nation. Liberations are set throughout the map, where you approach a gang member and press 'start liberation'. From here, you will have to overtake provinces by killing a heck load of enemies. You will have to blow up or somehow destroy several blockades to reach the heart of the base. I normally do this with the good aim of a couple grenades for each blockade. What you have to do is get the bar that shows up to one end, proving that you have caused enough damage to be able to takeover the base. As you do this, the base will then be your property and normally a chopper will appear on the roof, where it will spawn in the future. Some liberation's are really hard, as backup choppers come in and mow you down with their missile launchers and machine guns!

Apart from these, there are even more things to do! Cleverly, the creators scattered around mysterious objects that must be found, which show up as blue dots on your radar. Once you collect the first item of a group, you immediately activate a 'collect mission', where you must continue to find the other items of that mission. These may be anything from drugs to weapons. The completion of these will mean more Gamerscore as you unlock achievements!

When not running around like a maniac firing guns, you can take a chance to admire the unique and stunning gameplay of stunts and free roam! Rather like the Grand Theft Auto series, you can free roam whenever you aren't doing a mission. There are 88 vehicles at your disposal from choppers, boats, cars, bikes, mini-subs and jets to explore the huge area! You can also call for drop off vehicles, where a chopper from one of your people will drop off an agency vehicle. There are four of them:

4X4 Similar to Hummer
Off Road Dirt Bike
Speed Boat
Mini Chopper

The 4X4 is amazing in the way it is fast and of high power. It can get you flying around the off-road tracks and is much safer than the bike! The bike itself is much fun, as you always have the option to deploy your parachute at the tap of a button if you have more than a small amount of speed. This enables you to do many cool stunts with ease! The speed boat is very fast, and is the best way to explore the seas. The mini chopper is the most useful vehicle in my opinion. It can fly up to extraordinary heights and get you from A to B safely and quickly. With the ability to fly, it makes getting around this huge island a lot easier!

Achievements
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Achievements in this game range from completing collect missions to story and side missions. When you complete a certain number of story missions, you will gain Gamerscore by unlocking achievements. The same goes for liberating a certain number of provinces and completing a certain amount of side missions. The achievements couldn't be better, as you are influenced in doing stunts galore (although I'm sure you would be already!), because there are a few achievements that require you to perform a certain number of stunts in air, water and on land. Some of these may seem hard to do, but there are cheap ways around them!

Fun Stuff
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* Grab a helicopter to fly to the highest mountain in the game called 'Eagles Nest'. Call for a heavy drop of a mountain bike or 4X4 vehicle. Head towards the edge at full speed and enjoy the exhilarating thrill of heading down the mountain at full speed experiencing the bumps as you go! This can be quite annoying but funny when you mess up and slam into a tree further down.

* Grab a plane and head to the air base right down south. Parachute out your plane and land on the runway where the fast jet is parked. Hop in before the people take you out, hold down the engines and zoom off into the air at breathtaking speeds! From here, you can fly back to other airports or simply enjoy flying the fastest plane in the game with its missiles!

* Go paragliding! Head to the see and call for a speed boat heavy drop. Get in your boat and zoom off to a top speed before deploying your parachute. Using your handy grapple hook, grab hold of another boat and go for a calm paraglide! You can adjust the length of your grapple hook with the triggers as well as reel yourself in to board the vehicle if you wish (this can be done with any vehicle).

* Head to a tall bridge or mountain and BASE jump off it! The stimulating feeling of jumping from buildings and such whilst deploying your parachute at the last possible opportunity (hopefully without messing up and dying) is just fantastic! Also, try to gain the achievement of a 1000ft long base jump free fall before deploying your parachute

* Grab a plane and fly thousands of feet high before getting into a stunt position where you are holding onto the wing single handed! Then deploy your parachute and enjoy the scenery and feeling as you slowly drift down towards land! At the slowest possible decent with your arms and legs spread (you can control this), this can take a few minutes!


So, I am sure you have gathered lots of fun things you can do. The gameplay really is endless. It is a shame that the side missions are so repetitive, but there is so much to do otherwise, that it makes up.

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~ Graphics ~
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Wow. The graphics are absolutely stunning! They are by far the best graphics I have seen for any game in terms of scenery and detail. You can be flying through the sky and see right across the island into the distance. The graphics are just unbelievable and score top marks for me! If you search 'Just Cause' on Google images for example, you will find some amazing high quality pictures.

The graphics are helped by the setting of the game. On this enormous tropical island, the lovely warm blue sky contrasts with the emerald green palms of the trees that lie below and the cinnamon brown dirt that you can drive along. When falling through the sky, the clouds in the distant may seem far away, but you never know what's round the corner! With the excellent effects of weather, it just adds to the realism and graphical exceptional quality of this game. From light rain to thunderstorms, you really are put in great settings that add to the whole setting of a tropical island!

Not just the skies and lands are of excellent quality graphic-wise. With the ability to swim as well as walk and jump, you can explore the vast oceans! Some collect items will be underwater, so you may have to anyway. The oceans can be dived under at every inch of this gigantic map where water is present. Once diving, not only can you swim metres down to the seabed, but you can admire the vibrant tropical fish, wild turtles and even dolphins that roam the seas! Then, you can hop on a boat that passes by and sail calmly back to land unless you have hijacked a speed boat, at which the breeze running through your hair is better than ever!

The game also goes through both day and night, so you can be flying through the skies in light or dark. The game is entirely different at night, but I much prefer it at day so I can admire the real tropical feel to the game. Overall, the graphics are stunning. The scenery that you will see is out of this world, and amazing that what you are seeing is merely on a games console. You are really set in this wonderful tropical paradise, which is largely emphasised with the formidable graphics.

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~ Sound ~
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The sound in this game is so amazing too and it really adds to the tropical feel. The music is very Spanish/Mexican mostly composed of quick drum beats and some foreign instruments or keyboard instruments that give the game a lovely feel. The music is so good that I actually managed to download every soundtrack! The music is really up-beat and fast, adding to the feeling of excitement and joy when playing this fabulous game. The music will start playing from the main menu to various parts of the game. When you are sky-diving, a relaxing song will begin to play that is composed of light voice tones and relaxing instrumental play. The music goes very well with specific missions too, where it is fast, exciting and exhilarating.

The sounds themselves are very good too. You will hear all kinds of sounds corresponding to the gameplay. As well as this, you will hear Rico make his cheeky comments such as 'I cannot believe I get paid for this', when you are sky-diving through the scenic sky thousands of feet above land. The sounds of the weapons and grenades are also very effective, as they all have their own sounds. The sounds of the vehicles are somewhat a drawback, as most land vehicles seem to sound the same and a bit unrealistically boring. Other vehicles such as choppers sound great and much more realistic.

Overall, the sound is almost perfect for what the gameplay is like. Appropriate sounds and even music come in at every stage of play. The music itself is just superb in the way it correlates to the genre of setting and brings excitement along with exhilarating stunts and crazy missions that you will be going through in the gameplay.

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~ Controls ~
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The controls are admirable. There is nothing wrong with them, and they are pretty standard. The triggers are used to control grenades and weapons, which is perfect. You can also use the LB button to cycle through targets. The thing that I found a bit weird was the PDA menu. You have to press the back button to bring it up, but this was really hard to get used to. Because it seems like the main menu that I always visited, I always seemed to press start instead. Apart from this, the rest of the controls are good and work very well. The triggers are used in vehicles to smoothly control the movement or acceleration of vehicles, which is good. The buttons are used more for simple actions such as jumping, aiming (with long range weapons) and controlling the camera. One thing you will have to get used to is using the D-Pad to cycle through weapons, which normally isn't used in most games.

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~ Replay Value ~
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This game has pretty good replay value. There are loads to do and the achievements can take a while to get them all, if you are into getting every achievement from every game. I found myself coming back to this game many times either to unlock more achievements or simply enjoy the diversity of the game from others. This game lasted me a good month of pretty solid play. After that, I got bored of it for a while until I had the urge to fly planes to such great heights and sore them through the sky only to attempt landings at different airports. I will never get bored of flying through the skies in this game with the relaxing music, admiring the amazing graphics.

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~ Price ~
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This game is available for just £14.98 at Amazon.co.uk. This is an absolute bargain! This game may not have online play, but for such a price, it is well-worth the buy to experience the unique gameplay of this fabulous game! The graphics are one of a kind, and the gameplay is full of unique stunts and fun things to do. The size of the game is immense, so you will definitely be exploring for a good few weeks at least!

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~ The Score ~
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Story - 9.5/10
Gameplay - 9.5/10
Graphics - 10(+)/10
Sound - 10/10
Controls - 9/10
Replay Value - 8/10
Price - 10/10

Overall - 9.4 / 10 - 94%

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~ Facts ~
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Genre: Third Person Shooter / Action
Release Date: 22nd September 2006
Developer: Avalanche Studios
Publisher: Edios Interactive
Rating: ESRB - Mature, PEGI - 16+

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~ Conclusion ~
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I see no reason why you shouldn't try out this game. A demo is on the Xbox Live marketplace with a fun mission to play through, giving you a good feel of the game. This game offers absolutely remarkable graphics with realistic scenery, picturesque sights and clear vibrant colours. The gameplay is extremely fun with infinite fun things to do on this enormous island. You can either follow the storyline or complete side missions or free roam to the maximum in this vast game. With plenty of stunts, vehicles, and weapons to keep you entertained with, this game offers great replay value. The only thing that drops this is the really repetitive side missions that are kind of pointless, yet still fun! The music is excellent and goes very well with the tropical feeling of this game, with music coming in at perfect times to emphasise on the gameplay - whether it is up-beat and exciting or slow and relaxing, it always works well. The controls work very well with the game with the ability to control vehicles movement quite precisely! So, get your hands on this game and explore the gigantic map in the air, under the sea and on the land with 88 vehicles and tonnes of weapons and your handy grapple hook for use with stunts.

Thanks for reading,

- Recon -

Summary: Take to the skies in this magnificent game full of stunts and enjoy the one of a kind graphics