Just Cause 3

Should I buy Just Cause 3? That is the question I often get on Steam. Yes, it is worth picking up. The game is beautiful. even more beautiful than Just Cause 2. Flying over mountains, roads, enemy bases, and the fields feels real. I have not finished the game yet but I am at the end of the story. Everything written here is just my opinion of the game.

I ran into a few issues in the game that were echoed by other gamers and I saw first hand. The memory leak was probably my biggest gripe. It was like playing a wind-up toy, the longer you play the game the less steam it has to keep going. Elements of the game would start to slow down the longer I played, so I would have to save and restart the game to continue playing. Some of the rest I felt were either overlooked features by the developer and bugs that carried over from JC2.

Cons:

• Vehicles feel like steering a tank (do not even think of driving a motorcycle like in GTAV)
• NPC’s randomly run into buildings and stay that way. (AI is still better than JC2)
• Unlocking of Gear mods by completing challenges. (Some very boring, others insanely hard)
• In-game leaderboards are a great idea, but they are of no interest to me the longer I play the game
• Memory leak – There is a memory leak that grows, the longer I play the game
• No mini-map!
• Bland dictator story – game world felt, “empty”

Moving on to the more positive note of the game there were quite a few over JC2. Flying in this game is good, incredibly good. The planes steer like a plane and not a tank so, I can forgive the car issues because of the effortless ability to fly. The wingsuit is a great feature and makes it fun to fly over huge swaths of territory.

Pros:

• Wingsuit (FUN, FUN, AND FUN!)
• The addition of the Bomber plane and flying in general
• Visuals are better than JC2 by a long shot!
• Explosions! They are bigger than JC2
• Better variety of weapons
• The garage system to collect cars
• The rebel drop system

Overall, the game’s many issues are easy to forgive (except for the Memory leak) by some of the pros you see listed. The explosions are great, the visuals are wonderful and the flying is fun. The only problem I had is the game still feels like it is missing something.  I cannot put my finger on this despite all the NPCs, cars, and other things moving around in the game world. If JC2 could be remade with JC3 graphics and have the new toys then that would be the perfect game in the franchise but that is just my opinion.

Your mileage may vary.

Game On!