izigame.me

(dev 1) do you know what folks love about Just Cause games?
(dev 2) blowing sh*t up-
(dev 1) messing around with the grappling hook, that's right!
(dev 2) ...
(dev 1) so for JC4, we're gonna spend the majority of our time making the grappling hook super convoluted
(dev 2) but, shouldn't we spend more time on game play, missions, .. blowing stuff up?
(dev 1) no, see, people love to just muck around in our game, so if we give them an overly-complicated grappling hook, they'll come up with their own fun just messing around with it!
(dev 2) ... *starts fluffing up resume, and applying to jobs for some other game company, b/c Avalanche has clearly lost their GD minds*
Wish I could give it a "meh", because while it's sort of entertaining, there's too many stupid design decisions that ultimately get in the way of you having fun or accomplishing goals:
* Need to map way more buttons to do the same stuff you could do in JC3. (EG: you can't simply press "jump" to deploy parachute when free-falling. No, they make you map a separate "parachute" key now. JC has always had way too many buttons and controls, and, you know what makes it more fun.. MORE CONTROLS! *sigh*)
* Some remapped controls ignore your remap. EG: Reload defaults to "R" key. Tap to reload, hold to swap weapons. If you remap it, your remap will tap to reload, but you still have to hold "R" to swap weapons. How did this pass QA?
* Rico can only carry 2 guns. That wouldn't be so bad, but enemies are bullet sponges. So, you run out of ammo fast. Once out, Rico throws the gun away (!) This leaves you weaponless on several occasions. How do you get more weapons? You have to either air-drop them in (which is a death sentence in a fire-fight or while being pursued) or look for shimmering weapon boxes amidst the landscape.. b/c unlike JC3, the weapon locations don't show up in your HUD to make them easy to find. It makes no sense.
* You also run out of ammo easy because Heat (enemies looking for you and trying to kill you) is very hard to get rid of since ENEMIES SPAWN IN THIN AIR RIGHT BEHIND YOUR BACK. Not even joking. I was across a large river on a desolate hill side. I shot a rocket at an enemy tank across the river. Infantry enemy IMMEDIATELY SPAWNED NEAR ME. I thought I was nuts. So, I tried it again. This time, a motorcycle enemy spawned instantly on my side of the river. They don't even give the illusion of enemies chasing you; they just spawn them right on top of you behind the camera to hide it. So, it's difficult to lose heat. And, they keep ramping up the enemies as you kill them, so eventually you have TANKS, HELICOPTERS, etc spawning all over you! If you go hide in the forest, they still eagle eye you through the trees, too. So, good luck with that sh*t. It's absolutely bottom-barrel BS from the devs.
* And, speaking of BS, some moron at Avalanche seems to think everyone plays JC to muck around with the grappling hook, because they doubled-down on how convoluted it is in JC4. You can only carry TWO guns, but you get THREE load-outs for the grappling hook, where you can mix-n-match retractor, blimp and rocket booster mods.. and those mods have their own mods, like speed/strength of retraction, etc. People play JC to go blow sh*t up, so it boggles the mind that they'd spend so much time making the grappling hook even more gimicky than making the game more compelling to play. It reminds me of JC2 or JC3 where the devs had such a h***-on with doing stupid things with the grappling hook that like 1/2 the achievesments revolved around it, like "hang someone up and then shoot / kick them". Just absolutely dumb stuff you'd have to be extremely extra about. For some reason they think that's why people play JC, so that's what they focused on.. and the rest of the game is poorer for it.
* Then they decided the DLC needed more gimicky BS by throwing in a hoverboard which is annoying to use, and you're forced to use it in puzzles on ships.
* And that leads to Puzzles. So many BS puzzles. I just want to blow stuff up. But, you have 30 seconds to go here to unlock this, then you need to hoverboard over a bunch of switches in a place where it's easy to get stuck on crap within 15 seconds to unlock this, then you have 2 minutes to fly all over the place to flip several switches... I JUST WANT TO SHOOT THINGS I THE FACE AND BLOW **** UP! IT'S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE! For the love of god, why did they double-down on the puzzle BS?
* Well, at least you get something for all your hard work, right? I mean, stuff is destroyed, and... NOPE! The game auto-saves. If you quit and continue your game ALL THE STUFF YOU BLEW UP IS BACK. So, your actions have no impact on the game world in the long run.
* And, even MAIN OBJECTIVES have no impact. You not only took control of an area, but also took control of the drone production facility. Doesn't matter. TONS of enemy drones spawn around you in an AREA YOU CONTROL and absolutely wreck you. How? You took over the production facility. How is the enemy getting stronger when you're wiping out and taking over all their stuff?! It makes absolutely no sense, and underlines that YOUR HARD WORK AND ACTIONS DON'T MAKE A DIFFERENCE. Sure, a few friendlies are cruising around, and the frontline of the war has shifted. But, there's still TONS of enemies in areas YOU CONTROL. So, you can't do anything without getting swarmed. Makes no sense.
* There's the usual petty, insulting "challenges" padding the game world out, so they can brag about "hours of fun". Drive a certain car through a hoop, wing suit through some rings, etc. Bottom-barrel open world BS. Every now and then they'll have "kill this person" or "drive this person here". I wouldn't mind this if it upgraded Rico and made him better. Like, better weapons, armor, etc. NOPE! You only gain XP to unlock mods for your grappling hook to make it more convoluted. It just reminds you that some dev at Avalanche got off on how great the grappling hook was by trying to cram it down your throat.
* They do have some interesting main missions....until you realize it's a "did you enjoy that 30 min mission? Well, you get to do it 5 more times!" Again, typical Avalanche. They have a "free the hostages" mission which you get to do over and over again, b/c.. yeah, that won't get boring. Then they have a "guard the transmitter" mission where they throw tons of enemies at you that chew the transmitter apart in no time, so you fail it over and over again until you finally give up and uninstall the game. NO JOKE! You'll die a few times, then quit the game, and google to see if it's just you.. and reddits and such are FULL of folks getting demolished on this mission. It's not a fun or challenging mission. It's just an abusive "F U" from the devs who seem to not play test of QA their game, and/or think making the player fail a mission over and over again against impossible odds is some how "compelling gameplay". And, if you make it past 1 of those.. guess what.. you got more to do, because of course you do, because Avalanche loves to puppy-mill out the same stuff over and over. Good luck!
There are moments when this game shines.. like shooting out a tire and watching an enemy vehicle flip, or when everything's blowing up and you're having a blast.
But, you spend more time frustrated with stupid puzzles, unfair enemy respawns, etc than having fun, especially when (like JC 2) heat takes forever to die down (and they start rolling in tanks in like 2 minutes!) causing you to run away with your tail between your legs instead of taking everyone on like a bad-***. And then you hit a wall with some missions (like the transmitter one), and you start to think "this is not fun."
So, ultimately this is getting a down-vote from me.