Just Cause 4 review: The master of mindless destruction [UB]

[Blackfire]

 

The master of mayhem, Rico Rodriguez, returns in Just Cause 4, armed with his classic parachute, grappling hook and wingsuit combo, promising to wreak havoc on the oppressive forces of the fictional South American island of Solis. 

This time around Rodriguez has even more weaponry at his disposal to deal out the damage across the land. This arsenal includes everything from lightning guns to giant controllable tornadoes. But is this game all style and no substance?

More of the same 
With Just Cause 4 the developers set out to take all the features and gameplay that fans loved from the previous games and make a bigger and better experience. As such, fans will discover an immediate familiarity with how the game works and plays. This is both a good and bad thing.

 

It took us time to settle back into the swing of things, but before long we were wingsuiting and grappling hooking our way across the landscape with the greatest of ease. Gracefully flying over mountains, under bridges and along motorways before parachuting into an enemy base to reign down a flurry of fire and destruction.

At first we found ourselves sorely disappointed with the visuals though. Just Cause 3 was stunning and that game released three years ago, so we were expecting more this time around, especially based on what we'd already seen before release. Character models are underwhelming and there's just a certain gloss missing that lets it down, especially when playing on PC.

Flying high above the surface, however, the draw distances are impressive. You can see for miles when you're up there, peacefully whistling through the wind in your wingsuit, admiring the mountaintops and valleys below. 

Back down to earth and the game itself uses the same logic as before: move from one place to another, blow up everything in sight and earn chaos points.

 

These points can then be spent to liberate an area of the map by pushing the friendly "army of chaos" forward into that region. Doing so also unlocks new weapons, vehicles and goodies that can be delivered to you by air anywhere on the map by willing pilots of some rather large cargo planes. 

Some areas can only be liberated by completing the main story missions. Similarly, some vehicles and weapons can only be accessed by side quests or taking part in sandbox shenanigans.

There are mini-missions that include wingsuiting through numerous rings without crashing or driving a vehicle at breakneck speeds through a certain zone – the sorts of distractions that have existed in these style of games since Grand Theft Auto blew up in a big way. 

Earning chaos points and liberating a region doesn't take long once you get the hang of it. Even less time once you can call in a tank, chopper or mega weapon to your location to smash the enemy to oblivion.