Just Cause 2 - Avalanche - PC + whatever

[Sky]

Imagine Arnold back when he was an action movie star. Now imagine he's spiderman.

This game is pretty simple. An open world, GTA-esque environment. Jack cars, planes, boats, cycles. Complete jobs for factions, with your over-riding mission something about working for the CIA or whatever to find some guy who taught you how to be Spidernegger.

I've got about 7 hours in now. I've done a bunch of races, there are types for each vehicle class (air/sea/land). They range from a straight-forward race through the city to BASE jumping/paragliding to racing through back alleys in a tuk-tuk (a motorized rickshaw, I guess), which is pretty funny when you've got a Heat level on you.

The Heat mechanic is similar to GTA, escalating response. The lines the military (and others) spew are pretty funny at times, reminiscent of a Hot Pursuit meets Thief. Ammo is a little sparse, so taking out military is one way to re-up. You can also unlock stuff to buy off the black market guy, who you can summon almost anywhere; you can also upgrade the stuff you buy off him by spending points on each item.

You get to carry one rifle or two pistols (incl machine pistols, sawed-off shotties, etc) and two kinds of explosives (grenades and detonation charges). Gun play is a mix of lock on and aiming, which is fine by me, since aiming with thumbsticks blows (you want to play this with your 360 controller, imo). As I said, they can be a bit tight with ammo, so you can also get creative, crashing a helicopter on an assassination target or to knock over a statue is one of my favored tactics.

Which brings me to the two most fun parts of the game: the hook and chute. The hook makes you into spiderman. You can use it to zip to things. You can zip and then open your chute, flying into the air. You can zip an enemy and pull him off a ledge. You can zip an enemy to a tree, and he'll dangle there. You can zip an enemy to a car and drag him down the road. You can zip an object to a car (or helicopter) and use it as a wrecking ball. You can zip while you're in your chute to propel yourself along, this is actually the fastest and best way to travel except over water.

The basic goal is to cause mayhem (blow stuff up) to unlock new missions, then gain territory for a faction, unlocking more missions. Go around and find hidden caches to unlock stuff and to win favor with factions. And blow some more stuff up.

Presentation is slick, game runs pretty well. On my 4-yr-old pc, it can slow down in cities a bit, and I had to leave off playing in 3D Vision because of the slowdown in the city portions. It does look amazing in 3d Vision, I rate it my #2 favorite 3D title behind Tomb Raider, just ahead of Batman AA.

Verdict: buy it! Especially on steam sale, you're crazy not to (as I was, thanks Santa!)

[bhodi]

Some people loved this game. I didn't. Mostly because I was frustrated with the grappling hook / parachute. Tyring to climb a tower with it is just incredibly frustrating. The camera angle freakouts don't help either. You end up having to drop, parachute away, spin around, grapple up a few more feet, and do it all over again. If you miss opening your chute by less than a second, well, you've just lost height.

Also I kind of felt sorry for blowing up poor village's water towers and town generators for points. It's not their fault their leader is a dictator, now you've just destroyed their only source of clean drinking water - nice job, hero!

[LK]

Rico isn't really a "hero" in the traditional sense. He IS illegally invading another country and disrupting order to protect U.S. Interests. Dictatorship or no, it's kinda fucked up if you dig deeper than the surface (all three alternatives are just as corrupt and crazy as the guy you're out to replace, except they are pro-U.S.).

I'm realizing now how messed up your reasoning is to kill an opposing nation in most shooters based on real life, and why Nazis, zombies, all-powerful aliens, and other foes you can't humanize are safe bets that don't make you question your grounds for killing them.

[Kail]

Tyring to climb a tower with it is just incredibly frustrating. The camera angle freakouts don't help either. You end up having to drop, parachute away, spin around, grapple up a few more feet, and do it all over again. If you miss opening your chute by less than a second, well, you've just lost height.

Maybe I'm not far enough, but as far as I've seen, generally if you have to climb a tower, there will be another one nearby (or some other surface) which you can zig-zag up between without ever touching your chute and with basically no chance of falling.  Grappling up onto a higher point of the same surface you're on is a pain, but I don't think I've ever had to do it once I started looking for other ways up.

[LK]

Solid cliff faces (flat planes), you can zig zag. Cylindrical towers fuck you if you're close up.

[Azazel]

I'm realizing now how messed up your reasoning is to kill an opposing nation in most shooters based on real life, and why Nazis, zombies, all-powerful aliens, and other foes you can't humanize are safe bets that don't make you question your grounds for killing them.

Most games that involve killing anything (read: most of them) involve either mass "murder" or genocidal killing sprees of some kind. Just like real war or the abattoirs that supply our butchers and supermarkets.

[Hoax]

Imagine Arnold back when he was an action movie star. Now imagine he's spiderman.

[...]

Gun play is a mix of lock on and aiming, which is fine by me, since aiming with thumbsticks blows (you want to play this with your 360 controller, imo). As I said, they can be a bit tight with ammo, so you can also get creative, crashing a helicopter on an assassination target or to knock over a statue is one of my favored tactics.

Anyone played this like its a pc fps w/ mouse and kb or does it just not work for that?

[climbjtree]

Hey, to the rescue again!

I'm currently playing on PC doing the KB + mouse thing. It works great. If anything, you could probably turn down the sensitivity a touch, but it does work well.