Familiar chaos.

The adventures of Rico Rodriguez have been up and down since its inception. The first game was novel, but boring at best. The second outing was one of my favorite 360 games of all-time. The third suffered from gating the fun behind mundane tasks and its host of technical problems. Now Just Cause 4 arrives and fills an entirely new gap. This game feels like what the third entry should have been. I hate using the .5 description for any title, but Just Cause 4 epitomizes that idea. Still, it is hard to argue with how fun stupid can truly be.

Let’s address the elephant in the room right off the bat. Just Cause 4 runs light years better on console than its predecessor. Explosions and physics do not weigh down these consoles with unplayable frame rates. That said the game is also a step back visually from the third game. The environments are not as lush and the textures are muddy a lot of the time. Still, I will take performance over fidelity most days, and the action of the Just Cause series requires it to run well, and this game achieves that.

MSRP: $59.99
Platforms: XB1 (reviewed), PS4, PC
Price I’d Pay: $39.99

The story of Just Cause has always been second fiddle to the action. With the fourth entry they lean more heavily on attempting to be serious, which is a mistake. I still preferred the outlandish characters from the second game. Lean into the stupid, it is what made those early games more appealing. Rico once again is helping to liberate the area by taking over sections and causing chaos. This time around he can also push the frontlines of war to conquer more locations. It is an interesting mechanic, but one that is not explained all that well.

There are a ton of menus and submenus within the game. It can get confusing on how to progress early on. The game play is straightforward, with the focus on the grappling hook. Rico now has customizable load outs that he can set which include balloons to lift objects, boosters to send them skyrocketing, and of course tethers to bring objects closer to chaos. The concept is fun, but boy is it confusing at times. There are so many options to adjust. Thankfully the game let me set three options which I could switch on-the-fly with the d-pad. I found the ones I liked and mostly stuck with them.

As I mentioned, this feels more streamlined. A lot of what made JC3 so frustrating is how the controls felt. Shooting was off and not satisfying. Just Cause 4 remedies this by making it more snappy, but the limited ammo is a real bummer. This is a game about chaos and destruction, and I found myself running out of bullets far too often in massive firefights. It feels like the developers wanted to shoehorn players into using the grapple for combat scenarios more often. However, for a game that revels in chaos feeling limited to one technique doesn’t support the theme. Just lean into the stupid and give me essentially unlimited ammo.

Just Cause 4 succeeds when it embraces its stupidity. Sadly, a lot of the game forgets this and tries to be more serious and structured than it needs to be. Some of the missions are not designed in a manner that utilizes the chaos. I found just exploring the world and creating random chaos more fun, but that only lasts so long. It still feels like these games have struggled to match the synchronicity the second game found. All the pieces are here, but they just don’t come together the right way.

Whether it is fatigue or poor implementation, Just Cause 4 doesn’t feel like a true sequel. The issues I had with the third game have been fixed, but I still fell off this game much faster than I had anticipated. I adored the second game, dealt with the third one, but this fourth entry just lost its appeal far too quickly. It might be time to rethink and restructure the series, or perhaps move on to a new idea.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.

Good
  • All the issues with the last game are fixed
  • Weather system adds neat dynamic
Bad
  • Confusing menus and progression system
  • Muddy textures
  • Lack of ammo
6.5
Decent
Written by
Ken is the Editor-in-Chief of this hole in the wall and he loves to troll for the fun of it. He also enjoys long walks through Arkham Asylum and the cool air of Shadow Moses Island. His turn-ons include Mortal Kombat, Metal Gear Solid and StarCraft.