Health regenerates over time, but not fully, certain wounds will deplete the bar and you’ll need a health kit to restore it, again, they are pretty plentiful and you should be able to find one easily enough. Lastly your PDA map is great, it has an X-Y coordinate system to let you make a note of cool locations and finds, you can share these on forums or keep them for personal reference, if you find a cool vehicle, location or weapon drop.

Just Cause 2 is a blisteringly great gameplay sandbox with numerous tactical choices and fun to be had, you can’t fully describe every feature – so the best thing to do is play it.

The PS3 version has an awesome video recorder built in that lets you capture the output from your game, upload directly to YouTube or save it off onto your PS3 HDD for later perusal and upload. You can capture up to 10m or set it to automatically capture 30 seconds of footage, saving this 30 seconds manually when you feel like it.

Graphics

There are a few pop-in issues and some FoV issues with the game, but on the whole it’s a gorgeous looking game when you stand atop a wind-swept, snow covered mountain and watch a thunderstorm raging in the distance over a nearby city. The snow collects on Rico’s clothes and he literally gets covered in frost as you watch. When it rains, Rico gets wet, he gets dusty in the desert and the vehicles get covered with dust/dirt and snow. The sunrises, sunsets and environment graphics as a whole are gorgeous and on the PC version the water is tied to the physics system, so it looks even better.

The weather system is also dynamic, rain clouds form based on environmental conditions and none of it is scripted.

There’s a decent level of detail to everything in the game and whilst there are a few issues with textures here and there, none of it truly spoils Just Cause 2. Explosions are spectacular and often pretty breathtaking with huge balls of fire and smoke shooting into the air. The lighting effects are gorgeous and underwater looks especially nice. At night all the villages and cities light up in a great way and you can see Panau City for miles.

Physics

Ragdoll physics abound and they’re gloriously over the top, Rico tumbles and rolls when he is knocked off his feet and enemies are tossed around like crazy from a big explosion. You can see the effects of bullets as you shoot them in different body parts and they are struck hard by the impact of Rico’s grapple. You laugh as the poor guard is tethered to the back of a speeding car and gets dragged across the road. You can’t help it. There’s a lovely weight to everything and the vehicles have different handling characteristics, definitely improved over Just Cause. I did encounter some odd physics things on the PS3 where Rico ended up part of the scenery or fell into a building and couldn’t get out from the inside dimension where everything was all transparent, where the Doctor when you need him? The same location was fine numerous times on the 360, these glitches happen and it’s highly unlikely you’ll hit one.

There's a layered damage system on the cars and other vehicles, so that they become deformed and wrecked over time and impacts. You can also shoot out tires on the cars to make them spin and flip out Hollywood style.

Animations

The animations in the game are good, there are definitely great moments where you tether a guard and leave him hanging as a bullet piñata, he struggles to get the grapple loose before you end his life with a couple of shotgun or pistol shots to the face. Rico’s running, fighting, shooting, diving and vehicle operation animations are great. Some of the stunt jump animations defy belief and are gloriously ridiculous to watch, which just adds to the appeal of the game for me. The rest of the animations are good, there’s nothing I can truly grumble about here, since I’m often having too much fun to notice if something has gone wrong animation wise.

AI

The AI in the game isn’t too bad, it will take cover, it will try and free itself from your hook line and it will generally offer a good challenge when chasing you down on foot, or in a vehicle. There are times the pilot AI makes awesome mistakes, those just add to the chaos of the game – two helicopters meet in a spectacular fireball in the sky, AI glitch or just awesome action, you decide.

Sound

Panau is brought to life through a variety of sounds; there are fantastic wind-swept mountains where the snow flurries and wind howls across the slopes. In the dense jungle there are the cries of birds and other animals, replaced by the chattering of creatures at night. The whole thing is a fantastic audio package and there are some nice audio moments all around, especially when base-jumping down the side of a particularly windy mountain.

Music

It’s a rousing secret-agent style theme that kicks in now and then, the music can be understated or action-y as befits the on screen action. When you’re up in the sky and sailing around on your chute, you get a nice relaxing theme that billows with you on the wind. Great stuff.

Voice/Dialogue

There are some good performances and some bad ones, it’s a mixed bag, but you forgive it because you’re in the middle of the A-Team meets 007. The script is cheesy at times and thoroughly over the top, rife with awesome clichés and great campy writing. I loved it personally.

Multiplayer

None, though a 2 player coop would have been awesome to see implemented, perhaps for Just Cause 3 eh guys?

Just Cause I can!

Just Cause 2 is a game that blows Just Cause out of the water, fixes what was wrong with the original and offers almost TOO MUCH to do. Its wonderful dip into the future of action-packed sandbox/open world games and one of the better entries into the genre, I can truly say that is a game that I have had the most fun with for a long time and continue to do so. Once I’m done with the day I’m going to sit down and see if I can capture any more crazy stunts and madcap moments on the PS3 version.

To give you a recap, the 360 is slightly better frame-rate and graphically it has motion-blur and some nicer textures. The PS3 lacks the motion-blur but gains the video recorder; the PC has awesome water and the best graphics.

Although it never happened to me, apparently there’s a bug where traffic and civs just vanish and never respawn. To fix this, go into a race and everything should be fine after. I am reliably informed that this works.