Just Cause 2 Catch-All

I've uploaded two videos, this is the one I prefer. From the realisation I could do it, to the sense of realism it seems to have because of the camera. Plus, whee!

1Dgaf wrote:

I've uploaded two videos, this is the one I prefer. From the realisation I could do it, to the sense of realism it seems to have because of the camera. Plus, whee!

That video makes me want to attach something or someone to a wind turbine.

This game is great but flawed. Anyone who needs direction in a game should proceed with caution. The enemy spawn can be annoying. It's like Red Faction Guerrilla, where the designers increase difficulty by just increasing the number of enemies. There have been a few times were I created a lot of heat and a ton of enemies showed up. I ran away behind some buildings to play some cat and mouse. I flanked the enemy and saw a group of 6 or 7 guys just standing in a group facing the direction of where I was before I ran away. And by a group, I mean a huddle where they were all close enough to be touching each other. I also found that like red faction guerrilla, the best strategy is often to hit and run. Trying to take on an army base full of guys often leads to death.

There is little guidance in how to proceed. You are just told to create chaos and then there might be stuff to do. For a long time (8-10 hours), I couldn't find the first mission for one of the 3 factions you can work for. So I did 3 or 4 missions for the others. Once I finally did the first mission for that third group, about 20-30 more missions and activities showed up, which just about tripled the directed missions I had available. I had no idea why that was what was needed, but I suggest spreading your services around.

All that said, I've played about 12 hours so far and have no plans to stop. I enjoy the locomotion, wondering around finding collectibles and finding many of the 300 plus locations to cause havoc. This is my latest podcast game, where I can zone out and listen while just seeing where the game takes me. I also think it needs to be said that while the gameplay may have flaws, it's a technical achievement. The environments are beautiful, varied, and detailed. The amount of polish is astounding. It's an open world game so it won't be bug free, but overall I've had exponentially more experiences where I was consciously impress than where I was frustrated by jank.

Yes! The slowboat postal service finally delivered my sweet little bundle of chaos...

I'm loving the little details in this game. The "3D" PDA map? What a cool effect! It magically turned my screen into a hologram.

I finally realized the little white dots on the map are collectible pickups after playing for two hours - but clearly I won't be completing any collectibles in a game this massive. I'm going to narrow my focus and just destroy all the water towers of Panau. I'll be the Water Tower Bandito!

Surprisingly, the driving missions are kicking my rear. I just lose all control at high speeds, much more so than GTA or Saint's Row. I'm hoping some vehicle upgrades will make driving less wonky, because right now I'm nothing but a vehicular homicide machine at any speed over 35.

chaosmos wrote:

Surprisingly, the driving missions are kicking my rear. I just lose all control at high speeds, much more so than GTA or Saint's Row. I'm hoping some vehicle upgrades will make driving less wonky, because right now I'm nothing but a vehicular homicide machine at any speed over 35.

Remember that you don't have to use the vehicle provided and that they are pretty generous with the time. I've complete a lot of flying races in a helicopter.

Extractions are free and take you anywhere you want to go instantly.

That's not quite true -- you can extract to anywhere that you've explored, that's popped up as a location on your map. You don't have to have finished it, just visited.

What I find handy, when presented with a mission with no nearby explored targets yet, is to extract to the closest airbase and steal a jet. Some of the major HQs also have choppers. But choppers move pretty slow, so jets are preferable for getting somewhere fast.

I can't imagine truly "completing" this game. You'd have to be insane.

Malor wrote:
Extractions are free and take you anywhere you want to go instantly.

What I find handy, when presented with a mission with no nearby explored targets yet, is to extract to the closest airbase and steal a jet. Some of the major HQs also have choppers. But choppers move pretty slow, so jets are preferable for getting somewhere fast.

Spoiler:

The jet on the Mile High Club is also very convenient for this purpose.

IUMogg wrote:

This is my latest podcast game, where I can zone out and listen while just seeing where the game takes me.

Exactly. I have a few complaints with the game (what others have said about too many enemies and so on), but last night I played 4 hours in a row doing exactly this: screwing around with one headphone in, listening to podcasts. In that time I did the intro stuff and two or three missions for the yellow group, and I had a blast.

Mogg wrote:

The enemy spawn can be annoying. It's like Red Faction Guerrilla, where the designers increase difficulty by just increasing the number of enemies. There have been a few times were I created a lot of heat and a ton of enemies showed up. I ran away behind some buildings to play some cat and mouse. I flanked the enemy and saw a group of 6 or 7 guys just standing in a group facing the direction of where I was before I ran away. And by a group, I mean a huddle where they were all close enough to be touching each other. I also found that like red faction guerrilla, the best strategy is often to hit and run. Trying to take on an army base full of guys often leads to death.

This has started to really strain my enjoyment of the game. Weapons are weak, ammo is scarce, and you don't regen to full by taking cover so if you need to attack a base, your only real option is to hit quick and hard and get out. Well, I'm in a mission now where it wants me to strike at 4 targets that are very deep inside four bases, all of which are right next to each other. It does not put a checkpoint after each target... if you screw up, you need to restart at the beginning, and worse, it takes away the attack helicopter it gives you the first time. Not that that matters, since Panay has all of his bases filled with SAM launchers for some reason.

The game is at its best when you're just messing around doing as you please. What it has me doing now is the opposite of that, and it's not fun. It's frustrating. I can't take it slow and careful because the game will just respawn legions of enemies.

It does a great job making me feel like I'm literally up against an army and killing each and every soldier is not an option. I'm OK with that, it makes sense that sometimes the best thing to do is run away. The thing is, it's now telling me I can't run away, and it's surrounding me with an army I'm not equipped to handle. And this is only about the fourth mission or so!

Maybe I'll go collect another few hundred armor/weapon upgrades and try again.

LobsterMobster wrote:

It's frustrating. I can't take it slow and careful because the game will just respawn legions of enemies.

What difficulty are you playing on, Lobster? I'm curious how that affects respawn rate/number of enemies.

FYI: When the flight controls say "normal" for pitch, they actually mean the opposite of what the on-foot controls mean by "normal." So if you want your y-axis to be flipped for both on-foot and flying, you need to set one to "inverted" and the other to "normal."

chaosmos wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

It's frustrating. I can't take it slow and careful because the game will just respawn legions of enemies.

What difficulty are you playing on, Lobster? I'm curious how that affects respawn rate/number of enemies.

I'm on Normal. I'm about 7 hours in now so I'm not sure I want to restart on easy.

LobsterMobster wrote:
chaosmos wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

It's frustrating. I can't take it slow and careful because the game will just respawn legions of enemies.

What difficulty are you playing on, Lobster? I'm curious how that affects respawn rate/number of enemies.

I'm on Normal. I'm about 7 hours in now so I'm not sure I want to restart on easy.

Are you seriously telling me this game doesn't allow difficulty shifting on the fly? What is this, 1996?

I enjoyed dicking around with this game for a few hours so far tonight... Wish I'd have gone with the PS3 version after all, because I'm noticing the screen tearing quite a lot (maybe it's just because I was primed to notice). Otherwise, the environments are pretty amazing. Cut scenes and voice acting are nothing short of mediocre/horrible, though. Have we learned nothing from Uncharted 1 and 2?

I have a tendency with sandbox games to play them for a few hours before quitting, so I hope I don't get to that safe frustrating phase that you've described here.

SommerMatt wrote:

Cut scenes and voice acting are nothing short of mediocre/horrible, though. Have we learned nothing from Uncharted 1 and 2?

Since when did Just Cause 2 become a linear, story-heavy game?

Wow, I finished it already, at 22 hours, 29% completion, and I could easily have finished it at 15 or 16 if I hadn't spent time clearing villages. Zillions and zillions of quests left. I haven't even SEEN most of the world yet.

Very minor spoiler on how to know what mission starts the endgame:

Spoiler:

When you get an Agency mission that starts in the same place that you began the game (the center of the west coast on the large eastern island), that's the final mission.

Spoiler on what upgrades I had:

Spoiler:

Got through it fine with just an upgraded assault rifle and submachine gun, and I'm not sure I even needed those. Headshots FTW.

You can still do the quests and explore afterward, but I dunno, I'm feeling kind of let down right now. Significant plot spoiler:

Spoiler:

I was expecting a big twist and a bunch more stuff, not The End.

Anyone know if taking down things like radar installations / killing generals, etc actually affects the enemy at all? (e.g the message that pops up when you kill a general says something along the lines of "the enemies morale has been weakened")
I've blown up a whole lot of stuff so far and haven't noticed much of a difference.

So I've noticed that they don't necessarily spawn enemies indefinitely. I've been cruising around the military installations, annihilating them, and once I've cleared them of enemies I'm good to go. In the cities it feels like a different story, but I've never tried a standoff there to see if they'll eventually stop coming.

It seems like most bases have a spawn point or two, when an alert occurs, a few enemies will start there. If you kill those, the alert will spawn a few more. So there will always be two or three, but they're not very good about leaving their spawn point and hunting you down, so if you avoid that area of the base, you can mostly roam unhindered after you've cleared it out.

Larger bases may have multiple spawn points, however.

They may also spawn more as the security level increases.

Sometimes when the alert level gets high enough, cargo helicopters will come in and airdrop in new troops. Even still, I have been playing on normal, and eventually you'll pretty much kill everyone off and have free reign to hunt down collectibles.

Although I have not actually gathered any stats, I may be having an easier time with it because I have made a point flying around and sniping all the Colonels I can find (it says it lowers Army morale) and destroying comm stations (it says it reduces reaction time of forces) before I attack major installations. Maybe that would help with some of the complaints you guys are having with endless waves of dudes.

Quick question, since I have only played the 360 demo. Once you destroy a building, like a water tower, does it stay destroyed? If you spend long enough in the game do you eventually find yourself driving around a wasteland of destroyed gas stations and buildings?

Montalban wrote:

Quick question, since I have only played the 360 demo. Once you destroy a building, like a water tower, does it stay destroyed? If you spend long enough in the game do you eventually find yourself driving around a wasteland of destroyed gas stations and buildings?

Well, the buildings remain static for the most part, with the exception of the things that are destructible like water towers, gas stations, fuel tanks and the like. Stuff that you can destroy does not respawn, except for guard towers (I think). Even so, the world is so large, you don't ever feel that it's that empty.

bennard wrote:
Montalban wrote:

Quick question, since I have only played the 360 demo. Once you destroy a building, like a water tower, does it stay destroyed? If you spend long enough in the game do you eventually find yourself driving around a wasteland of destroyed gas stations and buildings?

Well, the buildings remain static for the most part, with the exception of the things that are destructible like water towers, gas stations, fuel tanks and the like. Stuff that you can destroy does not respawn, except for guard towers (I think). Even so, the world is so large, you don't ever feel that it's that empty.

Good, good. Lobster's comments about re-spawning enemies and "hit and run" expectations by the developers, as well as other people's doubts about whether they were having any effect at all on enemy numbers just got me worried that other stuff besides enemy troops might re-spawn too, and really break any sense of having an effect on the game world.

Montalban wrote:
bennard wrote:
Montalban wrote:

Quick question, since I have only played the 360 demo. Once you destroy a building, like a water tower, does it stay destroyed? If you spend long enough in the game do you eventually find yourself driving around a wasteland of destroyed gas stations and buildings?

Well, the buildings remain static for the most part, with the exception of the things that are destructible like water towers, gas stations, fuel tanks and the like. Stuff that you can destroy does not respawn, except for guard towers (I think). Even so, the world is so large, you don't ever feel that it's that empty.

Good, good. Lobster's comments about re-spawning enemies and "hit and run" expectations by the developers, as well as other people's doubts about whether they were having any effect at all on enemy numbers just got me worried that other stuff besides enemy troops might re-spawn too, and really break any sense of having an effect on the game world.

The game world is ridiculously big. I've put in over 20 hours in the game, with at least 15 of those hours discovering and clearing locations. (places are unidentified dots on the map until you go there for the first time). There are over 350 places to find. I've been to 140

My copy just arrived today.

What's the difficulty like on the missions towards the end of the game? Should I start on easy?

Went to an Indian restaurant last night and there was a com tower nearby (it was a classy place) that was the spitting image of the towers in JC2. It's probably just as well I didn't have any grenades on me.

Higgledy wrote:

My copy just arrived today.

What's the difficulty like on the missions towards the end of the game? Should I start on easy?

Went to an Indian restaurant last night and there was a com tower nearby (it was a classy place) that was the spitting image of the towers in JC2. It's probably just as well I didn't have any grenades on me.

No, don't start on easy.

Yeah, normal's pretty good. If you're a strong FPS player, you may want to go with a higher difficulty level. Once you figure out how the weapons work, you get pretty devastating.

Finally tried out the demo this weekend and have to say, why didn't I see this game before? Tons of fun. When time and budget permit (hopefully a Steam Sale a couple months from now) I'll be grabbing this game.

I'm liking a lot about this game, but I hate the health system. Someone might have mentioned this already, but what idiot decided to have a GTA-style game with respawning enemies, and only allow the player to regen about 1/4th of their health by hiding? Good luck finding a health pack in this massive landscape.

Also, someone please tell me you get body armor at some point!

There are a lot of health packs scattered around the cities and towns but they are kind of hard to see at first. They usually appear in the same places and once you learn to look for those places you can get by. I think every gas station has one by the vending machines and most military bases have them in warehuses and stuff. When you are on a mission there are usually med kits placed in handy areas in the course of the mission.

Overall though there aren't a ton of medkits compared to the number of enemies. I think they do this on purpose to kind of steer the players towards slowly uncovering the island. If you die and keep going to the nearest stronghold you tend to clear out the area around the stronghold which opens up more missions and whatnot.