
Rico remains a weightless spiderman, retaining that joyous, nonsensical means of getting around that relies on well-timed sequences of grapple-hooking, parachuting and wingsuiting. Just Cause 4 still taps into that need for reckless abandon that resides in all gamers, but its impact is softening Just Cause 4 is designed around these possibilities, though that comes at the expense of a well-paced wider game. It offers new levels of playful possibility that I'm sure people far more patient and creative than myself will exploit to make for some incredible YouTube highlight reels. You can unlock fine-tune features like making your tether balloons explode on a trigger, or add a 'Power Yank' to your retractor, which makes even heavy vehicles collide together like toys in the hands of a sugar-crazed child.
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It's a good call, going all-in on the sandboxy spirit of the series even though none of this stuff is necessarily practical in a combat sense. Here you can have three different tether loadouts, with each one containing whatever mix of balloon, rocket and retracting tethers you like.

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The old upgrade system has been largely replaced, with many once-unlockable abilities now available from the off, and a new mix-and-match tether loadout system. Joining it now is the 'Air Lifter' balloon tether, which lets you attach several balloons to objects and send them off to orbit, as well as 'booster' tethers, which send their hapless targets fizzing around uncontrollably like cheap fireworks from your local convenience store. There's still the retractor which lets you, say, string two or more helicopters together and send them twirling into each other. This lets you attach objects and people to each other for all kinds of showcases of physics silliness, and it's received a welcome upgrade. Then there's the all-important tether: the tool that single-clawedly set the series on its path of physics-based excess. You can also now call in several planes simultaneously to drop a vast array of weapons and heavy artillery, giving you the freedom to turn Just Cause 4 into a vibrant warzone of ragdolls and explosions whenever you like. So it's expanded the player's arsenal with everything from drone-firing railguns to weather-harnessing super-weapons, which include a wind cannon that lets you invisibly blow away whole squads of enemies and structures, and the lightning gun, which not only zaps enemies but can create mini lightning storms that fry everything in its perimeter. The series knows now that it's dependant on the kind of all-action spectacle that makes Mission Impossible look like the most stolid of John le Carre novels. Head over to the frontlines and you'll sees skirmishes between your squads and the enemy, but it's all for show, as the enemy can't actually retake territory from you, and your side's progress is dictated solely by Rico's renegade activities.Īnd it's of course these activities, not the pseudo-strategy twaddle, that are the real reason people play Just Cause. This macro-scale layer gives an appearance of strategy, with the numbers of squads in regions and frontline markers teasing the possibility of a kind of Risk-like territory game, but it never follows through with it. The whole map is open for you to explore from the start, but you can only move these squads into regions neighbouring those under your control, making that map-painting process a little more focused than before. Each region has a specific mission you must complete, and once you've done that you can call in squads of revolutionaries-unlocked by destroying enemy infrastructure and capturing certain regions-to take control of it. Where in previous games you did this simply by causing enough destruction in a given region, this time Avalanche has attempted to inject a bit more depth into the process. It's on you to wrest back control of the island. It's lightweight, but good-humoured and well-written enough to tick along with. It ties into the plots of the previous games (for anyone that actually cares), and has a dash of light intrigue too thanks to a connection with Rico's father, who inadvertently helped the dictator harness the elements and weaponise the weather.


This time, Rico's helping liberate the South American island of Solis, a vast paradise of several beautiful biomes whose people are oppressed by dictator Oscar Espinosa and his Black Hand army. You are again Rico Rodriguez, a freelance super-agent, and one-man flashpoint for revolutions on seemingly every dictator-run tropical island he drops into.
