Just Cause 2

Rating: 3 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)
Genre: Sandbox; Sub-genre: Third person shooter, Physics simulator
ESRB: M (Wanton violence, but not necessarily gory)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 70/12
Developer: Avalanche Studios
Wiki page

There's games like Grand Theft Auto that build gritty worlds where you run errands for sociopath criminals. There's games like The Elder Scrolls where you explore a beautiful world. There's also games like Saints Row where you just dick around and laugh. And then there's Just Cause 2, a little bit of each, but still it's own thing. And that picture above is a drawing, but riding on jets mid-flight is just part of Rico Rodriguez's day-to-day life. Equipped with a grappling hook that allows him to kick the laws of physics straight in the balls, he whizzes around wherever he damn well pleases. He can catch any vehicle and take it over: land, sea, and air. He can bolt up to the top of a short building in an instant. He can even open his infinite parachute mid-jump and slingshot himself across the sky. This is just a gadget he has, too. There's like a whole game that goes along with this.

He's like some kind of Batman who hates independent island nations.

The story is either stupidly light-hearted, or is a brilliant mockery of the American mentality (like how Starship Troopers is actually a movie that is about the opposite of what you think it is). The fictional island nation is ruled by a vicious dictator, and Rico is on a mission to turn the country against him and for America. And he does this via random explosions and murder. Also, America only cares about this country because of the oil. Saying it out loud, it sounds like a satire, right? But you can't get into that when you're thrown into a cheesy video game with C level writing, and B level voicing. After you've spent a few hours blowing up everything in sight, you'll likely forget the game even has a plot.

And your best bud is some kind of Yosemite Sam cowboy type person.

The gameplay serves as both the strong point and as a weak point. If all you want is a third person shooter with some driving thrown in, you'll get all that but it's not spectacular. If you want to tie a boulder to the back of a car and do donuts to cause a bunch of random damage before crashing into a gas station and dying, you can do that all day. AND you can do that kind of thing to solve combat situations! Tie two bad guys together while you shoot a third, tie a car to the ground that's driving after you to cause it to flip out, crash helicopters into turrets... it's really up to you to figure out the funniest way to deal with a given situation.

Driving stuff off of high places is one of my favorite things to do!

And the island of Panau is HUGE. It may be the biggest sandbox ever made. You can see mountains that are literally miles in the distance, spend an hour driving to them, and then climb all over them. There's also a busy city section where there's like three downtown areas with skyscrapers. And there's collectibles and shit to destroy (destroying shit gives you points!) in every location, along with dozens of side missions. I estimated a thorough playthrough at 70 hours, but that's just doing all the missions with a small amount of screwing around. I'd wager to find and do literally everything would take maybe 120 hours? It's hard to say because there is a small percentage of things that don't appear on any map, so tracking those down would take a lot of time.

This is just a small corner of the island. Fortunately you can steal a plane and see the rest easily!

Conclusion:
If blowing crap up and screwing around are your thing, this game has it in spades. Conversely, if you want some kind of deep game or memorable story, you may want to look elsewhere. Shit, I used all screens from the actual game this time. That's how funny it is!

In this game, even water is explosive!