Just Cause (2006) - MobyGames (original) (raw)

aka:JC,Rico: Terror in the Tropics

Moby ID: 24152

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Description official descriptions

You are Rico Rodriguez, a CIA-agent who is sent to the small Island of San Esperito to start a revolution and bring down the current regime under the rule of General Salvador Mendoza.

After you jumped out of the airplane and helped your local contact survive an attack by gang members, you have - much like GTA: San Andreas - the freedom to do what you want. The complete island is accessible from the beginning and you can either follow the main storyline, engage in side-missions, or collect items all over the place. To help the revolution you can also drive the government out of the individual sectors on the island. This is accomplished by a three-stages fight in which you have to go up against a huge army of government forces.

As a fully trained agent, Rico can also perform many stunts. He has always an parachute equipped which he can open whenever he has enough speed. So he often uses cars or bikes as a jump-pad and then sails smoothly into the sunset.

But of course he cannot impress the evil regime with that, so he also has access to a wide range of weapons from pistols with unlimited ammo to rocket launchers and machine guns. Rico is also trained to drive everything that has an engine, from a normal bike to a fully-armed military helicopter.

Spellings

저스트 코즈 - Korean spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

166 People (133 developers, 33 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 73% (based on 52 ratings)

Players

Average score: 2.7 out of 5(based on 57 ratings with 2 reviews)

Just Cause? Lost Cause...

The Good
I have to admit this game was attractive at first glance. From the Guevara-esque cover to the GTA style freedom of play, it was hard for me to pass on this game, especially considering the fact that I obtained it from ebay at the whopping price of one dollar.

The story is of course something that many tend to dream about; being at the forefront of regime change in a corrupt third world country (or maybe that's just me), where the cause, the "just" cause is good, even though the methods are bad. How many games place the main character in the leading role of revolution where gun toting, car stealing, and drug dealing violence is an amalgam of methods for justice? It's hard not to like the idea.

The graphics are par for the course. I wouldn't call them superb, but they serve the purpose.

That's it for the good. Yep, that's it.

The Bad
Where do I begin?

Let's start with controls. First and foremost, there are too many of them. Controls for walking, driving a boat, a car, an aircraft, swimming, they're all different. Why? Sure, you can change the control options but it's long and tedious. As a matter of fact, there are so many controls that you'll find yourself changing them on an as needed basis. I for one don't understand why the forward button for driving a boat, walking, swimming forward must be different for every activity. Even after I change all of these in options, guess what! I pull up the map and moving the map forward, backward, etc. is all different as well. Ridiculous. Why do the pick up item and swap weapon (as in a weapon that is on the ground) have to be different? With my grappling hook, why does shortening or lengthening my distance have to be different keys than forward and back? Argh...

Combat is terrible. I have never once died in combat. As a matter of fact, early on in the game I was a gunner on a truck as helicopters and other vehicles chased us. The targets would be hit whenever I fired the weapon. I closed my eyes, and made it through the rest of the mission while destroying all incoming enemies. While this autoaim does not continue through to shoot outs, it's almost impossible to die in this game unless you're hit by a car. Furthermore, enemies appear out of nowhere. Have a empty road ahead of you? Turn 360 degrees and you'll have new enemies that appear out of nowhere.

You're always wanted. The cops never give up. In GTA you could lower your wanted level and cruise the streets in peace if you wanted too... however in this game, even though your wanted level drops down, the cops are always after you. To make matters worse, they all say the same thing; "stop right there citizen!". This is all you hear throughout the entire game. Well, there's that and the fact that a helicopter is chasing me everywhere shooting rockets at me. It never stops because I never die, and they never run out of ammo or people.

89 vehicles to command? Yeah, if you consider a VW lookalike bus and a VW lookalike station wagon to be 2 different vehicles. You actually have boat, car, plane.

Saving your game is an outrage. We're confined to console style saving tactics where the game can only be saved at key locations and not during missions or other events. Bleh. Too many times I've played longer than I care to play because there were logistical problems preventing me from saving.

The graphics seem a bit blurry and washed-out. The sound works ok, but the voice acting and cutscenes are rock-bottom terrible.

The Bottom Line
If premise alone made for great games, Just Cause might be at the top of the list. But that isn't reality, and I'm forced to accept the fact that good idea met bad design and this game won't be remembered for anything except for what NOT to do in game design.

Windows · by D Michael (222) · 2007

GTA meets Oblivion, but the game is Grandly Oblivious

The Good
Yep. Great graphics. If I had a cent for every game that...

Well, the game is big though. Similar to Oblivion. Detailed jungle vegetation from Los Yep I'm Lost to Rio de Where the Hell Am I?

Bah, skip the good, go to the bad.

The Bad
Whoopee, hope you have time to hear me whining, cause I'm on a roll!

What's wrong with my mouse?
Little issues first. Some really minor issues that should be a problem in the first place. Main menu, want to click on a selection. Hey, my mouse doesn't work? Why doesn't it work, because you have to use the keyboard. Egad, the 21st century and they forgot add a mouse feature for the main menu. Doh. If that isn't a bad sign, I don't know what is.
Big World, Big Graphics, Big Booring
Yeah, the bigger is better phase got really boring if you don't follow the minimal standards of Oblivion. Big is better ONLY if there is a reason to make it big. In this game, it doesn't make any difference if you walk to the next target or if you fly there. Simply because its just useless 3D landscape. More than once I got lost trying to find my way through the bushes and trees and believe me, any form of short cut in this game gets you lost in El Creepo Jungle. Reminds me why I hate the tropics...and there are a lot of trees and rocks hampering your direction. Crashing into a tree every couple of minutes does tend to get irritating after awhile, some geographical detail would really be better off being excluded. All that geographical detail laid to waste…
Voice acting? Homer Simpson has more personality
And yet we all love Homer. So we have what seems to be a so-called Latin hunk who astoundingly looks and sounds like Antonio Banderas. Though unfortunately for Antonio, the bloke here certainly would get him fired from the movie industry. Latin English has never sounded so ugly and boring. Apparently in this game, good looks are enough to get by in the CIA.
GTA copycat? Bite me
Anyone ever played a copy cat that’s better than the original? If it were, no one would be calling it a copy cat. Hell, they followed a lot of details except the cool stuff: [1] Stunts. Remember those? When you jump off a ledge or something high, you enter a slow-mo cut-scene style movie. They have it here, except it doesn’t show for the really great jumps. It does show when you fall off a 2 meter ledge. Doh. [2] Things that go Boom! Don’t you love blowing things up? Yeah. If it’s a car, we have to blow it up. But that doesn’t happen very often in this game. Sure you can blow the tires off (which is cool) and the windows and everything else off the car in graphical detail. But when you empty 4 magazine clips to the car’s engine and the car doesn’t blow up, that just doesn’t look right. Don’t know about real life, but when you have a machine gun and a police car, something should blow up damn it! Apparently grenades are the only way you can blow up stuff real fun, but grenades are too easy. Even shooting the fuel tank doesn’t do squat. [3] Mini quests. Now, GTA had some really cool mini quests. From killing weird dudes to collecting various car types to a strip garage. This game has one of the boring mini games ever. Collect this, collect that, kill this, kill that. Only problem is, the distance between the areas are irritatingly far. Especially if you crash into trees all the time. And why do you crash into trees? See #4 [4] If you can fly, don’t drive. Reminds of really bad racing simulation days. I really don’t care if in the real life, cars turn and skid like that. In real life, we don’t use buttons, we have instincts. Not in games, when I want to turn, then turn you stupid car. And don’t freakin skid every time I turn the wheel more 10 degrees. If the driving mechanics were adapted in real-life, everyone would have in accident over 30 km per hour. [5] Blow up everything. I suddenly remembered you can blow up stuff real easy. That is, when you have your Agency Jeep. Yep you can blow up stuff. In fact, you can blow up the entire freakin country, since your Jeep doesn’t have an ammo limit. WTF? Seriously dude, what makes a shooting game a shooting game is that you have manage your ammo. Any shooting game that doesn’t have ammo limitations need to get in touch with reality a bit here. [6] I am immortal? Ok, we have 10 baddies with machine guns and you with a hand gun. Who wins? You of course. You’re a CIA agent!! And not just any CIA agent, a Latino CIA agent that looks and sounds like Antonio Banderas. [7] Get that freakin chopper off of me!! Well the good thing, unlike GTA you can shoot the chopper down with a gun. The bad thing is, some choppers seem to be shooting only at you! Sure, you after the chopper goes down, another chopper suddenly shows up in its stead. Either the developers had a fascination for helicopters but dodging helicopter bullets while out running a tank really isn’t fun. [8] I maybe invulnerable to bullets, but I am also road kill. One of the easiest way to die in this game, is by getting hit by a car. Which is ridiculously frequent. Which is also quite stupid since it often happens when you are slowly crossing what seems like a deserted road or during a gun fight. Sure in GTA cars always brake at right time, unless your really asking for it. Though maybe unrealistic, but sure hell is a nice gesture!
**The Bottom Line**
2 DVDs of eye-candy. I don't think even hardcore GTA fans would enjoy this game.

Windows · by Indra was here (20747) · 2007

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Just Cause appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

References

The box art emulates the famous photograph of Che Guevara taken by the Cuban photographer Alberto Korda. A fitting choice, as this game also deals with the overthrowing of a dictatorial regime.

Sales

The game was sold in just over 1 million copies by 2009.

Analytics

An interview with Just Cause Directors Christofer Sundberg and Linus Blomberg
by Blogcritics Magazine (8th September 2006)
IGCD Internet Game Cars Database
Game page on IGCD, a database that tries to archive vehicles found in video games.
Just Cause - The Game
Official Homepage
Wikipedia: Just Cause
Article about the game in the open encyclopedia
X360A achievement guide
X360A's achievement guide for Just Cause

Identifiers +

MobyGames ID: 24152 [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Sicarius.

PlayStation 3 added by Charly2.0. OnLive added by firefang9212.

Additional contributors: Sciere, Solid Flamingo, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third, Plok, Victor Vance, FatherJack, Kennyannydenny, R3dn3ck3r.

Game added September 24, 2006. Last modified September 10, 2024.