User Reviews (1 - 11 of 24)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Great Gaming in the GTA Style

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 16 / 22
Date: October 02, 2006
Author: Amazon User

In the style of Saint's Row and Grand Theft Auto, Just Cause lets you free a stereotypical Caribbean island from a drug-lord-connected corrupt president.
You're not a secret agent, nor a tough-talking street punk. Instead, you are Rico Rodriguez - smooth, suave, and probably decked out in rich Corinthian leather.

The island map you explore is HUGE, made up of many smaller sub-islands with roads, jungles, bridges, coastlines, and tons of villages. Everything is a mix of bright, tropical colors and run down, Cuban / Haitian slums. Compared to some of the grey, dreary games on the market, you might think the colors here are too cartoony. However, if you're ever lucky enough to visit the Caribbean, you'll realize that the sea really *is* that blue ... the lush jungles are really a brilliant green.

That's not to say you're in an eden here. Rico has been brought in by the CIA to mingle with the local revolutionaries to topple a corrupt government. You're not bound by many laws while you do this. You quickly start stealing cars, motorcycles, boats, helicopters and anything else that strikes your fancy. You can hop into the back of open trucks, ride along on the top of moving vehicles, and do numerous 'stunt moves' to carry out your missions with flair. You have a magical unlimited parachute pack on, so any time you find yourself falling into trouble, POOF your parachute opens up and you sail to safety.

This definitely enjoys its action movie lack of realism with great gusto. The cliches abound, as does the peppered-with-key-words Hispanic dialogue. There are numerous side missions - find the 10 boxes of coca. Find the 10 sniper scopes that were washed ashore.

I had both good and not-so-good feelings about the graphics. On one hand, they dida good job of showing the run down nature of many of the towns, the style of cars available, the vegetation. But on the other hand, we have seen some awesome graphics on our XBox 360 - and this just wasn't up to the same quality level. Many items in nature seemed blocky. The shadows were often jagged. I suppose it's a trade-off - they created a HUGE world, far larger than pretty much any other game I've seen - so perhaps the detail in that massive world wasn't quite up to other games. I think I personally would have rather had a smaller world - so you weren't running across vast empty wastelands to get to destinations - and kicked the graphic quality up a bit.

Still, there is a lot to enjoy here. There are a ton of vehicles, a ton of locations, and lots of main and side missions to work on. If you're into the GTA style of gameplay and want to take your show to the country, definitely give Just Cause a try.

Amazing...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: November 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This is one of the most amazing games for the Xbox 360 in terms of its graphics. The enviroment is expansive and the most realistic I've seen for most 360 games. It just makes you want to "get in" the game...amazing graphics. The missions are quite easy to understand and most missions are fun to do. It's an open enviroment so you can literally go anywhere on the map even off road. There are tons of vehicles to steal from civilians, gangsters, and even cops and the military. I have drove in the game numberous cars, trucks, motorcycles, ATV, boat, helicopter, an airport buggy (those that haul the luggage bags) and even a bulldozer I found in a field.

You'll love this game if you like adventure type games and doing missions. You can built you rep with the local guerillas and druglords and shoot cops and government officials. Somethings I found was that the screen gets jaggy when I move the screen or camera really fast, maybe that's just because I have it set on 1080i on my HDTV. However, the characters looks smooth, much like the ones in Dead or Alive game. Because of the gorgeous graphics I rated it a 5, but after a while you might get bored of running around all across the map to get to a certain location or do a mission. Other than that...spectcular game!

A glorified GTA ripoff

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 21
Date: October 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Just Cause is a strange game. It's rated "M": not intended for anyone under 17. But the only people who will really enjoy this game have to have the IQ of a 5th grader.

The physics in this game are just plain silly. You can jump your character from a 100 mph truck to a vehicle passing the opposite direction no problem. You can jump out of an airplane, land on another airplane and hold on. You can grapple onto a helicopter, grab its tailfin, and jump into the cockpit.

The story and dialogue were also written for the lowest common denominator (or perhaps by the lowest common denominator). The goal of the game is to overthrow a dictator by (basically) creating chaos: including destroying power stations, police stations, and by assisinations. In these post 9-11 days, it seems like you're doing little more than terrorizing a small island nation; culminating in (a ridiculous airborne) assasination of its leader.

The game's side missions are tedious and after playing for a while, you basically see the same mission over and over again. After overthrowing a government settlement so many times - it just gets old.

It's not all bad. The vast geography is really amazing. If you parachute out of a plane, you can get a good view and watch as it seamlessly gets closer and closer until you open your chute. For the most part, the weather remains sunny; but rain is interspersed (poorly) throughout the game. The playable map is very very large. You could probably play on it for months without seeing everything there is to see.

Finally, the actual gameplay is pretty bland. If you've ever played GTA, you know how to play this game - point in the direction of the badguys and your character automatically aims. Vehicle operation is almost idential to GTA as well (though flying planes has been made much easier). The game tries to innovate by including a grappling hook that allows you to latch onto vehicles. This can be a useful tool at times; but it really doesn't add much to the overall gameplay; especially when you can call in a vehicle airdrop just about any time.

If you're a die-hard fan of the GTA series, this title will tide you over until the release of GTA 4. Otherwise, this game is a renter at best.

Just Cause stands on its own!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: October 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Just Cause should not be compared to GTA as it stands on its own. It has beautiful graphics that really stand out on the Xbox 360. I enjoyed looking at the quickly approaching landscape has I dived out of my air plane for the landing zone.

The only problem I have with Just Cause is you will have to be a Xbox Live subscriber to get the required software updates. Just Cause incorporates a new technology known as motion blur which looks awesome, but will also lock up your system if it isn't updated. My system locked up quite a bit before the October 31, 2006 update was applied. But now, the game is awesome!!

I enjoyed the sound effects, especially the music since it adds that Latin feel to the game. The voices are basic with the regular chit chat coming from every character as you pass by. I also like the way the main character, Rico only talks when he has to. This makes him "man-of-few-words" tough, and also everybody's hero.

Overall, Just Cause is a truly an excellent game that is unique for its many insane stunts, and drop dead beautiful graphics! Avalanche Studios and Eidos Interactive have done an outstanding job in creating this highly recommended game.

Freefalling fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: December 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I knew I liked this game after jumping out of a helicopter at about 15 thousand feet, freefalling AFTER the helicopter (with clouds rushing by), grabbing onto the falling helicopter in freefall, and getting back and flying off again with about 1500 or so odd feet to spare. :) The glide ratio of the parachute took some getting used to (it's much higher than typical skydiving parachutes), but it's for the best since it allows one to travel really far under canopy. Fun stuff.

If you like playing around with a parachute this game is a good time. :)

Completely Underrated

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: January 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

What a complete sleeper-hit and underrated game. I own tons of consoles and tons of games, and I KNOW when a game is a 7.0 or a 9.5. I believe that Just Cause got lost in the sandbox-game chaos and was overlooked by both reviewers and customers. Here's why:

The action in the game is intense and completely ridiculous. If you enjoy jumping a motorbike off a ramp, ditching the motorbike midair to grab onto a helicopter's tail, kicking the pilot out of the cockpit and using the helicopter to blow the government dogs to smithereens then you will love this game! This situation happens much more often than you would think and the action in this game can get ridiculous, insane, and absolutely FUN.

The other touches of this game really bring it all together. It feels amazing to liberate villages while the guerrilla fighters scream "Libertad!!" and "viva la revolucion!" only to return to your safe house where sweet south american/mexican guitar tunes greet you. That reminds me; the music is excellent. You won't find some emo-kid band tracks in here; only local music that completely fits the context of the game. Rico's statements during parts of the game are hilarious too.

Not to mention, the island in the game is HUGE. And I mean HUGE. You will never get tired flying a helicopter up high and looking around at all of the land that you have liberated.

Not to mention the graphics.... I almost died when I saw the full 1080i-motion blurred-high dynamic range graphics showing me the gorgeous sunset on San esperito. The graphics alone on this game (from up high) should be reason to buy (much better than Far Cry or other island games).

The reviewers got overly harsh on this game (it is NOT trying to be GTA, so don't compare it to GTA!!!) The animations are kinda stupid and obviously the missions are repetitive, but it doesn't matter when the action is so intense!

Trust me; buy this game on the X360 and you will not be disappointed!!

Just Cause

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: September 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

there are 89 vehicles, not over 100. the size of island is huge! 250,000 acres is currently the largest in-game world ever. this is another great game that can be played for 200 plus hours and you still wouldnt see everything (like oblivion is). there are over 300 unique towns, villages, and cities to explore as well.
the main character rico can perform amazing stunts in this sandbox style game. one for example would be to drive a car very fast, hit the A button to go to Stunt Position which in a car would be on the roof, hit A again to open your parachute and lift high into the air. you could then float to somewhere or position yourself over another vehicle and swoop down onto it. hit the Y button to take posession of the new vehicle and move on.
i have read that it can take 50 minutes to drive across the entire map.
the gun play is great and theres a wide variety of realistic weapons.
the story line is well paced and varied and there are over 300 optional missions.
the camera is set to third person but with a click of the right stick you can pull the camera back to an over the shoulder view.

Very refreshing

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: October 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

One of the best-looking games yet from Eidos, the 16-rated Just Cause is set in a vast tropical world which players can explore in a tempting array of almost 100 vehicles, including Jeeps, boats and helicopters.

Behind the handsome eye candy is an equally compelling caper involving corrupt governments, dodgy South Americans and Weapons of Mass Destruction. Where the game departs from reality is that here, at least, such weapons do actually exist.

Players sign up for a tour of duty with a secret American agency charged with triggering events to overthrow the gangsters and conmen who rule San Esperito. In a detailed world spanning 250,000 colourful acres, anything goes just as long as that evil ruling party loses its twisted grip on power -- teaming up with drug barons is every bit as legitimate here as infiltrating the corridors of power. Missions can be picked off in any order and the gameplay is both robust and thoroughly involving, with a number of neat touches; fans of the Nintendo SNES classic Pilotwings will literally jump at the chance to parachute from any of the aircraft for spectacular views of the vast landscape below.

There is bound to be a sequel, because this original is so good.

This game is FAWESOME

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: October 02, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Though I would have to say that the game is a little too easy, this game is truly fawesome. I have only played for about 10 hours, and already I'm addicted.

I say it is a little too easy because Rico seems to be fairly bullet-proof, and with the aid of your grappling gun you can steal almost any vehicle from anyone, INCLUDING helicopters. This makes the "seek and destroy" submissions VERY easy. Just grappling-gun a heli, real yourself in and hop in the heli.

Overall, though, EXCELLENT. Highly recommended, especially for $50!

Excellent time killer

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

If you are looking for one of those super-realistic games where everything is completely plausable, find another game. Just Cause is essentially an action movie translated into a game, and it turns out very well. If you pictured James Bond being played by Antonio Banderas with M played by Craig T. Nelson, you wouldn't be too far off target. I would recommend it to most people.

Review Page: 1 2 3 Next 

Actions