This is for those people wondering if you should buy this game. Should you ignore people who cry like babies because it's not like how they remember the Xbox 360 version was? Absolutely. Nostalgia is the biggest pair of cope glasses in gaming. In fact, it's easier than that version and you can actually aim without that annoying auto aiming system. Nobody really cares about the graphics in an old game like this, if you do then go cry about how the original Crysis plays smoother on console than on PC. Anyways, look in the guides to see how you can play at 1080p and it will run smoother than butter down your mom's cheeks. Viva la revolución, mi amigos/amigas (Long Live The Revolution, My Friends!)

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Only buy and play if you’re a fan of the series and want to see its roots; otherwise, there are better Just Cause games out now and better open-world third-person shooters available from that time period.

This game has aged poorly. I have played Just Cause 2 already and wanted to go back to its roots to see what it evolved from. It’s cool to be able to see that all—they really differentiated this game from just being a GTA knockoff by taking the GTA formula but applying it to a rebel overthrowing a government with CIA help. It’s a great idea, and I’m sure that it was fun in its day. However, while I usually do some of the side quests, collectibles, and mini games in open-world games, I found myself playing straight through the campaign (about 21 total if you count the last one as three parts) without doing anything else because the game felt kind of empty when I wasn’t actively involved in a mission.

The Positives:
-The thing that I love about this series is that you have the ability to summon things—no need to run for 10 minutes to go find something you like when you can just call in a vehicle and have it airdropped. You can also fast travel to the next mission. Those are amazing quality-of-life features that I appreciate. It came in especially handy at any time where you get frustrated in the game because it speeds you up to the next fun thing.

-There is a good diversity of weapons, though I will say that the limited ammunition for anything other than the stock weapons that your enemies have means that you can’t do much with them.

-The vehicles were interesting—I love the realistic nature that there are cars of all different ages and conditions because it’s a third-world country. They also have agency logos on all the military-style equipment they give you, which is amusing.

-The cutscenes looked pretty good for their time. The characters had personality, and the storyline built up from simple disruption to the final overthrow.

-The game does not hold your hand. This is both a pro and a con (which I’ll cover later), but the pro side is that you just grab things and figure them out as you go. I think I was learning the controls all the way until the end of the game because there was always a new weapon, vehicle, piece of equipment, or game mechanic being introduced. I’ll save you some trouble (skip this if you don’t want a hint) and tell you that the difficulty of the final mission jumps up to 11 where the security of the island is insanely strong and yet they drop you with a dinky boat that will get slaughtered if you approach. It takes minutes to go get a helicopter with a machine gun, and you’ll still likely die. I think the game wanted you to hijack one of the helicopters blowing you up around the perimeter. The controls make it difficult, but I finally mastered it and got one with missiles so I could take everything out to get past Part 1 of the final mission.

-Once I got the controls down, the run-and-gun combat wasn’t too bad. They gave you the ability to survive major gunfights as long as you keep moving. That gave the game a sense of constant motion because that’s what you have to be in to not die.

-If you’re interested in cruising through the game just for gaming history, it only took me about 6 hours (in-game timer) to beat by doing almost exclusively missions (I did enough side quests to take over two island areas and gave up after the quests were all the same and I didn’t see a noticeable difference in my progress or abilities after completing them). I like short games, and this doesn’t overstay its welcome—I beat in about 3 evenings of a couple of hours each.


The Negatives:
-This game is very buggy. At one point, I would enter a tank during this one mission, and it started bugging out and launched thousands of feet into the air and in the wrong direction to the next checkpoint. Fortunately, I was so high up that I could just jump out, use my parachute, and cruise for 3-4 minutes to complete it, which is how the strengths of this game make up for the weaknesses sometimes. But you’ll experience bugs throughout that will kill you or thwart your mission progress, from being thrown hundreds of yards to not being able to make your motorbike go forward.

-I couldn’t use a controller for this game because there’s no sensitivity adjustment in the options and so the reticle would just fly around the screen, but keyboard and mouse worked just fine.

-The game was a little vague sometimes with what you had to do. The mini-map helped you know where to go, but then once you were there you had to figure it out. One time, I had to destroy crops but didn’t know how. I ended up using the enemies grenades and vehicles in conjunction with my grenades to destroy them, but it took over a half-hour for that one mission (without deaths). There are canisters that I think you’re supposed to drive over and spread out to get them all—and I think there might be a flame weapon or something somewhere—but I couldn’t get it to do any more damage than a grenade and so I just used that. One mission requires you to blow up an entrance into a building and doesn’t really tell you that (how would you know to do that???), while another one tells you to stop an enemy but you don’t have the vehicle, weapons, etc. to do so. That last one forced me to get creative, which was cool, but most of the time it was a tad annoying.

-There’s not much in the game. They made a huge island with not much in it. It was early days of open-world gaming, and they were going for a huge island to differentiate from GTA et al, but it’s a whole lot of nothing with a few cars, people, etc. between villages, military bases, or rebel stations. The side quests were all “go to military installation, wreak havoc, and raise a flag” in nature or “go get X person or thing and return to the quest-giver” missions. This is what I disliked about Just Cause 2, and it’s even worse here when combined with the fact that there’s not a lot to do (JC2’s graphics and gameplay were so improved that it compensated for this).

-The health system was annoying. The positives were that you had stations you could go to for health, weapons, a vehicle, and saves…but then you’d leave and just about anything would knock out 75% of your health in about 2 minutes: getting hit by a car; your car exploding; you jumping out and falling too far; you getting shot at by someone while you’re supposedly driving innocently; having 5 people come out of nowhere, careen into your vehicle, and shoot you half to death while obstructing your vehicle (if anything is in your way, your vehicle stops dead). Fortunately, the recovered roughly 20% of your health if you got away, and if you keep running around you’ll almost never die by bullets—something has to explode, you have to get stuck or stop, or you have to fall or get hit by a car to die.

Overall, I didn’t care for the game for the most part but did enjoy some parts—especially the part at the end with the jet. I like these kinds of games so managed to make it fun and I’m glad I could just complete the missions to beat it and be done with it in a reasonable time, but I couldn’t go 30 minutes without experiencing at least one or two bugs that messed up my progress. Saving often and learning how to either avoid the bugs or have them work to your advantage will help. If all else fails, just grab a helicopter with missiles and blow everything up (as long as you keep moving and don’t let SAMs or other helicopters get a clean shot at you, you’re invincible).

My recommendation: Play the 21 missions if you like the series to say you played it; otherwise, go play GTA3-era games or Just Cause 2 for better experiences of this genre.