RODRIGUEZ REMOVALS - YOU DISPATCH IT, WE SMASH IT.
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of the screen to signify
needs to be done. The
pictures can be unclear
and in most cases will
have to be memorised
or you won’t be able to
tell what they are. The
lack of a minimap means
breaking up the action
to check the locations
of objects you still need
to destroy on the main
map, which breaks flow.
A streamlined UI also includes no health bar, so
it’s very difficult to tell exactly how much danger
you're in.
So, what’s new in
terms of gameplay in
Just Cause 3? Well, Rico
is now equipped with a
handy wingsuit, which
has become my favorite
form of transportation in
any videogame. Players can simply reel in
towards one point with
the grappling hook, and
deploy the wingsuit for
an elegant take off. The
animations are spectacular, proving just how
smooth the wingsuit really is - and showing off
the world in the process.
It’s difficult to master, but
the reasoning for that is
actually one of my favorite things about the
new gadget. Much like
the parachute, players
are required to grapple
onto a nearby surface
to pull themselves along
and continue to stay airborne.
"CHAOS ON
A MASSIVE
SCALE IS
SPOT ON"
This isn’t a problem
with the parachute as
it's so slow moving and
generally used at high
altitudes. The trade off
for the extra speed of
the wingsuit is that Rico
must be much closer to
the grappled surface,
and is pulled towards the
surface ever so slightly.
This proves to be tricky
because you have to
navigate Medici while
coming very close to objects along the way.
The game’s optional
challenges really test
your abilities - some
require the wingsuit to
complete precise courses for maximum points.
The more points you
gain, the more gears you
earn. Gears are used to
unlock Gear Mods, a
sort of equippable upgrade. These upgrades
are collected from a
linear skill tree for categories such as wingsuit,
grappling hook, and air
vehicles. The frustrating part of this system
is that to be able to use
a Gear Mod at the end
of the skill tree, not only
do you have to unlock
it, you have to have the
previous Gear Mods activated too. If you have
a fantastic Gear Mod,
but the one before it isn’t
worth the gears, you just
have to deal with it. This
need for tons of gears
wouldn’t be nearly as
bad as we’re making
out if the challenges had
more variety to them.
The wingsuit courses
are very entertaining,
but the same style of
go-through-the-rings repeated for every class of
vehicles is annoying and
a poor use of the game
engine.
The amount of interactivity within the world objects is absolutely insane,
and unlike anything
we’ve seen before. It
might simply be compensation for an essentially
unchanging goal, but
Just Cause 3 has struck
a perfect balance. The
tether mechanic in Just
Cause 2 was entertaining, but severely limited.
Avalanche evidently understood this, because
they overhauled the
tethering mechanics and
turned them into a means
of varying the gameplay massively. Rico can
now obtain up to six active tethers (with Gear
Mods obtained through
challenges), which can
be retracted to cause
devastating chaos. It is
unbelievably enjoyable
to find interesting uses
for the tethers to bring
down a statue rather
than to simply use explo-
sives. My favorite way
to destroy a watchtower
in Just Cause 3 is to attach to tethers extending
diagonally across the
4 support beams of the
tower, retract the tethers,
and witness the tower
collapse on itself. If you
prefer, you can tether a
solider between two tall
structures and fling them
slingshot style into the
sea. The possibilities for
the grappling hook are
truly endless.
The all-new tethering
isn’t quite perfect. In a
Just Cause game, you
fight a lot of enemies. So
many, in fact, that you
are almost constantly
engaged in combat, especially when you are
actively p \