Just Cause 2: A Second Look

I posted earlier that I anticipated Just Cause 2 with equal amounts longing and fear. A demo was recently released on XBox LIVE, and I took a look at it, just as I said I would.

Remember, if you will, that I cited several major and glaring problems with the first Just Cause, just from the demo alone. I'm totally willing to admit that the demo is not the same as the finished product, but the release date for Just Cause 2 is later this month, surely the recently released demo is a good gauge of the final product.

I hope that's not so. The demo had a few minor technical bugs: mainly, that when I pressed the buttons the demo told me to press, nothing happened. I think I stood in the middle of an empty field slamming the "Y" button on my controller because the demo told me doing so would call the Black Market. Now, maybe they didn't include the Black Market in the demo and that's why it wasn't working, which wouldn't surprise me. If it's not included in the demo, though, please don't tell me it is. That's misleading, and aggravating: when I say "stood in the middle of an empty field," I'm talking about both my character's physical position and my own mental state.

I can look past technical errors, but there were a few more fundamental errors that ate at me. First, the demo was timed. I had a half an hour with it, and after that, fuck off and die. Buy it or don't, asshole, but you're not getting something for nothing. What if I can't make my decision in just a half hour? I mean, I did, but what if I had been unable to?

Both Just Cause and its sequel share one fundamental problem, for me. There's no real apparent storyline, or at least not one strong enough to be present in the demo. It has a free-run mission select system reminiscent of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, but the difference is that GTA managed it flawlessly. The amount of sheer and vast expanses of land in Just Cause and Just Cause 2 make the free-run system a chore; I understand that all I have to do is go to Village A for my next mission, but right now it's on the other side of the fucking island and there's a God damned mountain in my way, and there's not a fucking car in sight. Then the game becomes virtual hiking, and guess what? I'd rather actually hike--it's free.

I see the gameplay videos and think about the amount of agency inherent in a system that allows you to steal a car, hop on its roof, fire your weapons, jump to another vehicle, hang on to the bumper, pop that driver in the head, slide into that driver seat, speed up to 80 mph, hop back on the roof and take off on your parachute as the car heads over a cliff. That appeals to me--every sense of me. But it just doesn't deliver in a package that's manageable and playable, and that saddens me.

Save your money, kids. Splinter Cell: Conviction drops April 1st.

Assassin's Creed 2: Revisited

I recently revisited Assassin's Creed 2, and I have to say that it was a welcome change of pace from my recent gaming schedule, and almost like seeing a friend from long ago. I was in love with the game from the trailers, truthfully, and played it straight through to its end in about 5 days after having waited for it with baited breath for months. It has a great many improvements over its predecessor: an interesting storyline that's relevant to the gameplay, a whole host of new killing instruments, and decidedly less linear mission timelines. Assassin's Creed broke a lot of barriers and blew a lot of people away; Assassin's Creed 2 demolished the standard set by its progenitor. Plus Altair's black armor is just motherfucking bad ass.

All of that being said, I'm sort of sad to say that it took purchasable DLC to bring me back to the game. For a modest sum, these game add-ons opened up new missions and memories, and in addition to providing several more hours of play, they reminded me why I had fallen in love with the game in the first place. All-in-all, money well spent, to be truthful. The only real nagging question for me is, why did it take DLC to bring me back to the game? I quite literally jumped at the chance to purchase the DLC so that there would be new missions in the game, but what if--and bear with me here, because it's going to get crazy--what if these games were just built with more replayable features? I know, it really does seem crazy to most of our brains, but what if you just didn't get tired of playing a game? Wouldn't that be crazy? Yes, it would destroy the market for DLC, which I understand is pretty profitable, but wouldn't it also revolutionize the way we look at the old games we keep on our shelves?

For now, DLC does a reasonable job of providing new content for old beloved titles, and I'm reasonably satisfied with it, for the moment. I'm anxiously looking forward to playing through some DLC for Batman: Arkham Asylum, as soon as I get my copy of the title back (ahem!), as a matter of fact. That said, the operative part of these statements is "for the moment." I don't want to live in a world where game developers release half-finished games for full-price, and then tack on a ton of DLC to generate extra revenue. It's dystopian, sure, but what's stopping them? The success of DLC has demonstrated to developers, I believe, that we're willing to shell out more dough for after-market parts. Where does it end?