When Eidos confirmed that Just Cause was coming to Xbox 360, we kind of just shrugged. It looked like a fun enough Xbox game, but before the announcement had even been released to the world at large we’d already assumed this was going to be a bogstandard port. A few months later the developer shows us this next-gen version running and our hat is lying on the floor, chewed to a soggy pulp. In what seems like a short space of time, Avalanche has worked wonders. This looks absolutely stunning.

From the moment you parachute in it’s impossible not to be impressed by the scope of the landscape in front of you. Rolling mountains show off the large draw distance, miles of jungle decorate the ground, rivers sparkle, towns appear in patches, oppressive military buildings rise… all bustling with activity below you as the wind rushes past your hair. San Esperito is huge and, after the obligatory opening sequence involving a car chase, you’re free to go anywhere you like in this world that looks as lush as anything that the frankly embarrassingly linear Far Cry has to offer. And, amazingly, there’s not a single loading screen in sight. In the space of a few minutes you get that same sensation that you felt watching the sun set in Oblivion.

At one point, for sheer curiosity alone, we spent an hour speeding around the map just to see what would happen. The only sign of strain came from the occasional frame drop, usually when we were around cloud height. The scenery also got a touch too familiar after a while (once you’ve seen one tree you’ve seen them all) but during that 60 minutes we were grinning like a South American businessman hearing the word ‘immunity’ for the first time.

Travelling around the island might not sound like a barrel of laughs, but this feature is one of the most enjoyable – thanks purely to the stunt side of the gameplay. When you’re driving any vehicle you can tap the A button to enter Stunt mode. In most cases this means surfing the roof of whatever vehicle you happen to be. From this Stunt mode you can fire guns, jump from vehicle to vehicle or open the parachute which, depending on the speed you’re travelling, will launch you into the air.

While you’re suspended from the parachute you can carry on using your guns or jump back onto any car below you, landing with a thump on the roof with your magnetic boots. Once you get used to the controls (and find the grappling hook, that allows you to parasail on any moving vehicle) you end up ‘stunting’ across the entire island looking like the freaky lovechild of Spider- Man and James Bond. Understandably, the grin doesn’t wear off for a while.

It’s almost impossible to travel normally – the temptation is far too great. You could be sitting on top of a mountain planning a stealthy attack on a cartel base, but there’d still be a voice inside your head telling you to request a motorbike drop so you can launch off the cliff with your hand thrust firmly above your head forming devil horns with your fingers. Mix this effortless stunt ability with the lock-on system and the combat becomes equally entertaining. You can throw grenades through the air as you leap from a moving vehicle, target them and shoot them before either you or the grenade hit the ground. You are the starring role in a James Bond film directed by John Woo and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.

However, this level of cinematic cool also brings its own problems. The whole point of this game is that you’re a government agent sent to incite a local revolution and essentially gain control of the entire area (also known as democratic freedom if you live in America). What this basically boils down to is helping the locals to take over the towns, assassinating political figures, siding with drug cartels to fund miniwars and so on. Problem is, regardless of what you’re doing, you attract attention.

Of course, this is fair enough if you’re storming a base, but you can be driving normally down the road in an unmarked car with no gun on show and the passing police/militia will begin pursuit completely unprovoked. We’re not sure what the point of the meters in the top corner of the screen that mark police and military awareness are though. There really is little reason to pay any attention to these as you’re consistently forced into stunt escapes and acrobatic combat. It’s a good job the auto-locking makes all of this incredibly easy. Unless you’re a complete moron, not a single bullet is going to go to waste in this game. You can stride into the middle of a nasty looking group and keep rattling the triggers with guaranteed success.

Don’t get us wrong – this is still a lot of fun to play – but could have been so much better had there been a feeling of being within a politically unstable environment. As it is, you’re never given time to think or care about the various factions. The basic gameplay structure could have taken a lot of pointers from Mercenaries… a game that forces you to think about what you’re doing and which faction you should side with. The story here might suggest otherwise, but this is very much a shoot first/think later game with no consequences for your actions. In a way – particularly with the stunt options and the auto-lock – this plays like a massive-scale arcade shooter.

Ironically, one feature that is directly comparable to the Pandemic Xbox game is the high level of repetition. This isn’t the kind of game you want to spend more than an hour or so at a time with. If you do you’ll find yourself starting to tire very quickly. It’s all very well having free-roaming sandbox gameplay, but when it comes down to the missions you have to carry out, there is very little on offer in the way of variety. In fact, after a while you’ll find yourself warping between the different headquarters on the island just to get some of the missions out of the way.

It’s the side missions that are most notably cloned – the most glaring example being the minor revolution, which rears its ugly head far too often for our liking. Every single village on the island starts off under the control of the local government – the evil dictatorship you’re trying to topple. Explore the immediate area around any village and you’ll find a freedom fighter just away from the centre surrounded by crates and ammunition. It doesn’t matter what town it is, they’ll look the same and have the same crates stacked up next to them. Go up and talk to him and you’ll begin the revolution in that town, because revolutions are that simple.

In every single town in Just Cause the revolution goes something like this: talk to freedom fighter and follow his comrades into the town. Kill anyone your target reticule locks onto until you reach a roadblock (that wasn’t there before the revolution). Throw a couple of grenades at the roadblock to blow it up, move on and kill more cursor magnets until you reach a second roadblock. Blow that up as well and continue on until you find more militia and a flagpole, touch the flagpole to bring American freedom to the people and save the town. You know how duvets protect you from the monsters in the closet? Flags in this game save the locals from bullets.

This is all great the first couple of times, but after the fourth or fifth town this templated mission starts to get very tiresome. It’s almost as if the developer has spent ages creating this wondrous environment to explore, but has absolutely no idea what to fill it with. The main missions do offer the occasional variety and there is fun to be had there, but even then you start to wonder what the point is to having such a large area.

What Just Cause ends up becoming after a while is a giant playground – somewhere to mess around for a couple of hours performing ridiculously far-fetched stunts and causing as many explosions as possible. Almost like GTA without any of the character. For these short bursts of satisfaction alone this is more than worth getting – however, don’t be surprised when you end up switching off halfway through a mission and start praying that Mercenaries 2 will fill the hole.

Mike Richardson