More Just Cause 2 Lunacy

By Jim Rossignol on June 9th, 2009 at 8:46 am.


It’s amusing how calm Just Cause 2‘s lead developer is as he narrates the most ludicrous sequence of events I’ve ever seen in this footage. The trailer was insane, but this is just silly. If I have to die, I want this dude to choreograph it.




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  1. 09/06/2009 at 09:00 Matzerath says:

    So his superpowers are ground level parachute deploying and horizontal grappling hook?

  2. 09/06/2009 at 09:05 Lack_26 says:

    Is it just me me or does rico look like Guy of Gisborn, from Robin Hood.

    Also, how is standing on the car getting in? Oh yeah, this looks ludicrously fun.

    Edit: I wish this game came out when I was 10, it would have been even cooler.

  3. 09/06/2009 at 09:08 Gap Gen says:

    Shoots a guy vertically into the air. “OK, I think he’s dead.”

    But yeah, that is some Spiderman shit.

  4. 09/06/2009 at 09:09 Adrian says:

    I’m sold! This looks incredible! just Cause 1 was one of the most fun games i ever played but this looks even better! Love how you can climb in front of the car for cover! People might argue that the grappling hook stuff is unrealistic but it was what really made the first game fun and it looks like they even improved it! Cant wait for this one

  5. 09/06/2009 at 09:11 MD says:

    Haha, I love that when he offers to ‘drive you to his crib’ your character accepts by standing on the roof of the car. Naturally.

    It’s in third person, and it looks rather ‘consoley’, so JC2 isn’t an obvious candidate for my wishlist. But it looks wonderful! No grittiness or sadism, just joyfully ridiculous violence in a beatiful and vaguely cartoony world. The movement looks brilliant, and if the controls are done well and the physics feel right (by ‘right’ I don’t mean realistic, just fluid and fun) then simply moving around the world will be a blast.

    Lately I haven’t had many reasons to curse my outdated rig, but this is one of them.

  6. 09/06/2009 at 09:16 negativedge says:

    Yes

    These guys seemed to have just sat around and came up with as long a list of Things That Would Fucking Rock In A Video Game as possible. Some of the mechanics are probably going to turn out a little wonky, but I don’t care.

  7. 09/06/2009 at 09:21 Gap Gen says:

    He says “it can be difficult to get the right timing” with grenades and then does it perfectly from 100m away between speeding vehicles.

  8. 09/06/2009 at 09:25 Langos says:

    Please tell me he’s on god mode??

  9. 09/06/2009 at 09:28 Ian says:

    So many things I should complain about but…

    WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

  10. 09/06/2009 at 09:30 Cypher3au says:

    Must…buy…this…game.

  11. 09/06/2009 at 09:30 Pemptus says:

    I just hope that MISSION VARIETY is in the developer’s mission statement. Right before the grappling hook lunacy.

  12. 09/06/2009 at 09:50 The Fanciest of Pants says:

    Absolutely fucking bonkers. Looks like a goddamn blast to play.

  13. 09/06/2009 at 09:52 Ashurbanipal says:

    “My favourite trick is tying a truck to a helicopter and use it as a wrecking ball.”

    That man, he knows what fun is.

  14. Premium User Badge

    09/06/2009 at 09:54 MonkeyMonster says:

    Pure Chuckle Juice in a can!

  15. 09/06/2009 at 10:26 Christian says:

    Nice..this game really seems to be becoming a must-buy :)

    Except: Do I smell the stench of Quick Time Events? I hate those things. Hate them!

    When he jumps on to the other car near the end of the video and climbs into the driver’s side: a box is displayed with the word ‘Struggle’ and three buttons. Looks like good old button-mashing to take over vehicles. I hope they remove this..this really is a deal-breaker (for me that is).

    Developers, when will you learn: QTE are not a good replacement for your lack of imagination regarding challenges! Don’t they teach that in schools any more?

  16. 09/06/2009 at 10:28 Andrew Dunn says:

    The vehicle chase looked immensely fun.

  17. 09/06/2009 at 10:29 Muzman says:

    Looks hilarious!
    The guards seem to have been to the same bootcamp that did the stormtroopers from StarWars and I’d love to see what would really happen if you fired a rocket launcher while dangling from a parachute. But that’s not really the point is it.

  18. 09/06/2009 at 10:37 Dood says:

    This is what makes video games great. How could this game be not great?

  19. 09/06/2009 at 10:48 Kits says:

    That looks absolutely mad…not had as much interest in games lately as I’d like, but seeing that fired up my desire to play. Can hardly wait.

  20. 09/06/2009 at 10:52 idmmao says:

    Yeah, quicktime events every bloody time you wanted to steal a vehicle were a pretty big chunk of what was wrong with mercenaries 2. It really broke the flow of combat and it felt like you were taking an exam every time you wanted to get in a vehicle. Games don’t have to have a challenge every second to be fun, sometimes it’s fun just to be able to get into a helicopter when you want to. That was something the original just cause excelled at, and I’m not sure why they’re taking a step backwards here.

  21. 09/06/2009 at 10:56 Tom says:

    Looks like what I was kinda expecting Crysis to be like.
    Looks freak’n awesome! lol.

  22. 09/06/2009 at 11:13 Schmung says:

    This makes Mercs 2 look positively po-faced. Looks like a great laugh and very polished. Count me in.

  23. 09/06/2009 at 11:21 DarthInsinuate says:

    Bah, you don’t need to hijack cars, just tether the driver to the nearest tree and watch him fly away.

  24. 09/06/2009 at 11:49 Rei Onryou says:

    This game is just full of win. I hope it can actually deliver. It also makes me wish that they’ll be a mode where you can only use your grapple, tether and ‘chute to complete the game. Because it seems completely plausible.

  25. 09/06/2009 at 11:50 Christian says:

    idmmao:
    Exactly, that took a lot of the fun out of Merc. 2 for me as well. Also, the animations got boring after a while..it was nice that they had three tank-napping-animations, but still…

    DarthInsinuate:
    If that works every time without QTE, that might be nice (although not quite as nice as just taking the car/plane(copter). But what if there are no trees around? You’ll only very seldom find trees near a flying helicopter..

    I think GTA (and also Saint’s Row 2) had a nice concept here. You throw them out, but if you’re not careful, they just take the vehicle back from you and run you over.
    Also, QTE just fell like they belong on a console, not the pc..it just isn’t “natural” and feels wrong.

    Have I mentioned that I don’t like quicktime-events? :D

  26. 09/06/2009 at 11:53 Gilly says:

    Must….HAVE!

  27. 09/06/2009 at 11:59 Little Green Man says:

    He wasn’t in God mode: you could see his health going down when he was shot. He was pretty bad in that firefight – He came close to death at one point. Health was one of the crap bits in Just Cause – You could freefall into the sea from 2km up and not lose a single bit of health, but a little old granny in her car could almost instakill you if she ran you over and stopped.

  28. 09/06/2009 at 12:06 Spenot says:

    There’s a distinct lack of using sharks as baseball bats. And we need sharks to grapple enemies to them.

  29. 09/06/2009 at 12:07 Tomo says:

    That looks absolutely immense. It’ll live or die by how good the controls are though.

  30. 09/06/2009 at 12:14 Reverend Speed says:

    Looks a bit unrealistic to me.

  31. 09/06/2009 at 12:22 MetalCircus says:

    I enjoyed Just Cause 1 but my big problem with it was the tedious repetitiveness of the missions. They’ve done a lot of fun work to the grapple hook which does look awesome, and the graphics look fab, but I really hope they get some variety in the missions too!

    Still, looks great!

  32. 09/06/2009 at 12:37 Walter says:

    “If I have to die”

    I was under the impression we all had to at some point.

  33. 09/06/2009 at 13:15 OMET says:

    @Muzman
    Apart from being a trifle risky, not much would happen (besides the ensuing explosion), as there is no recoil from an RPG.

  34. 09/06/2009 at 13:31 Gap Gen says:

    Reverend Speed: Well, yeah, there are some inaccuracies (for example, if you look closely at the uniforms the guards are wearing, then they’re not the sort of uniforms you’d see in that kind of region. Oh, and the sound of the boat’s engine is sampled from a completely different series of boats).

    But if that’s the way it is, then you need this.

  35. 09/06/2009 at 13:53 jackflash says:

    Too bad I don’t like third person games, this looks pretty neat.

  36. 09/06/2009 at 13:57 Skalpadda says:

    If the whole game can keep that momentum going it should be amazing fun. Are the devs Swedish? The accent seemed familiar :)

  37. 09/06/2009 at 13:59 Dominic White says:

    If you can watch that video, and come away ‘Umm’ing and ‘Hmm’ing and maybe even grumbling instead of grinning like an idiot, then you either have no soul, or your inner child is dead.

    It’s like watching some kind of demented hybrid of Spider-Man and The Punisher on a tropical rampage, and there’s no part of it that doesn’t look ridiculously fun.

  38. 09/06/2009 at 14:09 Bongo says:

    Skalpadda yes. IDG made a feature on them a while ago.

  39. 09/06/2009 at 14:27 Skalpadda says:

    Thanks Bongo. Ah, it’s nice to be right. I should really try to read a bit more about what’s going on in this country :)

  40. 09/06/2009 at 14:27 Jim Rossignol says:

    The devs are Swedish, yes.

  41. 09/06/2009 at 15:01 Lucky Main Street says:

    That driving portion looks very Pursuit Force influenced.

  42. 09/06/2009 at 15:37 Sartoris says:

    Looks awesome in a dumb fun way, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I just wish explosions had more oomph. I liked the explosions in GTA4, for instance.

  43. 09/06/2009 at 15:46 Noc says:

    You know, the QTE didn’t bother me. I tried to figure out why, and then realized that it was because the action didn’t happen on screen.

    It wasn’t “Oh hey here’s this awesome thing we’re not going to let you actually do!” Instead, it was very much a “Guy disappears inside the car, you hear a bunch of thumping noises, and some other guy falls out” thing. It’s very slapstick and not something that you’d have manual control over anyways.

    It’s a bit telling that your alternative, Christian, is to have it be automatic. Which is still, you know, cutscene power. The problem with QTEs is that they’re prescripted and take control away from the character and give you a half-assed illusion of control instead; but this isn’t something you’d be in control of anyways. And it’s not even something you can see.

    And it’s kind of funny.

  44. 09/06/2009 at 15:51 Pie21 says:

    Regarding one’s suspension of disbelief at the physical inaccuracies observed in that video, this would perhaps be the perfect example of the Rule Of Cool.

    Could this be the finest parachute-em-up ever made?

  45. 09/06/2009 at 16:00 cullnean says:

    seems to me that the first one criminaly undersold

  46. 09/06/2009 at 16:01 Pags says:

    I’m surprised he didn’t make the logical step of just double hooking the jeeps chasing him onto the trees. Also, the dev’s accent is brilliant.

  47. 09/06/2009 at 16:04 Ryan says:

    OH MY OD IT’S THE CABLE FROM ROCKET JOCKEY

    (please tell me someone else remembers Rocket Jockey)

  48. 09/06/2009 at 16:42 Pie21 says:

    @Pags: I don’t know if it’s what you meant, but that just made me think of tethering two jeeps together just as they were about to drive down either side of an obstacle, e.g. a tree, or maybe a slow truck you just overtook.

    Or better, a single enemy soldier. Or even better yet, multiple enemy soldiers. I get the feeling this game is going to follow the HL2 tradition of making the use of bullets to kill people feel wrong.

  49. 09/06/2009 at 16:42 Starky says:

    re: Quick time events.

    Yes they sucked in Mercs 2, badly – but this doesn’t seem as bad, I loathe quick time events as much as anyone, and mercs 2 especially with those random symbols instead of buttons on the PC version that looked nothing at all like the action they were supposed to be, hacked me off.

    Still the ones in that vid didn’t seem like quick time events (press a button that flashes on screen or fail), but rather a quick time code, press 4 buttons in an overall time limit.

    Which is fine.

    Pressing 4 buttons in 8 seconds (Say S, Shift, W, then E) is MUCH easier and less frustrating than pressing 1 button per 2 seconds.
    It gives you time to read the combo, glance at the controller/keyboard and then enter them.

    On the issue of the Parachute

    Why didn’t they just give him some kind of high tech glider (ala batman) rather than a chute, it would have made a LOT more sense than some magical backpack of infinite silk, which vanishes on release.

  50. 09/06/2009 at 16:49 Elyscape says:

    @Ryan: I THOUGHT THE SAME THING