Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I don’t think the initials “DLC” quite fill us with the thrill that they were once intended to. Instead this promise of extra content for our games – something that you’d immediately assume would render us happy – now carries with it that little tone of dread: how will it go wrong this time? But how strong is that feeling? What happens when you combine it with a game that’s receiving so much positive attention? A game like Just Cause 2. We’ve not seen a single thing to dampen our spirits for Avalanche’s hyperbolic action crazyfest, so let’s see if we can get through a trailer for the DLC planned to come free with pre-orders for the game without this changing.

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There’s a lot of games to look forward to this year. Jim’s been writing about some of them today, in fact. (Parts one and two.) Amongst them is Just Cause 2, which has to be up there with Mafia 2 and The Old Republic in peak levels on my crazed antic-o-meter. Every video of the game makes it look like the most awesome fun toy (with that constant caveat: just so long as they don’t let the game get in the way). Their latest video(s) is a cute idea to show off how many different approaches you can take to a mission, with a choose-your-own YouTube adventure. The first part of it is below.

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Below is the first part of our intricate guide for PC gaming in 2010. There’s a horde of muscular-looking titles on the horizon, many of them likely to stop you and demand your money, like ludological bandits. Meanwhile, others that we expected to land, such The Old Republic, have already fled to 2011. Read on as the clouds in our crystal ball roll back…
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Don’t get too frightened by the latest Just Cause 2 trailer. It tries to upset and confuse us by talking about the plot for the first half. Evil despotic ruler, agent gone rogue, take over the world, blah blah blah. But then halfway through everything’s okay again. Shit. Blows. Up. So don’t worry.

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“It’s not realistic. We don’t want it to be realistic.” See, this is why I’m so looking forward to Just Cause 2. Fi-i-i-inally a game that isn’t trying to boast realism. But rather boast lunacy. The latest trailer shows off the vehicular stunts you can do, from tethering cars to statues, destroying sports cars off road, and just nonchalantly included in there, jumping from a private yet to a fullsize airliner. I might explode before this comes out.

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Two new developer diary videos for sandbox vehicular action game (comedy?) Just Cause 2 have landed, and they only serve to hammer home just how absurdly entertaining this game looks. The videos feature skydiving, grappling, and man-shooting, but also explain a bit about what all this ludicrousness is intended to achieve, which is to overthrow the dictators of the fictional island of Panau. Good thing dictators need overthrowing, I say. Go watch it look even more awesome, below.
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As well-read students of gameology will know, and any who’ve asked me for my wisdom will have heard, the two main prongs of good gaming are grappling hooks and double-jumps. Once both those two are in place, you’ve essentially made a perfect game. It’s quite simple. Now, Just Cause 2 doesn’t have double-jumping, but according to this graph I’m imagining it turns out that this factor can be replaced with infinite parachutes, so long as the grappling hook can double as a tether. It’s a complex graph. Evidence for why I’m hopping from one leg to the other in anticipation for this one can be found in my E3 impressions, and indeed in the new trailer, below.

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Videogames were always meant to be ludicrous, and Just Cause 2 captures the spirit of the insane quite perfectly with its absurd hyperbolic action sequences. As if being able to base-jump over a kilometer wasn’t enough, the game’s fundamental mechanisms – a grapple and a parachute – can be used together to create a consistent and instant option for getting vertical. Check it out below.
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Just Cause 2 is taking the whole Tourism In Imaginary Places idea rather unseriously for their GamesCom trailer. The latest glimpse of the open-world third-person absurdi-game is set up as a trailer for the beautiful holiday destination island of Panau, where the game takes place. Frankly, it’s a little throwaway after the game’s spectacular showing at E3, when we wrote loads about it, and then cooed and wooed at the entirely insane developer walkthrough. But still, it confirms Just Cause 2 as one of the most appealing games of the coming year.

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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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There have been two games that have made me laugh out loud at their sheer audacity during this E3, and one of them is Just Cause 2. You may remember that the original game from Avalanche in 2006, as famous for its infinite parachutes as it was for having an entire island to explore as you wished. There were some who found the unrealistic nature of endlessly spawning parachutes to be offputting. Ho boy, they’re not going to like Just Cause 2! Because, cor, it’s even more ludicrous.

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