Well the title says it all...... A few years back I had a blast playing Just Cause 2 and I had nothing but fond memories of it, and I even thought of reinstalling it for one more playtrough while I was impatiently waiting for JC 3. Well with life in the way and a huge PC backlog ( heck, I still plan to finish a couple of DS games ), only last month I managed to acquire it and finish it. Which is a good thing IMO, as the title was kind of broken at launch I've been told. Now, with all the updates and every DLC I finally found the time to play it, and honestly, I really, really liked it. Granted it was confusing at the beginning, before I learned how to clear camps ( which basically involves how to properly read the map and use way-points to full advantage ), and I really struggled with the controls TBH. After trial and errors, I had to settle with a combination of K/Mouse and XboxOne controller ( for wing-suit and some vehicles ). But all in all was a fantastic game. In fact, after I finished it I was longing for even more. At the time of release a lot of gamers vocally bashed this game and said that you were better off re-playing JC2.... So I decided to judge it for myself... Result: I now hate JC2 ! - If you jump from a slightly taller building or close your parachute, you get a very hard to control high speed free-fall that it's almost guaranteed to get you smashed on the floor or some other buildings, in JC3 you just drop down as you naturally would and you can open your wing-suit with a press of a button and actually steer the directions. Or just grapple on to something. - In JC3 when you open your parachute while grappling forward, you gain some momentum and keep going for a while. In JC2 you suddenly stop in mid hair and start to lose altitude. - Worst offender, while a lot of people were complaining about the lack of a mini map in JC3, I found the one included in JC2 mostly useless. There are no object indicators, not in the mini-map, not in the world map. Clearing a camp 100% involves collecting EVERY item and destroy EVERY military object. In JC3 such elements are highlighted on the map, the more you destroy/collect them, the more they become visible ( I didn't realize it a t first, but that's how it works ). In JC2 you have to look and wonder around like a crazy, with the only help of some collectibles getting highlighted as you come close to them or a little vicinity beacon on the mini-map. Good luck if you are missing a tiny generator on the back or underneath some building, it might take you 40 minutes to haunt them down if you can find them at all ! So yeah, for a game of that size, tediously wasting your time trying to collect everything ( i know it's not mandatory, but I can't stand to see my camps at 86% - 98% and not being able to finish them ). I also tried modding the game, but besides an external map viewer capable of reading your save files, there's nothing out there helping you with that. Granted JC2 seems to have more landscape variation, but that doesn't mean anything if it's not fun to go around. I had to give up, uninstalled it and deleted the installation files from my system. JC2 is gone for ever. Honestly, I'd rather play JC3 again........
That's the sad truth about games, once they age. Newer industry traits or just better gameplay mechanics in general can really wreck older titles. JC2 felt very stiff to me, and I've yet to play JC3.
