Just Cause 4

Just Cause 4 is a good example how multiple game launchers on PC might lead to half-assed releases. It was one of Epic Games' weekly freebies: finally one that I wanted to check out (to a degree). Just Cause 4 hadn't been well received on Steam so I wasn't expecting much but even having gotten the game for free didn't stop me from feeling disappointed.

Just Crash 4

This first problem that appeared was the game not saving itself or its settings. The reason turned out to be it being unable to write in the Windows users folder due to a non-ASCII character in the file path. I had wondered when that would come back to bite me in the ass -- I'm kind of surprised it took 5 years. I'm not certain if the fault is on Just Cause 4 or the Epic Games launcher, or both: I was able to get around it by starting the launcher as administrator. The game would then save its stuff with a garbled folder name but at least it saved.

For the second issue I never found a solution: the game would at seemingly random times freeze (with sounds still playing) and never recover. Sometimes it happened within few minutes, sometimes I finished a 2-hour play session without the game crashing once. I tried about every possible fix people had suggested (outside different hardware). The freezing doesn't happen to everyone but I did see many complaining about it (and specifically about the Epic version). I have a feeling it might be related to DirectX: I had an old laptop that had multiple different games freeze like that. Neverwinter Nights however stayed stable when launched using OpenGL renderer instead.

I beat Just Cause 4's story and side missions regardless and even started a 100% clear afterwards as the freezes curiously stopped when I had no missions left to play anymore. Then I discovered a location in Cabo Marrón, at a wingsuit stunt where the game would crash to desktop every time. And that is definitely a fault in the Epic Games version of Just Cause 4. I guess there's some corrupted or missing asset that causes a crash when the game's trying to load it. That's where I decided I had had enough. (Apparently people have reported that buying the game's Expansion Pass fixes the crash.)

Low effort sequel

Even disregarding its technical problems, Just Cause 4 is not a good game. It doesn't introduce anything worthwhile to the series and even lacks many elements the previous two installments have. There are no combat upgrades, merely different modes for tethers, balloons, and rocket boosters to play around with. They are also configured in a menu that has unnecessarily complicated design. Even with it having a tutorial it took effort to learn how to use it. What is it with Avalanche Studios and bad user interfaces?

Causing chaos is barely a thing. There are far fewer chaos objects around and you don't destroy them to liberate areas. Instead you command rebel force reserves to take over regions via the game's map like in a strategy game. There's no strategy to it though: it's just how Just Cause 4 gates its content.

Gunplay felt good. It's not clunky like in Just Cause 3: aiming down sights is smooth and each weapon even has a fun secondary fire mode. Cars also control slightly better than in the previous game. You still need to utilize drifting but I had much easier time staying on the road at high speeds. With the improved driving, it's a shame Just Cause 4 has so few races. In fact I think the only ones are in side missions. Wingsuit stunts had also been simplified to ever having only 3 close-by rings for you to pass through. They're not challenging in the least.

This time the series takes the player to an imaginary South American country called Solis. Yet another tyrant needs to be put down. Avalanche listened to the criticism of Just Cause 3 and the map has more diverse biomes. They clearly went back to look how they did things in the second game.

Visually Just Cause 4 is pretty enough. Its antialiasing leaves much to be desired though: FXAA is what it is and TAA tends to make stuff blurry -- it would need a sharpening filter applied afterwards. They improved the game's graphics post-release so water for instance isn't as flat as it used to although it still pales in comparison to Just Cause 3. And waves are not a thing for some weird reason. Like Avalanche had a different engine to work with or something.

This time you can choose how Rico Rodriguez looks from few different options and I of course chose the outfit he had in Just Cause 2. It didn't quite fit with the narrative as at one time Sheldon asks Rico if he remembers how he used to dress like a Mexican Johnny Cash and I was like, what do you mean 'used to'?

I wonder if there's a future for the Just Cause series. Is there any interesting direction they could go with it? If Avalanche asked me, I would advice them to remaster Just Cause 2. Add the wingsuit and challenges for it. Make the collectibles more meaningful: have them not cap and instead make each give a tiny bonus immediately like the paragon points in Diablo III do, and maybe not just to health. They could give bonuses to things like ammo capacity and accuracy as well. Add some mechanic to reduce or stop enemy reinforcement spawning. Add the chaos object highlighting from the third game so that finding the last hiding transformer doesn't take 20 minutes. Maybe throw in some of the gadgets and official co-op/multiplayer. Stuff like that. To me it would be the perfect Just Cause game. I think other people would like it as well.

Take me on (take on me)