Culture

You resent the presence of a story from the opening picosecond of Just Cause 2. It's the bland characters and the plot about some dictator who's all bad and such that are responsible initially for this reaction. But a few seconds later, the screen will literally go completely pitch black to load another little cutscene. Don't do that. Seriously. You created such a great sense of momentum between the motion blur and the rumbling controller and the way the Hispanic protagonist whose name I can't remember's hair moving as we dived from that helicopter. There was absolutely no need to show him latching onto the dead guy and taking the code thing. That could have occurred seamlessly from the third person point of view we were already in. He could have clumsily bumped into him. That would have been absolutely peachy. Anything's better than a several second load time.

Released in early 2010, Just Cause 2 isn't much of a cult game. Or a classic. But when it succeeds, it's utterly spectacular because it responds to the player’s experimentation. You have unlimited parachutes, and paired with unlimited arm-mounted ludicrously overpowered grappling hook capabilities, that's the greatest gift one might ever receive. Want to tie a hot air balloon to a truck and drive through town destroying power poles and police officers with the swollen canopy? Just go ahead. Tie that motorbike to that jet and swing from the belly of a plane like an off-road ET.
 
Actually, in retrospect, don't do either of those things simply because I suggested them. A few seconds on Youtube will show that you'll probably be able to accomplish your own goal in one way or another. Just Cause 2 is not a classic. As I said, the structured parts of the game are quite bad. But as the proverbial sandbox that allows you to build wonderfully intricate castles of silica crystals? It's a real achievement.