Before I begin, let me start by saying that YES, I know this has been out for awhile. I've been too busy playing it too actually review it, so here goes.
JC2 is one of those games that you might look at and not think much of from the cover, but it is amazing. A cross between Grand Theft Auto, Mercenaries and Spider-Man. That sounds cool, and it is. It's very much like GTA and Mercenaries in that you play as a character running around in an open world doing whatever the hell you want (unlike in Mercs, you don't get penalized for killing civvies). You play as Rico Rodreguiez, an agent for the creativly named US organization called "The Agency" (my hunch is C.I.A., but there is no hints to that). The game takes place on the fictional South East Asian island nation of Panau. A place where, despite the tropical local, the climate is wide and varied, from a large desert to the South-West to the snow capped mountains and the tropical savanna in most of the map.
The map itself is huge. Massive even. about 5-6 times as large as GTA: San Andreas + Mercenaries 2 maps. With 369 villiages, millitary bases/airports/communication outposts/ports and a few smaller cities beside the main capital city which, in itself, is massive. (I'm about about 71% and I've been playing for about 76 hours. Yes, that large.) Vehicles of all types are readily available for use. From motorbikes and small, 3-wheeled taxis, to sedans, sports cars, hummvees, tanks, helicopters, planes (both millitary and civillian), as well as both millitary and civillian boats. Really, the only type of vehicle that the game should've had added was submarines. But oh well, maybe in JC3.
The wrist mounted grapple and redeployable stunt parachute are the real gems of this game, they make it amazingly unique. The grapple can be used for simple tasks, like pulling Rico towards vehicles or complicated tasks like wiring two vehicles together. Either way, it makes the game amazingly fun. The parachute allows Rico to base jump from very high up and land safely no matter what.
When Edios Interactive, Square Enix and Avalanche Studios made this game they took the physics book and tossed it out the window. Rico can pull stunts that would kill a real human (or even some game characters), but isn't affected much at all. For example, you can fall hundreds of meters to the ground, pull your parachute at about 5 meters and be perfectly fine, just stumble a bit. It makes for some reallllllllly fun game play.
The enemy AI is fairly interesting, they aren't too stupid, but tend to favour running and gunning with overwhelming firepower to tactics. The downside is that it actually works. They call in Helicopters outfitted with miniguns and rocket launchers when needed to deliver a powerful punch and handheld weapons are also fairly powerful, the Machine Gun being one of the more powerful ones.
Speaking of weapons, the game features quite a few different ones, or so it seems, they quickly seem to be a bit repetitive, but seem is the operative word thar. However, they could've put in a bit more variety of guns, but the ones they did are fairly good. Scattered around the map are weapon and vehicle upgrade crates, which can be used to, what else, upgrade weapons and vehicles that you can buy from the black market contact. Each weapon has 6 levels up upgrade. One it starts with and 5 more to upgrade with. The other side of the upgrade system is that the enemies ALSO get the upgraded weapons, so it makes it a bit harder.
The real area where the game flounders is in the characters voice acting. Just so bad, and not one of those so-bad-it's-actually-funny things, it's more like so-bad-it-makes-you-cringe. The accents are off key and just terrible.
Final thoughts.
Excellent game. Well put together and thought out. An excellent job in most areas. A few that could use improvements (aiming and voice acting). 9.6/10
On a side note, this game is best played with rock music in the background, like AC/DC or something. makes it that much more fun.
