A really fun physics sandbox, that can be held back by its repetition and quantity of activities. That being said, if you enjoy the gameplay loop and the physics, there's a lot of fun to be had. NameBrand.

While I do ultimately recommend this game for its brilliant physics sandbox and endless destructive fun, I have some context for this review, plus a few pain points, before I move into why I ultimately recommend this game.

The gameplay loop is very identical across your 40 hour journey to the end credits... go to a place, shoot the red explosive things, kill the dudes, raise the flag, end the mission. Doing that will open up little side quests where you interact with various aspects of the game world, be it vehicles, the wingsuit, weapons, etc. These side quests rank your effort from one to six gears per its category, and as you collect gears, you unlock upgrades for those categories. Story missions are unlocked as you complete this loop in greater cycles, saving more settlements, etc, and these story missions might unlock a new weapon or vehicle for you to use as you please.

This is a fun gameplay loop, it certainly worked for me in Just Cause 2... but something about this loop got stale for me in longer play sessions. I would often find myself turning on Just Cause 3 for 30 minutes to an hour, just doing things, and then I would get bored? Because of this... I've been playing this game for, I kid you not, almost 4 years now. Four years from the day I booted the game up, to today, where I saw the credits roll. Some weeks I haven't even played it, some weeks I've played every day for a little bit, but it's been very much here a little, there a little. Which has worked fine for me! I like playing "breather" games in between other games that I'm binging more frequently.

I think I might have been more apt to play this more often and in longer play sessions if the game world was a bit smaller. An odd thing to say right? Just Cause 2, I feel like had a big enough world, yet was still small enough for me to explore because locations never felt too far away, and the different themed areas were just big enough to make it feel not so samey. I also feel like in JC2, the smaller world made me want to experiment with the physics more. While there are more tools to help me experiment with physics in JC3, because objectives are so far away, I always felt the pressure to be constantly on the move in order to make it close to my next objective. Not only is the scale of the map bigger, there's such a huge breadth of content, an almost overwhelming amount even... the mountain of Just Cause 3 that I would have to scale in order to experience everything is just a bit too much.

If you want the end game abilities and tools... you're going to have to grind for them. Six gears on all activities. All settlements liberated. If you want to drive every vehicle in the game, you're going to have to spend the time tracking those vehicles down across the nation, driving each of them to a chop shop, and rinsing and repeating for every new car in the game you want. If you desire all of the weapons on offer, you're going to have to hunt down every single collectable found across the nation, which I can only imagine how many hours that might take. There's such a massive time requirement if you want to experience everything in this game, and I can only imagine how long it takes to see it all... In contrast, with Just Cause 2, you can get everything simply by making it to the end credits (and maybe a bit more).

That doesn't make this a bad game or a bad experience, it just gets tedious in the end game, and I don't feel like a lot of the tedium is necessary especially because the main appeal for this game, is the physics sandbox. Limiting the sandbox behind game completion just feels... odd. I wish everything became available after the credits rolled, but you'd have to hunt down a save file from the community if you don't want to put the work in.

So with my big complaints out of the way...

This is perhaps my favorite open world physics sandbox to mess around in. It's perfectly jank in every way, and the hilarity that comes from the game engine trying to understand what's going on... priceless. I can't tell you how many clips I've saved of vehicles blasting off into outer space because they touched some object "wrong", or enemies randomly zooming across the pavement for no reason at all, and more. It's always surprising and the lack of realism kills me in a bout of laughter every time without fail. That's pretty much why I always come back haha. This is a comedy game and I cannot be convinced otherwise.

The inclusion of the grapple hook that you can detach and attach to things, reeling two or more objects together... chefs kiss. Perfection. Helicopters mean nothing if you tether them to literally any other game entity and reel them together. Amazing stuff. With more upgrades for more tethers and stronger tethers, it also unlocks your creativity. For example, I once spent a nice chunk of time, attaching a boat to my helicopter, because I needed to take the boat to the chop shop on land. Incredible stuff. You can be creative in whatever ways you can imagine with the grapple hook and there's a lot of fun to be had there.

For what its worth, I did find a large majority of the activities to be really fun and relaxing, particularly, the gliding activities, I always made a point to do those because they were really stunning and fun to master. The wingsuit is an amazing addition to the game and gamified traversal in all sorts of excellent ways. It's a major addition that deserves its own bravo.

The vehicles (with good stats) are a blast to drive and have been tweaked to perfection... driving really fast cars to the edge of cliffs, then using the nitro-jump is insane, and seeing how far you can drive down mountains is every bit of fun as it was in JC2, with the added inclusion you can nose dive into wingsuit activation... Even the jets are fun to mess with. Vehicles are top notch here. Just have to drive the right ones...

Weapons feel deadly enough I suppose? The tertiary power weapons always stole the show for me because of how insanely powerful they got later on. Other weapons I didn't really care to experiment with and were kind of forgettable. The OST is also largely forgettable? I think it's serviceable enough, especially in times of solitude, gliding around the island, but there's no tracks that make me want a vinyl or anything.

Oh yeah I did not care for the narrative at all. There's a revolution... bad boy in power... take him out... I skipped over 90% of all the cutscenes. Just didn't really care for the banter. Was in it for the physics playground... and my own creation of physics based comedy. Maybe I would have got more attached to the game if I had payed attention, but eh. I knew what I was getting into, didn't really need any motivations to blow stuff up and wreck havoc.

So, overall, I do think this is a good game, maybe even a great game at times, but if you're not ready for the time sink to get some of the more powerful upgrades to your gear, or the time sink required to roll end credits, then it might not be for you. If you don't like the gameplay loop within the first few hours of play, then it also might not be for you. But, for those of you who enjoy the game loop, and have the time to mess around in the physics sandbox with some of the fun upgrades, well... you'll have a blast playing Just Cause 3. Also I haven't tried it, but apparently the multiplayer is chaos and it's easy to install. So there's that.

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It's one of those weird cases where they've removed a bunch of the little annoyances that there were in the previous games and its made it worse?

Like you don't have to worry about spending too much money because the currency has been simplified to one token that can buy you everything you'd need and is easily restockable. You don't have to worry about swapping out your primary weapon for an explosive one because there's a third slot just for explosive weapons. You don't even have to worry about running out of C4 because you now just get an unlimited number of them.

As a result everything's way more streamlined and sounds more appealing but makes everything into busy work as you just kind of glide over outposts shooting rockets, I barely tried anything else because that works every time and there's no reason not to. Getting the fastest car in the game or the fastest jet isn't as fun as Just Cause 2 because I have an endless amount of them and can just fly about whenever I want. Its more explosive and action filled than Just Cause 2 but because everything's so streamlined for me I don't feel like I'm engaging with a world and so don't feel like experimenting with its systems.

It's the game equivalent of drinking sugar as a child, exciting at first then you just vomit EVERYWHERE