Top 10 Games of E3 2015

06. Just Cause 3

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The next installment in the Just Cause series, Just Cause 3, was created by game developer Avalanche Studios and is published by Square Enix for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Set for release on 1 December 2015, JC3 is one of the games that was intentionally targeted on the new generation of game play consoles and PC, giving the wizards behind the game all of the freedom available to push that hardware to its limits and create not just an immersive and explosive open-world action-adventure video game with elements of RPG play, but one that presents the player with lots of options for blowing things up and destroying its world!

To totally twist the famous quote from Winston Churchill, Just Cause 3 is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, and not just because first impressions of this direct sequel detail the heart-thumping experience of its protagonist Rico, who is returning to his homeland for the first time during a period in which that nation is fully oppressed by a not-so-benevolent dictatorship in which human life is dirt-cheap.

During the initial briefing and then the demo play on the floor what we discovered was that one of the main focuses for the wizards behind the game was to make the world in it as accessible - and destructible - as possible.

That translates into features like the wing-suit that allows the player to literally fly through the world, jumping from great heights and gliding for what seems like forever. The traditional parachute is present - in case you need to bail out of a military chopper / plane or get the urge to base-jump...

Speaking of that element, there are plenty of vesicles -- over 80 vehicles actually -- in the game, each with its own feel in terms of driving experience. Think a wide selection from motorcycles to tanks on the ground. In the air? Planes to choppers to Attack Helicopters that remind of the Hind. Yeah, that sort of hardware.

That said, the game play for vehicles is more of an arcade feel than a simulation - which is a good thing as that nicely compliments the foot-based play as you wander through the world looking for ever-larger things to blow up that will make increasingly bigger explosions. Think monster LNG tanks, bridges that span large gulfs, entire buildings, radio antennae, and even the odd telecommunications array that just need to fall-down-go-boom!

The basic game play interface is the character of the protagonist, who delivers a realistic game play experience that while it is not, as noted with the vehicles above, a simulation, is in reality something like a fusion of simulation and arcade.

The wizards behind the game went to a lot of effort to see to it that the physics in the world do not end up breaking immersion - an element of game design that has been woefully ignored in the past. This time though, every aspect of game play from parachuting to gliding, running and jumping to blowing things up, it is all within the realms of possibility.

If you were thinking that JC3 was just an excuse to blow things up and shoot enemies, well, yeah, it is that! But it is also a game that is built around a believable story in which there are heroes and villains, and brings the player to a place that they can genuinely feel good about setting off an explosion that triggers a chain-effect that quite literally wipes out the entire port district in the town! They won't be importing military hardware through THAT port anytime soon!

Finesse and small-effect is just as important as the force unleashed by high-explosives. Case in point, the weight of the character alone is sufficient, once the support wires have been cut, to bring down that microwave antennae, while the very essence of natural effects like the sun and tide, winds and weather have a definite impact on the player.

When you deploy that glide-suit taking advantage of thermals that naturally exist at the face of hills and cliffs allow the player to stay in the air far longer than seems possible - but the effects are based on real-world physics!

Aircraft-based weapons include machine guns, cannons, and missiles, as well as bombs, but quite often the plane itself makes for the best weapon when taking out larger ground targets. Just saying, that is what parachutes are for, right?

In the end as we collected our impressions and feelings, taking into consideration the fact that we liked and enjoyed the previous games in the series, the long wait for JC3 seems to be well worth it based on what we have seen. But there is something even more significant at play here, something that makes the perfect closing comment for this one...

During the pre-E3 press briefing from Microsoft, one of the surprise announcements was the fact that Fallout 4 would benefit from the very large PC-based Modder community, with Fallout 4 getting full and unrestricted free access to any PC mods created for the PC version, based on hints from Avalanche's Roland Lesterlin, Just Cause 3 will also benefit from the new mod transfer capabilities of the Xbox One!

So hey mates, get ready to re-learn your grapple and parachute techniques, because in addition to all of the above, the JC3 character interlace now features unlimited grapple and parachute capabilities. Oh yeah, they went there...

Posted: 22nd Jun 2015 by CMBF
Tags: Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, PC,