Just Cause 2 - Blowing Up a Gaming Station Near You

Just Cause 2 is a sequel video game title available for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. (The reviewer played the Xbox release.) You'll be playing as Rico Rodriguez. Your location? The fictional tropical island of Panau. Your mission? To blow stuff up. You will actually get missions and objectives, but basically you progress through the game by creating chaos.

You unlock areas, missions and vehicle and weapons upgrades by earning chaos points. You get access to a black market supplier. You will be targeting government equipment to earn the points. All the government targets are conveniently marked with the star that is the symbol of the Panau government.

You will find weapons throughout the game and they are easy to handle. Your parachute lets you base jump off of high places and float down to the ground safely. You can hijack cars and motorcycles. We quickly found a helicopter and a plane during our test run of the game.

Your character comes equipped with a grappling hook, which turned out to be one of our favorite items. It offers a variety of options during game play. You can use the grappling hook to trip up enemies or tether them to objects. There are explosive canisters in the game that take off like a rocket when you shoot them. If you tether an enemy to them, they are going too. You can also hook them up to a vehicle. The grappling hook is essential for reaching those high up places where you find boxes with guns, ammo and other items. There are even boxes of money lying around. You can climb trees, poles and scale mountains or buildings to explore the rooftops.

The sandbox style of Just Cause 2 allows you freedom to move around where you want, when you want. Your ultimate objective is to overthrow the dictator of the island, but you get to decide how you go about it. There are no "wrong" ways to tackle the destruction.

We recommend this game for anyone who likes a bit of a story line and a large opportunity to kill, shoot and destroy lots of stuff. The contents and subject matter of the game gives this game a mature rating. Blood, drug reference, language, sexual themes and violence make this more of an adult game; though older teens could also play this with parent approval.

Resources
Wikipedia - Just Cause 2

Wikipedia - Sandbox Video Games