Every time I boot up Just Cause 3, there are a few minutes of absolute brilliance. An average in-game journey might begin by catapulting via grappling hook into a perfect backflip before soaring into the atmosphere on an indestructible parachute. Properly alternating between grappling hook, parachute, and wingsuit keeps my momentum going. Before I realize it, I've reached my target: a red and silver depot filled with papier-mâché gas tanks and fascists. Just as I un-sling the ironically indiscriminate grenade launcher at my side, the game stalls. I groan because this has happened before, and it will happen over and over before I’m done with the game.Weapons of interactive destruction. Just Cause 3 on the PC is a fireball, digitally and metaphorically. In the third entry in the series, pseudo-protagonist Rico Rodriguez has returned to the land where he was raised. His mission: to indiscriminately lay waste to its state-run infrastructure by means that, while maybe not strictly necessary, are certainly many and varied. The fictional, Mediterranean-feeling island republic of Medici is under the thumb of one General Sebastiano Di Ravello. The man is a psychopath and a dictator, but he happens to be sitting on the world's only supply of Bavarium—the game’s Unobtainium stand-in. That makes him best friends with the West—specifically the CIA, which employs Rico and would love to get easier access to the explosive/limitless energy source/magic space rock. Most of this geopolitical wrapping is torn aside by the time Rodriguez surfs into the country on top of a cargo plane. With a rocket launcher. Before jumping into the ocean. Just Cause 3 matches the frenetic, destructive gameplay tone of Just Cause 2, though the story is a bit sillier this time around. Just Cause 3 isn't totally devoid of pathos, though. There are some surprisingly thoughtful moments here and there—particularly where "The Agency's" exploitation of Medici's rebel natives are concerned. But the plot is so simple, and told at such a broken and breakneck pace, that I rarely had time to care about any of it in between annihilating radar dishes and hitchhiking on the underside of attack helicopters. Credits to IGN
