I only played the original Just Cause very briefly during a busier stint in my game playing schedule, Did I miss action like this, or is using the statue of the island's president as a wrecking ball something completely new to the series? Either way, I'm in.

Unfortunately not everyone else has caught on to the joys of launching grenades from a hovercraft, so we'll have to settle for Eidos' Just Cause 2. Preorders kick off today, with participating stores offering codes good towards the download of five exclusive items to help Rico do the things that Rico does. Things like parachuting, driving cars, and shooting people. His signature pistol, Bull's Eye assault rifle, Chevalier Classic car, and Chaos parachute should do the trick nicely.

About the only time where Just Cause 2's vehicle physics work against you is when it has the chance to create an even BETTER awesome car crash, such as street vehicles going off road, or anything trying to get a grip on icy surfaces. God, I lose it when that sportscar goes off the sand dune. Just lose it.

The thing is, I want this game to take itself seriously while all this crap is happening. Oh, sure, this would be hilarious if it was all set to a Dukes of Hazzard banjo accompaniment. But, like giggling in study hall, it's even funnier when you beach a cigarette boat, parachute onto the dock and karate kick a bad guy and try to keep a straight face throughout.

Vehicular Stunts Developer Diary [GameTrailers]

This time around Rico hits up the South East Asian island of Panau, where his former boss Tom Sheldon has retired with a whole lot of Agency intel and cash. It's another island; another military regime; and a lot more explosions, and it's coming on March 23rf to North American Xbox 360s, PlayStation 3s, and PCs, with a European release three days later on the 26th.

"Just Cause 2 offers the freedom to explore and tackle the world in any way you choose", said Lee Singleton, General Manager of Square Enix London Studios. "The grapple and the parachute mechanic will change the way you play open-world games, allowing players to be in the air in seconds, tackling missions from above and using the aerial advantage. If you prefer to stay on solid ground, the choices offered by the grapple are limited only by your imagination."

I may come off snarky, but I'm actually looking forward to another round of Just Cause, if only to see if they fixed the things I disliked about there first one. Hey, it happened with Assassin's Creed II, why not Just Cause 2?

Not that there's anything wrong with the sandbox third person shooter/action game label; it certainly does sum up both Just Cause 2 and its 2006 predecessor. But with sequels, you're expecting something more, right? Well, Just Cause 2 delivers – in parachute and grappling hook form.

What Is It?
Just Cause 2 puts players in the shoes of Agency operative Rico Rodriguez who is sent to track down his AWOL friend and mentor, Tom Sheldon on the fictional island of Panau. Along the way, he gets enmeshed in conflicts between three different factions and there are a lot of high places that are just begging to be BASE-jumped off of.

What We Saw
I watched a developer recap the demo shown at E3 where Rico BASE jumps into a speedboat and then goes crazy grappling between points on what looks like a shipping port. Then the dev took me and several other games journalists through the beginning of the Casino Bust mission before handing over the controller so I could try my hand at playing in the sandbox.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is due out sometime in 2010, but it looks pretty enough to seem like the release could be sooner rather than later.

What Needs Improvement?
Wait, What Was I Doing? It's awfully easy to get distracted by the pretty scenery and raw freedom offered up by Just Cause 2. You do get map notifications of where you can go to complete the next objective on whatever question you might be on – and sometimes cell phone updates from non-playable characters who want you to do something. But the map is easy ignore since you have to open a menu to view it properly. Also the cell phone pep talks are jarring enough to be irritating, so you might tune them out. It'd be nice if the game sent your PDA unobtrusive text messages or something.

Where Am I? Panau feels huge. I'm not sure how it stacks up compared to the first game, but the square mileage of the island is supposed to be something like 400 square miles. With all the ground to cover and topography that makes it hard to scan for landmarks, it's easy to get lost. You might not mind it much if you're an intrepid explorer – but if you're one of those gotta-beat-main-story-now types, getting lost while trying to learn the lay of the land is going to be a huge drag.

You Can't Grapple Two Elevators Together: Bummer.

The Malaysian Faction Boss Is Annoying: I might catch heat from both feminists and Malaysian people when I say that I can't stand the Malaysian faction boss lady. But seriously, she's irritating – especially when she's constantly yelling at you during a mission in heavily accented English.

What Should Stay The Same?
I Want To Have The Grapple's Babies: It is so fun to grapple onto things, grapple things together or just grapple yourself to the ground then deploy the parachute while you're being pulled toward said grapple point to launch yourself into the air for what's basically the Spider-Man mode of transportation. The best part of the demo was when the developer grappled a truck that was pursuing him to the underside of a bridge as they passed by. The physics of watching the wire snap taut and the truck flip up and over were hilarious. Also, you can grapple cars and boats to helicopters. Oh, and you can keep your airborne momentum up when you're parachuting by grappling onto distant points on the ground or environment.

I Might Cheat On The Grapple With The Parachute: You can deploy your parachute at any time, pretty much anywhere if you've got even a few feet of air between your feet and the ground. A single button press deploys it and releases it, which is very low-fuss given all the guns you've got to handle. Once you master the pitch (point up, not down and you'll gain altitude!) and the grappling-to-the-ground technique, you might even forget to hijack cars.

We Could Have A Threesome With The Stunt Driving: Car chases are infinitely more fun when you're not actually driving. It's way better instead to let the car's momentum do the work while you straddle the front of the car as cover and shoot at the dudes climbing onto the back of your car, trying to kill you.

Final Thoughts
Just Cause 2 is pretty and violent and expansive – just like sandbox third person shooter/action games ought to be. It's really the grapple combined with the parachute that sets this game apart from, say, Mercenaries 2 or Saints Row 2.

Also, it occurs to me that if the game really went for realism with the parachute/grappling thing, discarded parachutes and wires would be littered all over Panau by the end of the game. Also, Rico would be covered in vomit.

Just Cause 2 'The Grapple' Mini Doc 3 [GameVideos]

This game's packing some attitude, dammit. It doesn't really care that opening a parachute 10 feet from the ground probably wouldn't work in real life. It does in real Just Cause 2. Now excuse me while I step off this building, I have a car to catch. Huh-huh, get it?

These latest screens of Eidos Interactive's free-roaming adventure game are keeping me interested. Head over to the official site if you want to check out the new podcast and a mini documentary about the game's vertical gameplay.

Below, the clip. And below that: a bonus! The game's box art.

It's the same developer demo I sat through behind closed doors at E3. It runs for around 10 minutes, but it's definitely worth watching the whole thing. As for why I thought this was "best in show", well...I value innovation and originality in gaming as much as the next man, but sometimes, I just like to see things explode.

Just Cause, released a few years back now as a GTA clone set on a sparsely-populated tropical island, was one of those games where you went "eh, nice idea, but really needs a sequel to get it right". And from what I've seen of the sequel so far, it's getting things so, so right.

While the game looks great, features a big island and stars a swarthy man (all big pluses for me), it's not the little bullet-point pluses (Open world! Lotsa weapons! Lotsa vehicles! Swarthy man!) that struck me as being important. It was the laws governing that world.

Basically, Just Cause 2 is an open-world title built on an incredible physics engine. One that seems to have been engineered with 80s action movies in mind, because that's mostly what my 30-minute demonstration entailed: me watching some guy act out an endless procession of explosions, comically elaborate kills and ridiculous acts of vehicular manipulation.

There are ragdoll physics. There is an amazing-looking grappling hook mechanic, that must be making the Bionic Commando team weep. If you shoot a jeep's tyres, it doesn't slow down, it does somersaults. If a car explodes and there's people inside it, their bodies are thrown from the wreckage, and you can catch them in mid-air, and tie them to lightpoles.

It's a Rambo sandbox, then. And it's all brought about by that grappling hook, and the physics underpinning it. Like all open-world games, you could just run around, steal cars and shoot people. But that's boring. Instead, you can use your hook to:

- spear enemies and lasso them together
- latch onto a building or vehicle from a great distance and quickly pull yourself over
- grab the underside of a moving helicopter and pull yourself up and into it
- while flying said helicopter, grab a jeep, suspend it in mid-air and use it as a wrecking ball
- tie it to a moving car (say, one that's chasing you), then tie the other end to a bridge you're crossing, instantly yanking it off the road and into the ocean.
- jump out of a moving aircraft and, while falling, harpoon yourself onto another aircraft, take control, then attach it to a building, jump out, watch it explode as it crashes into the building.

And that's just the hook on its own. You get a stunt parachute too, which you can combo with the hook to do...well, you get the idea. There are possibilities.

So, yeah. To say the killing options available are so numerable as to bring a smile to the face is an understatement. The inventiveness on show, and the potentials for hilarious Rube Goldberg-like sequences of destruction seem almost endless.

Course, this will all count for squat (SQUAT) if the mission structure and design aren't up to scratch (we only saw half of one mission, as the demo was mostly sandbox killing). But hey, half the fun of a sandbox game is in how free you are to get creative and go a little nuts, and already Just Cause 2 is looking like it can deliver on that front.

As for why I think it was the best thing I saw all week...well, since E3 isn't the place for deep and meaningful engagements with games, you can only really judge them on which game put the biggest smile on your face after 15-30 minutes with it. And Just Cause 2 put the biggest smile on my face. Simple as that.

The recently acquired Square Enix subsidiary remains mum on the Tomb Raider and Hitman fronts leading up to the show next week, instead singling out three previously-announced action titles as their big games of E3. Of course, big is all relative, especially in the case of the Mini Ninjas. The deadly but well-meaning assassins will be joining the delayed Batman: Arkham Asylum at the Eidos booth, while the return of Rico Rodriguez in Just Cause 2 will be showcased behind closed doors, away from prying eyes.

So what about Thorf (Thi4f) and Deus Ex 3? Barring surprises, both Eidos Montreal projects are more than likely nowhere near a showable state yet.

The game is slated to skydive in next year. Hopefully it won't feel as rushed as the previous title.

The original Just Cause was one of the earlier open-world action games, and if I recall correctly, there was a heavy focus on driving, things exploding, and people flying through the air, both with and without the aid of parachutes. A cursory glance at this latest set of screenshots indicates that Avalanche studios isn't straying all that far from formula for Just Cause 2. You are still Rico Rodriguez; you're still on a tropical island; and you're still overthrowing an evil dictator. The only thing that has changed is that the island is in Asia this time, and Rico has a grappling hook, two facts that shouldn't take away from the driving, exploding, and flying, so it's all good.

Look for Just Cause 2 to be released from whatever Square Enix winds up calling Eidos in the 3rd quarter of 2009.

"We lost the first deal in February but we could survive that one because we had a shortage of staff in other projects and we decided to put together a team to work on a original IP that we had in development. But the team that were working on a project that was terminated last week – there were about 67 people on that team."

Undeterred by such setbacks, Sundberg goes on to state that the trimmed staff has resulted in a stronger focus on their remaining titles, Just Cause 2 for Eidos and The Hunter with Emote Games. They're also in discussions with different publishers regarding a new project, so the layoffs certainly aren't affecting the company's ambition. Good for them.

Avalanche prepares to lay off 77 staff [GamesIndustry.biz]

Preview: Just Cause 2 [CVG]