Just Cause 4

Overall I'm happy with it. I got it for a nice GMG VIP discount.

If you liked 3 you will like this. If you weren't interested in the series and/or didn't care for previous entries I can't see anything here that would draw people in. It is what it is at this point.

It's a fun cruncher on the side to play in between more "serious games" like a Hitman, an Assassins Creed, and things of that nature for me.

I did see some of those inconsistent texture issues. I'm wondering if a patch plus updated driver would help that because there are other aspects of the game that look really nice. We'll see.
 
Q-BZ said:
Overall I'm happy with it. I got it for a nice GMG VIP discount.

If you liked 3 you will like this. If you weren't interested in the series and/or didn't care for previous entries I can't see anything here that would draw people in. It is what it is at this point.

It's a fun cruncher on the side to play in between more "serious games" like a Hitman, an Assassins Creed, and things of that nature for me.

I did see some of those inconsistent texture issues. I'm wondering if a patch plus updated driver would help that because there are other aspects of the game that look really nice. We'll see.
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I liked 3 and this one has serious problems dude. They completely removed my favorite feature - blowing shit up in settlements. Now it’s fly through 3 rings or drive through a ring.

This game has serious issues right now beyond the graphics. It’s a big open space with nothing to do once you do the single mission to unlock each zone.

It still boggles the mind they would remove the key core gameplay loop of the series.
 
Mchart said:
I liked 3 and this one has serious problems dude. They completely removed my favorite feature - blowing shit up in settlements. Now it’s fly through 3 rings or drive through a ring.

This game has serious issues right now beyond the graphics. It’s a big open space with nothing to do once you do the single mission to unlock each zone.

It still boggles the mind they would remove the key core gameplay loop of the series.
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Yup, I'm early enough into this I'm just starting to see some of that now. Not sure what went into some of the decisions here.
 
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The janky af menu and control setup is limiting my play tine, but are you guys saying clearing installations is pointless?
 
Sodapopjones said:
The janky af menu and control setup is limiting my play tine, but are you guys saying clearing installations is pointless?
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.. There’s nothing to even clear. Besides flying through Superman 64 rings.

The saddest thing of this game is that a lot of the settlements look pretty cool but there is absolutely nothing to do. You literally do a single mission for the entire region and that’s it besides the Superman 64 rings.

I got fine with the graphics, but this just blows ass. It actually makes me sad, they seriously ruined this game series.
 
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Mchart said:
.. There’s nothing to even clear. Besides flying through Superman 64 rings.

The saddest thing of this game is that a lot of the settlements look pretty cool but there is absolutely nothing to do. You literally do a single mission for the entire region and that’s it besides the Superman 64 rings.

I got fine with the graphics, but this just blows ass. It actually makes me sad, they seriously ruined this game series.
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Well I blew up an installation got some "Squads" and unlocked portions of regions, unless you're saying that is not necessary? In JC2/3 you could play the missions and skip blowing shit up all you wanted as well.
 
Sodapopjones said:
Well I blew up an installation got some "Squads" and unlocked portions of regions, unless you're saying that is not necessary? In JC2/3 you could play the missions and skip blowing shit up all you wanted as well.
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And once you get the squads that’s it. Further, the installations that do exist have no where near the stuff to blow up and again the settlements have nothing.
 
My opinion is tracking downwards having spent some more time with this... definitely some perplexing changes here.
 
Q-BZ said:
My opinion is tracking downwards having spent some more time with this... definitely some perplexing changes here.
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100% agreed man.

My experience with this game was this -

- Holy shit, what the fuck are these graphics.
- OK, well the game still looks great in some areas and it runs good, whatever i'll just enjoy it
- Having some fun with the first few missions
- Quickly begin to realize as i've already gone around 1/4 of the game map that there is NOTHING TO DO once you capture a region besides superman 64 rings
- The fuck is this game.

No amount of patches will fix this game. Between the removal of the liberation stuff, the general lack of things to do, the terrible AI that presents almost no challenge outside of missions, and finally the graphics.. I'd refund this piece of shit if I could. JC3 is just such a superior game to this crap.

This game to me feels like it needed another year of development. They spent all their money developing a new engine and adding in a bunch of novel technical features but invested no time on the actual gameplay loop. The release date neared, and they quick sprinkled in some Superman 64 ring challenges around the map and called it a day.

At the end of the day i'm more sad than I am mad that they managed to fuck up such an easy game formula. This game would have been fucking great if all it was was just Just Cause 3 on a new map with the weather features and new tether features. That's it. That's all they had to do. Instead they just completely fucked it up.
 
Mchart said:
I liked 3 and this one has serious problems dude. They completely removed my favorite feature - blowing shit up in settlements. Now it’s fly through 3 rings or drive through a ring.

This game has serious issues right now beyond the graphics. It’s a big open space with nothing to do once you do the single mission to unlock each zone.

It still boggles the mind they would remove the key core gameplay loop of the series.
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What do you mean blowing stuff up? They took it out?
 
Hagrid said:
What do you mean blowing stuff up? They took it out?
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So there are tiny little outposts sprinkled around the map that have the red destructible objects, and only a few larger military bases with a lot to destroy.

That being said, it's FAR less than JC3 that had shit everywhere you could blow up. Additionally the game doesn't track what you blow up. It just adds to a lazy 'chaos meter' and all the objects respawn if you go away. This 'chaos meter' every time it fills up gives you a 'squad'. These 'squads' are nothing more than a number tracked on your map that you then use to 'conquer/liberate' a region. Liberating the region has no gameplay attached. If you have the correct number of free 'squads' you just click on the region and it's liberated. That's the gameplay loop. There is nothing more. It is literally that poorly developed and provides little incentive for the player to keep playing the game as the narrative missions are so shitty that you just don't give a shit.

Oh, and the the single mission you need to do to initially unlock a region is almost always an escort mission. The worst possible type of mission when you are dealing with poor AI. Think GTA 3 style shit escort missions where you are constantly fighting the poor AI/controls.

Finally, the most damning removal was the removal of ANY destructible objects in the settlements/cities. There is NOTHING. The settlements are 100% just static objects placed down that frankly serve no purpose. You don't liberate them. You don't really fight in them unless a mission takes you there, and the enemy AI is so shit that you can't even get fights going where you fuck with enemies. They always just loose track of you eventually.
 
Mchart said:
So there are tiny little outposts sprinkled around the map that have the red destructible objects, and only a few larger military bases with a lot to destroy.

That being said, it's FAR less than JC3 that had shit everywhere you could blow up. Additionally the game doesn't track what you blow up. It just adds to a lazy 'chaos meter' and all the objects respawn if you go away.

Finally, the most damning removal was the removal of ANY destructible objects in the settlements/cities. There is NOTHING. The settlements are 100% just static objects placed down that frankly serve no purpose. You don't liberate them. You don't really fight in them unless a mission takes you there, and the enemy AI is so shit that you can't even get fights going where you fuck with enemies. They always just loose track of you eventually.
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Well dam, blowing the crap out of places was a big part of the fun for me. I loved 2 with the special generals you had to kill. Maybe I will wait until it's on sale for 10 or something...
 
Hagrid said:
Well dam, blowing the crap out of places was a big part of the fun for me. I loved 2 with the special generals you had to kill. Maybe I will wait until it's on sale for 10 or something...
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In it's current state it's not even worth $10 unless you just want a tech demo of a tornado.

The worst part is that right now people think folks are leaving negative reviews because of the graphics issues - But there are far deeper problems than the graphics issues - Problems that will never be fixed unless they 'patch in' JC3 style liberation and generally substantially increase the amount of desctructable objects around the map.

My guess - They ran out of time to actually put shit around the map to destroy like in JC2/JC3 and just quick added in the stupid per region mission and called it a day.

Oh, did I mention the laughably bad FMV's? I'm used to console ports with FMV's that look worse than in game graphics, but haha oh man. It's bad here. When people say the game looks like a PS2 game they are referring to these FMV's. Why in fucks name would you bother doing FMV's that look worse than the low settings in the game? You ran out of the time, thats why.
 
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I get what you're saying now, I was blowing shit up wondering why the region percentage was still 0% on my UI.

When the opening loaded, I thought I fucked up and loaded the original Dues Ex, I was ready for the UNATCO theme, sadly it was JC4, that's how bad cutscenes are lol.
 
Mchart said:
At the end of the day i'm more sad than I am mad that they managed to fuck up such an easy game formula. This game would have been fucking great if all it was was just Just Cause 3 on a new map with the weather features and new tether features. That's it. That's all they had to do. Instead they just completely fucked it up.
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Tracking with you by and large. This with a few refinements and things of that nature would have been more than enough for me.

I'm thinking this is the last one.
 
Mchart said:
100% agreed man.

My experience with this game was this -

- Holy shit, what the fuck are these graphics.
- OK, well the game still looks great in some areas and it runs good, whatever i'll just enjoy it
- Having some fun with the first few missions
- Quickly begin to realize as i've already gone around 1/4 of the game map that there is NOTHING TO DO once you capture a region besides superman 64 rings
- The fuck is this game.

No amount of patches will fix this game. Between the removal of the liberation stuff, the general lack of things to do, the terrible AI that presents almost no challenge outside of missions, and finally the graphics.. I'd refund this piece of shit if I could. JC3 is just such a superior game to this crap.

This game to me feels like it needed another year of development. They spent all their money developing a new engine and adding in a bunch of novel technical features but invested no time on the actual gameplay loop. The release date neared, and they quick sprinkled in some Superman 64 ring challenges around the map and called it a day.

At the end of the day i'm more sad than I am mad that they managed to fuck up such an easy game formula. This game would have been fucking great if all it was was just Just Cause 3 on a new map with the weather features and new tether features. That's it. That's all they had to do. Instead they just completely fucked it up.
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And Square Enix is wondering why they're bleeding cash.
 
Armenius said:
And Square Enix is wondering why they're bleeding cash.
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My gut feeling is they knew how bad this release was going to be but pushed for it anyways because of how bad they are doing. They need the sales, and any push of the timelines would have pissed off investors. Ultimately though this is going to hurt them way more in the long run. They've effectively killed a successful game series.
 
Mchart said:
So there are tiny little outposts sprinkled around the map that have the red destructible objects, and only a few larger military bases with a lot to destroy.

That being said, it's FAR less than JC3 that had shit everywhere you could blow up. Additionally the game doesn't track what you blow up. It just adds to a lazy 'chaos meter' and all the objects respawn if you go away. This 'chaos meter' every time it fills up gives you a 'squad'. These 'squads' are nothing more than a number tracked on your map that you then use to 'conquer/liberate' a region. Liberating the region has no gameplay attached. If you have the correct number of free 'squads' you just click on the region and it's liberated. That's the gameplay loop. There is nothing more. It is literally that poorly developed and provides little incentive for the player to keep playing the game as the narrative missions are so shitty that you just don't give a shit.

Oh, and the the single mission you need to do to initially unlock a region is almost always an escort mission. The worst possible type of mission when you are dealing with poor AI. Think GTA 3 style shit escort missions where you are constantly fighting the poor AI/controls.

Finally, the most damning removal was the removal of ANY destructible objects in the settlements/cities. There is NOTHING. The settlements are 100% just static objects placed down that frankly serve no purpose. You don't liberate them. You don't really fight in them unless a mission takes you there, and the enemy AI is so shit that you can't even get fights going where you fuck with enemies. They always just loose track of you eventually.
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That sounds pretty bad. I was hoping for more massive complexes to blow up, like the shuttle launch in JC2 or the massive oil refinery island. JC3 also had some interesting areas to liberate and drive/fly through.

I'll give it a go myself eventually but I hope this doesn't end up being as bad as you say. This has been a bad year for sequels. Shadow of Tomb Raider, Far Cry 5, Assassin's Creed Origins (technically last year) have been pretty big let downs. Especially the first two.
 
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Wow, that... really sucks. I enjoyed JC3 for doing the variety of capture types and challenges, tearing down billboards, statues, disabling alarm boxes, and so forth, then finally clearing out all the military shit. Seems like a huge step back
 
Flogger23m said:
That sounds pretty bad. I was hoping for more massive complexes to blow up, like the shuttle launch in JC2 or the massive oil refinery island. JC3 also had some interesting areas to liberate and drive/fly through.

I'll give it a go myself eventually but I hope this doesn't end up being as bad as you say. This has been a bad year for sequels. Shadow of Tomb Raider, Far Cry 5, Assassin's Creed Origins (technically last year) have been pretty big let downs. Especially the first two.
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I actually liked FC5, if you thought that was bad stay away from JC4, shit is jankier than Elex... like Piranha Bytes looks triple A compared to this. Gonna get my 15 hours out of this and maybe install Saints Row 4 for Xmas.
 
The worst part is when you look around the game map and realize there is nothing to do. At least Elex is filled to the brim with broken quests. It at least has that going for it. Outside of the main missions and the single per region capture mission there is just nothing to do in Just Cause 4. I literally just passed through two massive regions and the only two missions outside of the capture mission were (Are you ready for this?) pass through a ring in a car at 130km. Seriously, the fuck? Not to mention going through these areas there was maybe one tiny little military outpost with shit to blow to up - Not that it would matter, because it blowing it up doesn't mean anything.

I wasn't expecting a bunch of quality side quests like Witcher 3 or AC Odyssey out of Just Cause 4. I just wanted a game that let me blow shit up.. And it can't even do that. You know a developer gave up on a game when they have to load it up with Superman 64 ring quests. Even then i'm pretty sure if all I wanted to do was fly through rings i'd rather go play Pilotwings on my super nintendo.
 
I just re-installed Just Cause 3 to re-play through it some to see if I was giving Just Cause 4 too hard of a time.

I wasn't. Night and day difference even if I don't consider the graphics.
 
Just looked at a few of the negative comments on steam. Totally not what I've seen from youtube videos about bad graphics or crashes. Most videos are showing a "meh" response.

This is just gonna sit in my wishlist until later... Just finished up Just Cause 2 about a week or so ago and now playing through Sleeping Dogs with the Rico costume. Then had plans to get some Just cause 3 gameplay on sometime after.
 
RogueTrip said:
Just looked at a few of the negative comments on steam. Totally not what I've seen from youtube videos about bad graphics or crashes. Most videos are showing a "meh" response.

This is just gonna sit in my wishlist until later... Just finished up Just Cause 2 about a week or so ago and now playing through Sleeping Dogs with the Rico costume. Then had plans to get some Just cause 3 gameplay on sometime after.
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Every video that i've seen was pretty much a total scam job. There are a few, but Square is actively making sure most formal reviews/videos you see are basically selling a lie.

Things that Just Cause 3 has that JC4 doesn't

- Garages/ability to bring vehicles to get chopped
- Grenades/explosives/etc
- An enemy 'star' system with varying levels of AI response. JC4 only is on/off with heat and because you never actually liberate any towns it doesn't matter anyways.
- The general narrative and cutscenes are far better. All cutscenes minus a few are rendered in game and look great.
- Mechanics of the game are well described, there are no questions as to how certain things function
- Again, liberating towns.. This is a huge one along with many locations with tons of desctructable objects that need.. blowing up.

JC4 is a huge step back for the series.
 
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Mchart said:
Every video that i've seen was pretty much a total scam job. There are a few, but Square is actively making sure most formal reviews/videos you see are basically selling a lie.

Things that Just Cause 3 has that JC4 doesn't

- Garages/ability to bring vehicles to get chopped
- Grenades/explosives/etc
- An enemy 'star' system with varying levels of AI response. JC4 only is on/off with heat and because you never actually liberate any towns it doesn't matter anyways.
- The general narrative and cutscenes are far better. All cutscenes minus a few are rendered in game and look great.
- Mechanics of the game are well described, there are no questions as to how certain things function
- Again, liberating towns.. This is a huge one along with many locations with tons of desctructable objects that need.. blowing up.

JC4 is a huge step back for the series.
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Yeah, wish I could refund this shit, I loved JC because you could just pop in blow shit up and not use your brain and you were progressing in the game, JC4 is Janky Crap no one asked for, is clunky AF and not really any fun.

Elex is a fucking masterpiece compared to this, and that was Janky AF.
 
Sodapopjones said:
Yeah, wish I could refund this shit, I loved JC because you could just pop in blow shit up and not use your brain and you were progressing in the game, JC4 is Janky Crap no one asked for, is clunky AF and not really any fun.

Elex is a fucking masterpiece compared to this, and that was Janky AF.
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LOL comparing ELEX to this game
 
Armenius said:
And Square Enix is wondering why they're bleeding cash.
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They really are screwing up their titles. This is the third series now? Deus Ex? Tomb Raider? Now this that has some very perplexing decisions.
 
Comixbooks said:
LOL comparing ELEX to this game
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At least the cutscenes and menus weren't programmed by Forrest Gump, this is a contentless lazy fucking port. They didn't even bother to map PC specifics, it's like they just smashed the keyboard and were like "yep Cleetus this here is how you do it".
Q-BZ said:
They really are screwing up their titles. This is the third series now? Deus Ex? Tomb Raider? Now this that has some very perplexing decisions.
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With the exception of the characters, wingsuit and grappling hook, its not even the same game anymore.
 
Like I said, this game is just a tech demo. They obviously didn't have enough development time and couldn't actually put actual game stuff into the game and just rushed it out the door. The worst part is that i'm playing through Just Cause 3 right now and even the simple things in JC3 like the challenges are so much better. The wingsuit challenge in JC3 for instance was far more complex per location and was somewhat entertaining. Here in JC4 it's literally always fly through 3 rings. Same goes with the racing. There is no racing JC4. You literally just need to drive through a single ring.
 
Sodapopjones said:
At least the cutscenes and menus weren't programmed by Forrest Gump, this is a contentless lazy fucking port. They didn't even bother to map PC specifics, it's like they just smashed the keyboard and were like "yep Cleetus this here is how you do it".


With the exception of the characters, wingsuit and grappling hook, its not even the same game anymore.
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I am seeing that regretfully. I'm getting ready to put the game "on the shelf."


For all its jankiness and typical Pirhana Bytes issues... I'm going to sign off on Elex as well. If you know what PB does, how they work, and what to do, and what they're about... yes, it's got more going for it in terms of actual substance believe it or not. I enjoyed it more, lumps and all.


I am SO glad IO got away from Square Enix for the sake of the Hitman series. I know WB has its issues, too, but that game is just friggin' phenomenal.
 
What sucks is that Hitman 2 is a solid frickin' game but it's getting poor sales. Meanwhile Just Cause 4 is a giant piece of under developed shit and likely already has more sales.
 
Disappointing AF.

Really appreciate the honest criticism from you guys, and for taking one for the team so that the rest of us can save our bucks for a better game. Guess I'll dig into JC3 instead and forget that Nothing-To-Do-Here-Superman-64-Tornado-Tech-Demo exists. :p

I hate it when this happens to a good series.
 
Yeah - I'm having great fun replaying through JC3. It's been a few years and I have a system that can run it now with max settings @ 4k and it looks and runs great.

Anyone I see saying JC4 is even 'average/ok' obviously haven't played the prior games. The lack of content and poor design is just so stunning when you go back and play the prior games.
 
Damn, I should have looked for this thread before buying JC4. I downloaded it, last night, but haven't tried it, yet. Really don't feel like it, now. :(

Guess I could try to get a refund from Steam.
 
Get a refund if you can. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about this game. Even when they fix the graphics in a month there is still little to no actual gameplay/content to enjoy. Once you finish the 15 hours or so of cookie cutter GTA 3 (Or worse) quality missions there is nothing to do in the game. *I'll caveat that with the fact that there are the puzzle missions that are actually the only good missions in the game, but there aren't many of them - Only a couple of hours at most of content that is actually enjoyable.

If you haven't played JC2 or JC3 they are absolutely worth the money and worth playing though. If you haven't played JC3 in particular it's basically a better version of this game minus the tornado's and balloon tethers.
 
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