Just Cause

Just Cause from 2006 by Swedish studio Avalanche Studios introduced action gaming to agent Rico Rodriguez, who on the fictional Caribbean island of San Esperito, working for the CIA, tries to overthrow the local dictatorial regime while also investigating missing shipments of weapons of mass destruction. The game bet on a giant open world spanning over a thousand square kilometers, at the time one of the largest in the entire genre, through which players could move freely on foot, in hundreds of vehicle types, on motorboats, and in small planes and helicopters. The iconic element became the parachute combined with a grappling hook, which allowed for spectacular transfers between moving vehicles at full speed and all kinds of crazy stunts for which the series later became famous.

Gameplay was built around gradual destabilization – destroying government statues, bridges, radars, and military infrastructure served to weaken the government's power and liberate individual provinces from its influence, allowing the player to work step by step toward the final confrontation with the dictator. The graphics engine managed to render vast tropical environments with sufficient vegetation density and detail for its time, though the technical execution had its limits, and the game occasionally struggled with emptiness in the open world, repetitive villages, and somewhat wooden artificial intelligence for both enemies and allies from the resistance factions.

Critics praised especially the freedom of movement and the fun physics of movement with the hook and parachute, less so the shallow story, flat characters, and the aforementioned enemy AI. Just Cause thus remained more a game for experimenting with the sandbox and physical stunts than for thoughtful storytelling, but it was precisely this approach that foreshadowed the direction later taken by the significantly more successful and technically more advanced sequels of the series, starting with Just Cause 2.

Why play it: For players craving experimentation with the sandbox, hook, and parachute instead of a thoughtful story, it's a fun physics toy that foreshadowed the direction of the far more successful sequels.