Just Cause

Just Cause from 2006 took players to the fictional island of San Esperito, where CIA agent Rico Rodriguez sides with rebels against a military junta. The game was defined by the combination of a massive open world and total freedom of movement — a parachute let players glide over mountains, a grapple hook let them latch onto a passing car or an enemy, and players could switch seamlessly between land, water, and air, and between dozens of available vehicles, without any loading. In 2006, right at the dawn of the new console generation, it was one of the most ambitious sandboxes in terms of the sheer size of its playable world.

The Xbox 360 version launched alongside the PC edition as the technically most advanced take on the game, but unlike the PC, without any need to worry about system requirements or graphics settings — you just had to pop the disc into the console. Compared to the simultaneously released PlayStation 2 and original Xbox versions, it offered sharper textures, longer draw distance, denser vegetation, and steadier framerates even when many vehicles, buildings, and characters appeared on screen at once. The island of San Esperito thus felt more populated on the new console generation and got lost less often in the fog covering distant terrain, a common and necessary compromise on the older platforms due to their limited power. Loading times between missions and after character death were shorter too.

The gameplay content, story, and the island's scope stayed the same across versions — Xbox 360 didn't add exclusive missions or extra content, it just let the game's technical ambitions shine fully. The controls remained identical to the older consoles, and the game didn't use any extra features of the new hardware, as if the improvements were purely visual and about smoothness rather than new functionality. For players with a new console, in 2006 this was the most comfortable and smoothest way to experience the open world that would later become the foundation for the even bigger Just Cause 2.

Why play it: For players with a new console, in 2006 this was the smoothest way to experience the open world that the far more ambitious Just Cause 2 would expand on a few years later.