Just Cause 4

As sequels go, this one feels uninspired, satisfied to let the success of its predecessors do all the heavy lifting. While Just Cause 4 provides players with a brand-new island country full of natural and human-made wonders to discover, the action in this world is very familiar. Players use whatever Rico can lay his hands on, from gunboat and jets to turrets and rocket launchers -- even his grappling gun can be put to creative use -- to kill everyone and destroy everything in sight. To be fair, objectives go beyond simple destruction -- like moving between consoles to flip switches before a timer expires, or driving bomb-rigged vehicles into the ocean to safely disarm them -- but the result's usually the same: lots of dead bad guys, exploded infrastructure, and a chipper, miraculously unharmed Rico strolling out of the fire and smoke. Even the handful of new concepts -- like the island's manufactured weather, which can zap helicopters out of the sky with a single lightning burst -- feel like they've been stapled onto the same formula used for past games in the series rather than leveraged to create something new.

Retreading of old ideas aside, there's still an undeniable satisfaction in all the devastation. Few other games give players the sort of destructive firepower at Rico's disposal. Almost nothing's held back. From the very start, players can level entire enemy facilities using whatever they find. And Rico's nonsensical robustness is a nice change of pace from grittier games, where a single bullet is all it takes to send you back to a distant save point. The designers clearly want nothing to get in the way of players creating a laughable amount of chaos, and they deserve some credit for sticking to their principles throughout. Still, Just Cause 4 feels more like a great big expansion to Just Cause 3 rather than its own game. Older players looking for over-the-top action will have some fun, but this is a game better purchased at a discount rather than at full price.