Parents' Guide to

Just Cause 4

By Chad Sapieha, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 18+

Over-the-top shooter has mindless violence, no consequences.

Just Cause 4 Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this game.

Community Reviews

age 10+

Based on 21 parent reviews

age 2+

PLEASE DONT BE A STRICT PARENT

No blood no gore no swears and no violence to high of a rating conmen sense media. And please don’t be a strict parent just let your kids play what they wanna play and if they start to change then you can take it away but please don’t be a strict parent.

This title has:

Educational value
Great messages
Great role models
Easy to play/use
2 people found this helpful.
age 13+

Great Game, Appropriate for Young Teens

This game is very well made, and has no gore and little blood. Despite the rating, throughout the game you will only hear 4 or 5 curses. I believe that at the age of 13, kids should try to make hearing curse words the norm. I know I have heard my fair share of profanity, and I would like my son Jeremy to at least be a little prepared for what he is going to hear fairly frequently his entire life. I think that the blood isn't a problem because there is no gore, and hopefully Jeremy will only see blood, not gore in his life. And on top of that, it's just a good game. Please take this review in to account if you are considering letting your kid get this game, or if you are just getting it for yourself. Have a good day!

This title has:

Great messages
Easy to play/use

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (21):
Kids say (52):

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.

Game Details

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