Okay, so controls have not been improved. I actually had a better time using the keyboard and mouse to more smoothly aim my weapons and grappling hooks. Movement is still very mushy, but for some things like Rico's "running"--which I feel in JC2 was just him high-stepping and the camera shaking a lot instead of actually speeding up--I made my peace with them playing JC2. I'm very irritated that they have not fixed Rico's jumping over the lip at the top of a building from a grapple point on the wall; he still appears to jump slightly away from the building wall, which is so you can get a better grapple anchor point higher up the wall you're scaling, but when there's no more wall to scale I feel like there should be a different behavior because otherwise you the player have to press the forward key and hope that Rico will reach the lip of the roof before his feet fall below the edge and he slides back down the wall you just spent some time climbing.
The new movement mechanic introduced is a wingsuit, or something resembling a wingsuit, which allows you to fall faster and travel longer distances than at the pace of the parachute alone. I struggled a lot at the beginning because it felt like I was fighting against the game in order to stay aloft for what appeared to be no reason. It wasn't until I disabled the "Vehicle Camera Auto-Alignment" in the Gameplay options that I realized that I prefer to have the camera pointed a little bit below where the developers seem to think "aiming forwards" is. Once I did that it was much easier to maneuver around with the wingsuit and I really enjoyed pulling myself up a mountain with the parachute and then zooming downward and out again with the wingsuit.
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| This is why I say it's something like a wingsuit, typically a wingsuit has webbing between your wrists and ankles. |
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| The environment very much captures the south of Italy on the Mediterranean Sea. |
The graphics update from JC2 and JC3 is quite stunning. I absolutely love how much more Real the environments in Medici look than in Panau in the second game. The story focus works much better for me in JC3 as well: instead of Rico being hired concurrently by three rebel groups and a majority of the story playing out through completing missions for each faction, it's personal because Rico's home country of Medici is what's been taken over and he wants to wrest control from General Di Ravello. The gameplay focuses much more on the systematic liberation of various cities from under Di Ravello's control and it's the systematic methodology that appeals to me the most.
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| You liberate towns and military bases through controlled, yet wanton, destruction |
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| You have anything available to you, even Di Ravello's tanks if you can get ahold of one. |
While I was going to pan this game at the end of my 3 hours, over the weekend I went back to get more screenshots which is when I figured out that I could disable the Vehicle Auto-Aim and both driving and wingsuit flying became much more comfortable and fun. I ended up doing a marathon 6 more hours of playtime and nearly completely liberating the first two smaller islands. Once moving around feels better the game seems to open up much more and has completely changed my opinion. Assaulting military bases are the most difficult things to do in the game so far, with lots of surprise and seemingly cheap deaths, but thinking back on it it kind of makes sense even though it's incredibly frustrating at the time.
I think if you can get it for less than $20 it's definitely worth it. I don't know about the DLC because I don't think I have access to it yet in-game so I would say get the base game when it's a good price for you first and then pick up the DLC in the Just Cause Bundle the next time it's on sale.
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