When does a two-year-old game become relevant again? When an awesome mod is built for it. Just Cause 2 was released in March of 2010, but has been gaining the attention of the modding community just this past weekend when a multiplayer mod was re-introduced for beta testing. The team at JC2-MP created a way to play the insane, action-packed game with a friend.
If you’ve never played Just Cause 2, just imagine Grand Theft Auto plus James Bond multiplied by The A-Team. Cars, motorcycles, helicopters and all types of military or commercial aircraft are yours for the taking, and destroying, in one of the largest and most beautiful open worlds. As if that’s not enough, enjoy a physics defying grapple hook and parachute to get wherever you need to go quickly.
While the single player is lacking in a good story and the voice acting is purposefully bad, this is absolutely one of the most fun open-world games to this day. And since it is over two years old, it’s cheap. Soon you will be able to share in the fun with your friends; or you can just steal their tank and run them over with it. That kind of fun alone will make the game endlessly re-playable.
The mod released hundreds (the server supported tons of people at once) of armed Nicos onto an empty Panau, occupied by only vehicles and aircraft. An open playground that can turn killing fifteen minutes into hours of fun. Since it is such an early build, it came with some bugs and frustrations. I couldn’t find a single ammo/gun spawn to replenish the weapon you are spawned with, so dying was the only way to rearm. Since the grappling mechanic still existed in multiplayer, other people could grapple onto your vehicle and simply kick you out. Of couse you are more than welcome to instantly return the favor, causing a teeter-totter of who drives until it slams into a wall, exploding in the process. Frustrating, but fun. Something that I was pleasantly suprised by was the lack of lag. Even with hundreds of people running/driving/flying around, the latency stayed low.
Unfortunately, the servers were only up for a weekend to beta test and collect crash reports from as many users as possible. Once some bugs are worked out there will be another public test run which will be announced by the developers “everywhere,” meaning watch their Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Steam page for big announcements, because you don’t want to miss this. Find a friend, reinstall on Steam, and anxiously wait to have a blast.