Just Cause 2

Just Cause 2
Developer(s)	Avalanche Studios Eidos Interactive
Publisher(s)	Square Enix
Engine	Avalanche Engine 2.0
Aspect Ratio	4:3 16:9 16:10 21:9
Resolutions	640x480 - 720x480 720x576 - 800x600 1024x768 - 1152x864 1176x664 - 1280x720 1280x768 - 1280x800 1280x960 - 1280x1024 1360x768 - 1366x768 1440x900 - 1600x900 1600x1024 - 1680x1050 1768x992 - 1920x1080 3840x2160
Platforms	Microsoft Windows (Vista or later) PlayStation 3 Xbox 360 Xbox One (backwards compatibility)
Release Date(s)	NA March 23, 2010 EU March 26, 2010
Genre(s)	Action Third-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single-player Multiplayer (PC only)
Ratings	BBFC: 15 OFLC: 15+ PEGI: 18 ESRB: M CERO: D
Media	Blu-ray Disc DVD Steam download Digital download (Microsoft/Sony)
Languages	English French German Polish Russian Spanish Japanese

Just Cause 2 is the second game in the Just Cause game series.

Info summary

Just Cause 2 is an action-packed adventure game with one of the largest game maps ever. All gameplay is in an open world/sandbox and even most missions can be done in various creative ways.

Originally set to be released in 2008, it was pushed back multiple times until it was released on March 23, 2010, in the United States, and March 26, 2010, in Europe. It could be bought in an original or limited edition which came with Rico's Signature Gun, Bulls Eye Assault Rifle, Chevalier Classic, Agency Hovercraft, Chaos Parachute, and a double-sided Panauan Intel Map and Poster. All these items (other than the map) can be obtained as downloadable content.

There is also a free demonstration version of the game available for download. This is the sequel to Just Cause, released in 2006. A sequel, Just Cause 3, was released in 2015.

Gameplay

Just Cause 2 is an open-world game filled with all kinds of missions. There are 49 missions in the game and plenty of racing challenges. With the exclusion of the first two Agency missions, the entire main storyline is optional, alongside every faction mission and challenge. Returning from the first installation of the series, Rico Rodriguez is back on a new mission on the island nation of Panau, located in the Malay Archipelago. Rico, working for the Agency, has to infiltrate various factions and cause chaos around Panau to unseat the dictator Pandak "Baby" Panay.

The grappling hook can now be deployed with a button (right bumper for Xbox/PlayStation controllers, F key on PC,) rather than from the inventory. The grappler can be attached to any solid surface -to include vehicles and people, and can also be used to tether objects together. Additionally, the player has a parachute which is capable of being instantly deployed anywhere whenever the player has gained enough momentum. When airborne, the player can grapple onto the ground or structures to pull themselves along.

The game runs on a heavily modified Avalanche Engine 2.0. The vehicle physics have also been completely re-worked and handling is dependent on the surface differently depending on the situation. There is also the ability to upgrade vehicles, a feature absent from the previous game. There are 104 vehicles for the player to use in Just Cause 2, including a flyable passenger jet and various military aircraft. There is also the new Black Market system replacing the heavy drop from the first game, allowing the player to instantly purchase weapons and special Agency vehicles. (See also: Category: Just Cause 2 vehicles.)

There are 14 equipable weapons Rico can use. 10 of them are small arms, ranging from a police shotgun, a sawed off shotgun, a carbine, an assault rifle, a sniper rifle, and a belt-fed light machine gun. There are also light weapons Rico can use, such as the rocket launchers and the Air Propulsion Gun. The weapon inventory has 4 slots for small arms. Two of the slots are designated for pistols, submachine guns, and sawed off shotguns. (Additionally, they can be dual wielded.) There is 1 slot for a primary weapon, and another slow for both explosives. This allows the player to carry a selection of weapons at any given time. The grapple hook and parachute are both always equipped and are separate from the weapons. Furthermore, the grapple hook can be used as a melee weapon in times of need. (See also: Category: Just Cause 2 weapons.)

Plot summary

Agents Maria Kane and Rico Rodriguez arrive at Panau to find Tom Sheldon, who had mysteriously disappeared with lots of money from the Agency. While on their way to their destination, anti-aircraft flak cannons start firing at the agents in their helicopter, resulting in five memory cards getting scattered. Fortunately, the memory cards land at Kem Gunung Dataran Tinggi, a military base on a mountain. After obtaining the memory cards and getting back into the helicopter, Maria Kane, Rico's co-agent, lands the helicopter near the house of an informant for the Agency, Karl Blaine. During their visit, Rico and Kane meet Jade Tan, Blaine's girlfriend. Jade tells the agents where Karl is held up in and proceeds to take Rico to the Panau Falls Casino and rescue Blaine. Upon arriving, Rico eliminated the occupying Panau Military at the casino and reached the overpass tunnel of the casino, where Karl was firing at government troops. After Rico identifies himself with a brief conversation about Tom Sheldon, Panauan troops threw grenades where the agents were at, resulting in Rico jumping out of the overpass tunnel with Karl Blaine. Upon reaching the ground, Rico dislodges Karl Blaine's vehicle, and a long car chase with the Panauan Military commences. After a long chase Blaine stops at his house, Blaine takes Rico's PDA and downloads information about the three factions on Panau. Unbeknownst to Rico, Blaine also secretly placed a tracking bug on the PDA for the Panauan Military to follow.

After downloading the information about the factions onto his PDA, Rico completes the first stronghold takeover mission for one of the three factions. After this first stronghold takeover, Rico can do more faction missions and stronghold takeovers or pursue more chaotic activities. After Rico has caused enough chaos, the Sloth Demon, alongside any faction leader, will inform Rico of their information regarding The White Tiger. This results in the third Agency mission where Rico must talk to an informant who knows Ken Pang in Bandar Lengkok Sungai. Rico is then directed to the old Lengkok Sungai Gambler's Den, where Ken Pang is scheduled to be executed. After saving Ken Pang from the Gambler's Den Gambling Group, he leads Rico to a wrecked ship across the Lautan Lama Desert where Rico locates a dead drop. After finding it and eliminating a colonel, a Panau Military UH-10 Chippewa arrives and attempts to kill Rico. Rico hijacks the helicopter or shoots it down (player's choice) and proceeds to arrive at the location where the White Tiger is hiding. As he arrives, he is tranquilized and eventually finds himself hanging upside down before being freed by Sheldon at the Rajang Temple. Tom revealed that he was the Black Market dealer and the Sloth Demon (Sloth Demon is an anagram to Tom Sheldon.) After their reunification, the Panau Military suddenly attacks the two agents, forcing them to fight their way through them. After the fighting, Rico (more-so Sheldon) then discovers that Karl Blaine bugged his PDA with the earlier information. Tom Sheldon tells Rico to keep causing chaos, then hops on a truck and leaves the site.

After time passed with enough chaos caused, Tom informs Rico that Jade went missing and that they have to find her. Jade Tan is now with Baby Panay in his mountain fortress, the massive Kastelo Singa military base. Rico goes to the base and is tasked with causing as much chaos as possible, including destroying four vent stations. After fighting through throngs of highly trained soldiers and destroying the four vent stations, Jade Tan is swiftly taken away from the base via several MV vehicles, including two MV Command vehicles and an MV V880 operated by ninjas. Rico must jump from the base to catch up with Jade. Once he reaches her, Rico and Jade get aboard an Agency H-62 Quapaw. Jade Tan then briefs the team about three agents sent by China, Russia, and Japan to survey the country for an untold opportunity.

After arriving at the Three Kings Hotel, Rico is tasked with killing the three agents by going between each tower via helicopter piloted by Sheldon. The first agent, a Chinese general who works more like a sleeper agent, likes explosives. The second, an ex-KGB Russian mobster, has a unique armored personnel carrier. The third is an ex-Japanese Military general who has a satellite missile system (not in space). Even after killing all three of the agents, Rico still cannot determine why these three superpowers are flocking over Panau.

After the shootout at the Three King Hotel, Rico and his other agents are determined to find and kill Baby Panay with help with one of the three factions. Rico with the faction of his choosing storms the Wajah Ramah Fortress with several members, causing chaos along the way. After an immense amount of fighting and chaos, including the destruction of three anti-aircraft cannons, Rico finds Pandak Panay. After Rico eliminates the personnel, Pandak reveals himself, and Rico finally finds out why the superpowers are interested in Panau: Panauan Oil. Rico is about to move on Panay, but then Karl Blaine surprises Panay from behind with a fragmentation grenade, and commits a murder-suicide, seemingly bringing Pandak Panay down with him. Rico fights his way through numerous Panauan Secret Servicemen to open the dome entrance and then escapes just as the dome self-destruct sequence completes, blowing up the dome.

After a short time, Rico flies from the Selatan Archipelago to a small Agency outpost. He is tasked with defending the Selatan oil and gas field. As he flies out to it in his Sivirkin 15 Havoc, a giant nuclear submarine rises from the field. Rico infiltrates the submarine to find Pandak still alive and his ninjas. Pandak Panay reveals his endgame: fire nuclear missiles at China, Japan, Russia, and America. Rico taunts Pandak about how he wouldn't let that happen, then fights and defeats Panay. As Pandak tries fleeing, Rico confronts him. Pandak activates his nuclear missiles as a last resort, but then his blazer is snagged on the Japanese missile, sending him up. Rico then grapples his way onto the Russian missile with his final objective to not only kill Panay for good but disarm the missiles. Rico disarms all the missiles going to Japan, Russia, and China, then slams Panay into the nuclear missile heading for the United States. After Rico jumps off the missile, it explodes into the Panauan oil field, seemingly rendering it unusable.

After a long day's work, Rico reunites with agents Tom, Maria, and Jade. While Jade was telling Rico that the Agency won't be happy about the oil gone, Rico aggravatingly disapproved of putting oil over lives and was annoyed with the ethics regarding the oil. However, all agents toasted over a few drinks and the story ends.

Significant plot details end here.

Locations

Main articles: Category: Just Cause 2 Locations and Panau.

Throughout Panau there are large urban centers, military bases, villages, Offshore Rigs, and harbors. They dot the entire country, ranging from mountain towns to desert oases. Most towns are connected by road, but a few can only be reached by plane, boat, or trail. The island's affluence differs from region to region. Some areas are more wealthy than others and some struggle to scrape by, especially in rural farming settlements.

The largest city and capital is Panau City. There are other large cities and settlements sparsely scattered around Panau. There are settlements that are so small or abandoned, they are not recognized on the Panauan map. Additionally, there are numerous Ular temples littered across Panau that can be explored, although they are not "discoverable locations."

Downloadable and extra content

All platforms have downloadable content. The PC version also has a Benchmark feature and a Multiplayer.

The Just Cause 2: Music To Blow S**t Up By (game soundtrack), produced by Mat Lundgren, has also been released separately.

Patch and glitches

Main article: Just Cause 2 Bugs and glitches Just Cause 2 has over 100 relatively rare and relatively minor glitches (see Just Cause 2 Bugs and glitches). Note that not all versions of the game (PC, PS3, and Xbox 360) have the same glitches. A patch was released to fix some of those.

All versions of the game will either download it automatically or prompt an update when connected to the internet.

• PC: It is automatically downloaded by Steam.
• PS3: Came in the form of a "system update" when you open the game.
• Xbox 360: Initiates a prompt to update when you start the game while connected to the internet (i.e. Xbox Live).

What the patch fixes

• Sets uploaded YouTube videos as "public" by default.
• Fixes issues that would stop people and vehicles from spawning.
• Changes enemy artificial intelligence so they don't fire on the player during the Hijacking quick time event.
• Fixes the Vanderbildt LeisureLiner's spawning glitch. It used to be nonexistent, but even after the patch, the vehicle is still super rare.
• Adds "numerous stability improvements".
• Also related to video capture on the PS3 is a bug, where the game would stop suddenly after an extended play session and tell you the system had reached its limit on recording time. You would be prompted to discard the recording (or save it) and then your game and controller settings would all be set to zero: no volume, all hud options at lowest settings, controller options all pushed to lowest sensitivity, and so on. Players would have to go into each settings area — video, audio, and controls and push "Set to Defaults" to restore them and then invert the Y-axis the way one likes it before continuing to play. Many players found this very annoying and with this patch, while that pop-up message occurred, the settings aren’t lost.

Sales

Christofer Sundberg, the Founder and Chief Creative Officer at Avalanche Studios, revealed via Twitter that by 2013, Just Cause 2 had sold approximately six million units and has about five hundred thousand active monthly players.

Reception

As the story goes, Avalanche did not initially have any plans for a sequel game. They had been outsourced to develop some game for some other company, but somehow they lost the contract (or the game was cancelled), so they quickly needed to have something to do. At this point, they looked through their list of previously made original games that they owned the rights for and discovered Just Cause had actually done pretty well. The rest is history.

Compared to the first and future games, Just Cause 2 has been the most popular Just Cause title for several years. This is because Just Cause 2 was among one of the first "open-world sandbox" games popularized through the internet.

The game's depth of field, graphics, action sequences, grappler, and more contributed to this popularity. Despite this, the chaos system initially was somewhat confusing to new players and the storyline received some limited criticism over being somewhat repetitive. Just Cause 2 Multiplayer was very active until 2024.

On 2024.04.19, gamereactor.se chose JC2 as their number 5 of the top 10 best ever Swedish video games.

Trivia

• In theory, it is possible to complete the game with only a one-handed weapon, as Rico is only required to have one one-handed weapon during Welcome to Panau. This is only possible in theory because this makes a few missions like Into the Den and A Just Cause extremely difficult to a point of near impossibility.
• While it is possible one might think that Just Cause 3 was the first patched game in the series, this game was actually the first one, as the Vanderbildt LeisureLiner as an extremely rare vehicle used to not spawn at all. That was later fixed in a patch that while added it into the game, can still only rarely be found in the Berawan Besar Mountains, or Lautan Lama Desert.
• While every game in the series obviously has its differences, this is the only game that has a difficulty setting. In this case, the difficulty is set between Casual, Normal, Experienced, and Hardcore at the beginning. Casual is the easiest and it descends to hardcore as the hardest. This is also the only game where the Black Hand did not appear, although they were aware of the events of this game.
• An April Fools Day joke from a fake Square Enix account claimed the game was announced for Nintendo Switch on April 1st, 2022. "We are happy to announce a Just Cause 2 rerelease for #NintendoSwitch for the game's 10th year anniversary! Explode your way through Panau anywhere you go and for the first time ever, invite all your friends to play in multiplayer!" Links to announcements: 1, 2.
• Just Cause 2 has also been used for some kind of psychologic analysis of players: Link.

Gallery & Media

Just Cause 2 Editions

This was an officially released april fools hoax poster in 2022.

Multiple releases of Just Cause 2, including a disc of the Just Cause 2 Demo, and the Just Cause 2 Prima Guide.

The sides of the three copies. The scorpion on the Windows version is the same as the the Xbox 360 version. There is a red LED reflection on it, making it look red.

The Just Cause 2 Demo disk up close.

The common front cover of Just Cause 2 in North America.

A Japanese release of an Xbox 360 version.

A European PC version box.

Inside a North American Just Cause 2 game case.

Inside the Japanese Just Cause 2 game case. Notice the darkened Japanese text under the logo on the instruction manual. Also, notice the chrome tint on the disk.

Inside the European game case for the European release of Just Cause 2. This one does not have a game instruction manual in it. It was either lost or misplaced by the owner.

The common cover behind the North American game case.

The common cover behind the Japanese Xbox 360 case of Just Cause 2.

The common cover behind the European release of Just Cause 2 on Windows PC.

A Russian PC version box cover.

12th anniversary of the games release, announced by Avalanche Twitter.

The main box is bigger than it appears.

Even though this uses the North American cover, the rating is in French.

The back shares both English and French. In this regard, it makes sense as to why it would share the North American cover.

The cover is faded due to age. Although it is possible that it may have been exposed to the sunlight for prolonged periods. (See the back.) Additionally, this is protected in an acrylic case.

The Seal of Authenticity.

It can be easy to wonder how this is unique and why this is added to the gallery... Look at the barcode.

For the translation of "Дилогия," please refer two pictures to the right of this one.

The Spanish copy.

Behind the Spanish copy. SpartanEditor777 owns two sealed copies with the authenticated seal.

The French Limited Edition copy.

The back of the French Limited Edition copy.

Inside of the French Limited Edition

Notice that the translations between the standard edition and the limited edition is different. The limited edition uses the Eurpean PAL case, and the standard edition uses the American NTSC case with a shared English translation and alternative French text.

A side view of all the copies. (This photo was taken on 16.12.2023.)

As previously mentioned, the box is much bigger than it appears.

The back (and closer) view of the box.

The bottom of the Chinese JC2 box gives specifications.

SpartanEditor777 holds the box in a very questionable and awkward way as he snaps a photo of the top of the box.

Ultimate Action Triple Pack 360

Ultimate Action Triple Pack PS3

Just Cause 2 Merchandise

It is speculated that under 50 of these exist. Destructoid had ten of these bags and all of the promotional material, but they gave five sets away to their members. The only people who have these are likely developers, journalists, friends of developers, and... Some very dedicated Just Cause 2 collectors.

The bag standing up. (In case if anyone is curious, the background fabric is UCP Delta, whereas the photos taken the day before is ABU camo.)

Much like the previous photo's caption, it is unknown how many of these are in circulation. These should be considered to be extremely rare and very expensive.

A sealed Just Cause 2 PRIMA Games guide. These can be somewhat common to find unsealed, but more uncommon to find completely new and untampered (as time goes on.)

The back of the book. Catherine Browne is the author of this book.

It is unknown if the first iteration of this book exists or not. If it does, then it is at large and the whereabouts are unknown.

Notice that the info map costs 10,000 Panauan Dollars. (P$10,000)

This is a Mile High Club advert that is behind the Panauan tourism information book.

The Just Cause 2 mousepad and PS3 Blockbuster promotional slip

It is ill-advised to wear the Mile High Club shirt out in public. Or, due to its absurd rarity, anywhere. Hang it up and preserve these shirts.

The back of the shirts.

Pre-Release Screenshots

All Just Cause 2 pre-release characters.

Pre-release image of Panau.

Videos

References and additional external links

• Developer interview.
• Wikipedia Article on Just Cause 2.
• At the Steam store.
• Amazon Product Page.
• IGN Australian review.
• Official website.
• Source 1 about the patch. (Web Archive link.)