No specific enemy type elicited a groan from me in anticipation of a protracted series of mandatory button presses rather, any challenge in the game stems from the volume of enemies and how you choose to dispatch them. It was an engaging way to fight in an open-world in 2010 and it’s just as engaging now. The verticality the grappling hook provides makes Just Cause combat more about space management than scoring gnarly headshots. Just Cause 4 is responsive and snappy, every time I died it was completely my fault. Zipline to far-away point, parachute before impact, detach the chute, zipline again while Rico hangs suspended in the air for a few seconds, all like some kind of ground-parallel Spider-Man. I haven’t played a Just Cause game in years, since my ill-fated attempt to 100 per cent the second game, but it all came flooding back after a few minutes of adjustment. Just Cause 4 – Preview Images Provided by Avalanche Studios / Square Enix There are worse fears to have realized, since Just Cause 4 is still pretty fun on its own merits, but it’s nowhere near the breath of fresh air I was hoping for. I skipped the third game after the less-than-thrilling critical reception, aside from a brief detour at a pal’s house and the assurance that the game would run like trash on my PS4, but my fear that the series would continue to iterate on a winning formula rather than experiment with the talent they clearly have seems to have been realized after a few hours with a non-retail build of Just Cause 4. Just Cause 2’s extremely lean presentation of that cycle is what brought me to the dance, I suspect that’s the case for many others. The series’ cycle of resplendent, emergent chaos feeding into campaign progress, which then gives the players new areas to destroy and new tools with which to destroy them, is a simple yet elegant solution to the disconnect players often feel between story and chaotic open-world gameplay. These days, sandbox games are either iterating on Rockstar’s filmic crime epics or Ubisoft’s tower-laden crafting adventures, when the Just Cause games are right there for the plagiarizing and have been for years. Everyone is stealing from the wrong open-world video game companies.