Along with the bottomless supply of parachutes, Rico now has a 'wingsuit' that lets him glide quickly through the air. It’s hard to describe Just Cause 3 without a knowing wink at how absurdly cliche everything is, from the B-movie plot to the stock characters - including Rico’s affable friend Mario, who like all video game Marios is required to introduce himself with 'It’s-a me!' The game’s story is primarily a catalyst for over-the-top action sequences, which are more ridiculous than ever thanks to Just Cause 3’s new features. It's hard to describe Just Cause without a knowing wink at its B-movie cliches successfully driving a limousine without blowing it up or flying off a cliff, at least until the right moment.) Alongside these, there are challenges for testing specific skills and systematically destroying anything that props up the regime: propaganda billboards, towers of speakers blaring speeches, and the aforementioned statues. Sometimes, this means taking on big assignments like stopping an enemy convoy by blowing up a bridge, or side quests like impersonating a government official’s chauffeur (i.e. Medici is apparently Rico’s home country, and as in previous games, he’s stopped by to depose a megalomaniac dictator, a man with a seemingly infinite defense budget and a penchant for massive stone effigies. I played a few hours of Just Cause 3 earlier this month, including a couple of main missions and a decent amount of wandering around the game’s setting, a Mediterranean island nation called Medici.

So Just Cause 3, a new installment coming out in December, is going to be judged mainly by one metric: how well it can keep the explosions coming. The ideal mission ends with walls, oil tanks, and guard towers crashing down in a fiery chain reaction, while Rico floats away using his limitless reserve of parachutes. It’s a shooter where your target is not other human beings, but the entire national infrastructures of totalitarian regimes. It’s a sandbox in which 'chaos' is an actual, quantifiable value, accrued by protagonist and professional revolutionary Rico Rodriguez. Just Cause is arguably the prototypical destruction game series.

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