This is a good game. Is it a great game? Probably, but there are a few issues.

There are a lot of improvements from Just Cause 2. You're still raising hell on an island nation, but this time the ridiculous characters feel like they are entirely on purpose, and this time it's a lot prettier. There are a lot less collectibles and settlements this time around, but frankly, that's a good thing. Just Cause 2 had way, way too much to do, and not all of it was satisfying. Sometimes you could spend twenty minutes on a military base looking for that one last thing to destroy, the one insignificant little generator that you missed, that one crate that you didn't pick up. This time, once you start a settlement, you're told what you have to do to liberate it. Destroy the speakerboxes, destroy the propaganda vans, raid the police station and free the prisoners. It's fairly entertaining, the first few times, but after that it becomes somewhat monotonous.

It is pleasant to watch a province side with you after liberating everything within it. That was something that was missing in Just Cause 2, you can easily and visibly track your progress across the nation this time around, much like you could in the original Just Cause.

Then you have the various challenges, wherein you earn 1-5 gears based on your performance. Mostly optional, and although gears unlock upgrades for your gear and vehicles, you don't need to get five gears on every single challenge to unlock everything. Which is good, because some of the challenges require you to perform absolutely perfectly. I was stuck on one of the wingsuit challenges for a good forty-five minutes. Thankfully, I could have just given up and gone on to other things, as I had already unlocked all of the available upgrades, but I was determined and bored.

So the challenges are hit and miss. Some of them are actually fun, and add a neat element to the game. The races are generally pretty decent, except for the occasional moments of flipping your car. The destruction challenges are fun, but most of them can be cheesed by using something else. For example, the boat challenges can be difficult because most of the boats are hot garbage. But when a helicopter spawns on the outskirts of the challenge map, complete with rocket launchers? Not even remotely difficult. For the most part, I enjoyed the wingsuit challenges. You follow along the predetermined route and hit the circles, aiming for the middle for maximum points. And most of them, you don't have to be perfect to get five gears. Some of them are obnoxious, some of them are downright peaceful.

The story in the game? Meh. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm happy that they tried. They didn't take themselves seriously this time around. I mean, not that they ever did. But in the first two games, it still bordered on sense. Things got weird on occasion, like the ninjas with the submachine guns, but they only popped up a few times in the entire game. This time, they have a cast of wacky characters, all of whom are entertaining, none of whom get any closure whatsoever when the story ends. And that's my only real problem with the story. I like that it's silly, I enjoyed when the main character punched a computer screen and said "♥♥♥♥ you, missile", that was just a good time. But when the game ends with no fanfare, it feels underwhelming. It is underwhelming. I completed every single challenge with max gears, I liberated every single settlement, I did all the DLC, and the game just...sort of peters out.

On the note of DLC, it's fantastic. I picked up the Just Cause 3 XL pack on sale for twenty-five bucks. It includes three DLC storylines, each with new areas to liberate and a game-changing, almost game-breaking item being the reward for completing it. A gun that calls lightning down from the sky. When powered up with the gear upgrades, it is ridiculously overpowered. You can bring down a military base with the power of the gods. I ended up shelving that one because it was too much, and I wanted to have a touch of challenge. If I was going in for a second playthrough, which I will inevitably do, then heck yes I am going to use that to clear things out. It has some difficulties hitting aerial targets, as you have to make sure you're aimed right at them, and keep the cursor directly on them until the lightning comes down, or else it will blast off into the distance, destroying innocent trees. But for groundbound targets, it's pure death. This DLC pack also introduces the only boat in this game that is not a steaming pile of floating crap. The Loochador is a boat with a ridiculous amount of nitro boosting, high speeds and steering, and a barrage of rockets to destroy your foes.

The one piece of DLC gear that I DID use, and use a lot, was the jetpack. Holy crap, is that thing awesome. Just Cause 2 introduced the infinite parachute that defies physics, gravity, mass, just about everything that you hold true in the universe. But who cares, it makes the game more fun. This time around you have the infinite parachute again (which is even jokingly mentioned in the game), and the wingsuit. But the wingsuit is only useful when you're high up in the air. You move faster, but you can't get much air back. Until you get the jetpack. Now you can propel yourself through the skies. Who needs a vehicle when you have a highly unstable bavarium jetpack strapped to your back? Add to that, the fact that it has both a machine gun AND a missile launcher, both with infinite ammo and a reasonable cooldown time. Plus you can upgrade it via a series of challenges similar to the wingsuit ones, but designed with the boost in mind, making them much more difficult and interesting. At any rate, this piece of gear made my journey across Medici a lot quicker. The only downside of it is that SAM sites now detect you as an enemy aircraft, and will fire missiles at you if you get too close. Which you can avoid, if your timing is good. But it does make life a little more difficult, which is probably a good balance for a device so utterly useful.

The last piece of DLC equipment is a mech suit. Gun arm for the pew pews, and gravity arm for picking things up, throwing them, or just doing a devastating gravity punch and eliminating everything in front of you. Once you have the gear upgrades, which are, like the rest of the DLC gear upgrades, gained by completing specific DLC challenges, then your mech suit is a force of mechanical doom. You can pluck helicopters out of the sky, throw them at other helicopters, gravity punch entire waves of enemy forces, and pick out enemies with upsetting accuracy with the autogun mech. The other mech is dumb and I hate it. Also, once you've completed everything and have it unlocked, if you don't want to drive it you can call in a rebel in a mech suit to wreck ♥♥♥♥ FOR you.

Each of these pieces of DLC gear are gamebreaking in their own way, which is kind of perfect for a game like this. They're not needed, which means the base game is completely unprepared for them. For my first run through the game, I only used the jetpack, and held off on the weapons it has, because they felt like I was cheating. For later runs, I have no doubt in my mind that I will use these mech suits and lightning guns to destroy my enemies so fast that the good general won't know what hit him until he has a lightning mech knocking down his door like the friggin' Koolaid Man.

I like this game. I enjoyed it a lot. I had a huge grin plastered on my face from the moment I started the intro cutscene. I would definitely recommend picking it up, especially when it's on sale. For twenty-five bucks, it took me fifty hours to get through on my first playthrough. Definitely worth the price. My only issues with this game are the ending, which didn't wrap things up as much as I would like, and the fact that it crashed a few times. But it has a generous autosave feature, so I never lost more than a few minutes of mayhem.