Just Cause 2 Preview

Candlelit dinner + leaky gas oven = romance fail.

This time around you and Rico have a few new toys to play with, too. In addition to using his grappling hook to latch onto vehicles, you can tether objects together by firing out an elasticised cord. Fire one end at an enemy and the other at his friend, and both goons will be brought together at speed, knocking them out. If you're feeling a bit crueller, you could tie one of your foes to the back of a car and then drag him around in the dirt for a bit. Or you could use the rope and a helicopter to carry your favourite vehicle across the map; you could even pick up a big truck and use it as a makeshift wrecking ball.

Messing around with these options should be a pretty good laugh, especially when you throw in a hefty arsenal of machine guns and explosive weapons. You'll need them too, both to cope with the improved AI of your foes (they're now capable of flanking you and taking cover when attacked) and for the purposes of unlocking missions. In terms of game progression, chaos is the main currency in Just Cause 2. After all, you're attempting to destabilise a dictatorship - and everyone knows that the easiest way to do that is to make stuff explode. The island of Panay is littered with what the game calls "settlements": places of interest where there are people and buildings to investigate, ranging from bordellos to space centres. Show up and start trashing the joint with explosives or any combination of your dual-wield weapons, and you'll start to cause chaos - do this enough and you'll swiftly unlock new missions to take on.

Each settlement in the world has a percentage score to show how many of the activities you've completed in each area, and since there are there loads of these places, obsessive completionists will be as happy as a pig in muck. It's also worth mentioning that settlements won’t show up on your map until you've actually discovered them, so careful exploration will also have a role to play. Once you've visited a spot you'll be able to travel back there instantly, since Rico's black market connections are more than happy to give him a quick airlift.

I'm going to make an open world game about an Irish pop band. It's called Just Corrs.

As to the missions themselves, expect a small mountain of side quests and tasks that tower above what was offered in the first game, including stunts, raids on strongholds and assignments for rogue factions. Avalanche says that you'll be given a lot of freedom in terms of the way you tackle these operations, with differing approaches throwing up their own challenges. In one story mission, Rico sets out to rescue a contact named Jade Tan who's being held by Baby Panay's forces in a mountain-top base. Our demonstrator chose to approach this destination from the air, a decision that forced him to deal with several powerful SAM launchers. Unfortunately this firepower proved to be too much, and he was shot down - but happily, this allowed us to see that approaching by foot would have forced the player to get past several nasty-looking gun emplacements.

As if any more proof were needed that Just Cause 2 is going to be completely OTT, when our demonstrator eventually reached the back entrance to the base he was confronted by a gang of teleporting ninjas. As you might expect, this revelation was met with surprise and enthusiasm by the assembled press attending last week's presentation. It feels as if Avalanche has gone out to make a playable version of the most ludicrous action film ever created - and a pretty good-looking one to boot. The original Just Cause boasted some great graphics, but this takes things further with a greater range of colourful scenery and some particularly decent particle effects. The water looks excellent too, and if Rico takes a dip you'll notice that his clothes will get wet, eventually drying out in the sun. Details like this don't make a game on their own, but it's yet another thing that this sequel seems to be doing right. If the play mechanics are as much fun as they appear, and if Avalanche manages to keep the bugs to a minimum this time, then Just Cause 2 could deliver on all the promises that the first game failed to keep.

Just Cause 2 will be released on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 later this year.