The Just Cause games are silly timesinks. You buy them when you want to do whatever you want and enjoy the freedom that comes from soaring through skies and randomly blowing things up. People enjoy them because of the freedom they provide, but unfortunately Just Cause 3 isn’t up to snuff at the moment. Avalanche Studio and Square Enix needed to give this game a little more time across all platforms, and it’s unfortunate that people can’t immediately jump into a game and enjoy it for what it is.
It all starts with the framerates. There’s a constant debate about the importance of framerates in games, and when it comes to the discrepancy between 30FPS and 60FPS, it’s understandable. There are situations where such a difference is negligible. With Just Cause 3 , however, the problems are far greater. Rather than occasional dips, the framerates are dive bombing. Both people with the Windows PC and Xbox One versions are reporting the game dipping below 20FPS, with one of the lowest recorded being 17FPS on the Xbox One . It’s shameful, considering those are two of the game’s three platforms.
But the framerate issue is nothing compared to another of Just Cause 3 ‘s problems. Remember loading? It’s gotten better as years have gone by, with the memory of minutes-long screens mostly lost to the PlayStation 2 and Xbox generation. Sadly, Just Cause 3 brings them back. Anytime something happens to Rico, a loading screen comes up. If you start a mission, the game loads. If you travel from one location to the other, it ends up loading. If you die, there’s more loading.
I experienced five minutes of loading on the PlayStation 4, but there have even been reports of 10 minute loading times. Its motto should be, “Always be loading.” It’s unacceptable. Especially considering the length of some missions. Sometimes, you’ll come across one that only takes about ten or fifteen minutes, meaning you spent as much time waiting to play as you did actually playing.
The worst part is, we know Just Cause has always had issues. Just Cause 2 needed plenty of patches before it was ready to run at the right rates and all the bugs and glitches were gone. The original Just Cause had problems with cutscenes, resolutions, and occasionally questionable controls. It’s possible for the games to find themselves in a good place, but they need extra attention to get there. Attention Just Cause 3 definitely needed.
Especially since Avalanche and Square Enix should have wanted to do everything possible to avoid this possibility. There’ve been many games released this year that weren’t ready. Batman Arkham Knight and Fallout 4 are two examples of games that could have used an extra week or two. People would have been happy to wait a little longer for something both playable and entertaining.
There’s a good game lurking within Just Cause 3 . It has potential. If the proper bug fixes and patches come through, it will easily prove itself a worthy successor to Just Cause 2 and convince people to keep savoring the series. But it very obviously needed extra time, and it would have benefited everyone if Square Enix and Avalanche had went ahead and delayed it a few weeks.