A grizzled, leather-clad anti-hero with a grudge bigger than his revolver? Check .  A massive, sprawling expanse of land with more vehicles than Arnold Clark?  Tick that one too.  How about building razing explosions, or guns so powerful they'd make Van Damme blush?

Massive expanse of land to explore; Totally freeform level objectives; A great story with some nice twists

Inconsistent visuals; No multiplayer – a co-op mode would work well

Avalanche Studios are back with another serving of Rico Rodriguez and this time he parachutes and blows shit up in the island nation of Panau.

Lots to do; great variation; awesome stunts; wonderful sense of freedom; charming world; nice explosions

At times ugly graphics; mediocre story; some boring missions

Rico Rodriguez stands, head in the clouds, 1200 feet above sea level. The Southeast Asian island of Panau shimmers far below, a colourful patchwork quilt of diverse terrain, all couched within a Sonic-blue ocean upon whose surface ten thousand pricks of sunlight wink lazy.

We look back at the first Just Cause in an only slightly sarcastic spirit of fondness. Riding the crest of the go-where-you-want, do-wh...

Incredible game world; Brilliant grapple hook; So much fun in all the chaos

Mediocre combat; Horrid voice acting; Some dire checkpoints

Prepare to be mildly surprised, because we'll bet you a shiny pound that you won't find Just Cause 2 described thusly in any other gaming publication. We've put hours and hours into this desperately feisty third-person action game, and the best analogy we're going to make today is that it's the...

Sandbox games are ten a penny these days, everybody is making them, so it takes something different to stand out from the crowd. Some of them use a different setting from the norm, others give the player super powers, some even take a linear game and stage it in an open world, Brutal Legend I'm...

Avalanche Studios ticks all of the boxes where the first game failed...

Just Cause 2 is ridiculous in the best possible way. In the space of a few moments, you can grapple to a hovering helicopter; beat up the pilot and hijack the chopper; blow up a cluster of fuel tanks; put the chopper on a collision course with an enormous antenna; jump out at the last moment; and...

Enormous; varied island to explore with lots of things to do; More than 100 vehicles to drive and pilot; You pull off all sorts of crazy stunts; Stuff blows up in lots of awesome ways; Using the grapple hook and parachute to move around is great fun

Broken targeting can make gunplay a pain; Some of the missions are more frustrating than fun; Various glitches and other scattered annoyances

A few years back, Eidos dropped an over the top title on the last gen consoles and the 360. Mercenary Rico Rodriguez was tasked to liberat a large, politically unstable island, from the tyrany of a corrupt government.

The grapple hook isn't just a useful gadget in combat but it's also fantastic for exploring and creating stunts. It's been brilliantly implemented and you'll soon be moving effortlessly from one vehicle to the next, grabbing enemies off passing motorbikes, latching onto helicopters, and generally...

Exploring the beautiful island and finding great stuff; Destroying everything in sight; Developing our own stunts and being creative in combat

Having to trek for miles in the main campaign for little reward; The unpredictable targeting system in combat