Pre-order Just Cause 4

It's Just Cause 3 with better physics and those Fulton balloon skyhook things from Metal Gear Solid 5.

I feel like that's really all I had to say about Just Cause 4. Now in addition to your parachute, grappling hooks, remote detonators, and wingsuit, you can fly around the world of Just Cause like a really determined Superman cosplayer and turn anything within throwing distance into a hot-air balloon. You've also got sticky thrusters on tap, so you can slap one of those on the back end for propellant, and now whatever you can reach is your personal rocket sled. Cargo container, family sedan, unsecured cannon emplacement, whatever: It is now Rico Rodriguez's flying crotch rocket, and its previous purpose is officially canceled.

It's just that sort of game. This series is just that sort of series.

There's a plot, actually. Rico has brought his own personal squad, the Army of Chaos, to the fictional South American island of Solis to help him "liberate" it from the paramilitary forces of the Black Hand, in that unique Rodriguez style where "liberate" is a synonym for "burn to the water line." I get the feeling that there will be people who play this game for 200 hours who know very little about how the story's meant to be going, but who will be able to give you chapter and verse on precisely how the physics work.

Speaking of which, Just Cause 4 is running on a brand-new engine, Apex, which gives it the additional horsepower to accurately reproduce wind physics. In turn, this means that playing with wind is a big part of the game, up to and including how you get to play chicken with an actual tornado. You gain access to a weatherproof stormchaser vehicle and can track down hostile weather systems, all the better to watch them tear things apart, or to make sure your enemies' attempts to keep them at bay — with giant wind cannons that look like something from the bottom of Nikola Tesla's wastebasket — do not succeed.

There was a whole bit in the E3 2018 demo where Rico had to get ahead of a roaring tornado in order to reach an enemy airport and disable its wind cannons. That way, the tornado would destroy the place and tear it apart for you. At the time, I figured it was mostly a handy way for the developers to show off the amount of care they put into programming their weather physics, but only now, as I write this, do I realize that Just Cause 4 is a game where you are called upon to conduct an escort mission for a natural disaster. In fact, that disaster doesn't do too much that you don't already do. Rico clearly is doing this because he feels a kinship for this giant impersonal force of nature that blows up anything it touches.

Rico's also received a few mechanical upgrades. Aiming down iron sights is now a standard feature with all weapons — as opposed to Just Cause 3, where it was an optional upgrade — and all weapons in the game have a secondary fire, such as a three-round burst or deploying a friendly drone buddy that will attack independently of you.

The series-trademark grappling hook now has a full set of modifications that you can apply at will, such as additional effects when the hook makes contact with a target or allowing you to use the hook to plant objects like bombs or thrusters on a target. You can also mod all of Rico's thrown objects to add secondary effects, such as making anything held aloft by the balloon follow you around, or causing a pulse of concussive force when two tethered objects touch each other. Now you can make an enemy soldier fly face-first into a water tower, and then both he and the tower will punch each other into the distance like they double-KO'd in Smash Bros.

On top of that, there are now designated "chaos objects" littered around the landscape. If something has a red stripe, there's something on it that can be activated somehow to provide a secondary destruction effect. The example in the E3 demo was a giant fuel tank, which had a valve on the side that could get shot off. Doing so made the entire fuel tank — and this thing was about the size of a tractor-trailer — fly into the distance like an unguided missile, taking out everything in its path.

The developers opened their show for Just Cause 4 by saying, simply, "Everything is back." They've really leaned into the idea that this is what their franchise is all about: creative, constant, picturesque destruction, along with flying around with the world's least physics-enabled parachute and grappling hook. They've taken everything from Just Cause 3, turned it up, added a few more options, and sheathed the whole thing in an inch-thick layer of plastic explosive.