I really flip-flopped on whether or not to recommend this game. I have to say that I do because these devs are consistently and frequently putting out stylistic, fun, well-written (and voice acted) VR games that have a unique and fairly engaging story. Also, the songs are bangers every time. Seriously, huge props to the singers, composers, and writers of those songs because wow. These are quality games in a subset that is not often done well.

I've played all three games and 100%d the first two (as I plan to with this one), and here's my issue: either I've just become extremely familiar with the thought process of the team that comes up with these puzzles, or the charm has faded and the puzzles are getting easier. None of the puzzles felt very inspired. I felt like once I got a handle on the things around me (all the little interactive machines and buttons), I knew exactly what to do and there weren't many surprises. There were never any moments where I went "How do I approach this?". Those had been replaced by infrequent moments of "How do they expect me to do this?", which may be a small distinction, but a disappointing one. Other than that, everything was, to me, pretty straightforward.

I believe the entirety of the main missions took me a total of three hours. I would have finished it in one sitting had I not only been able to spend a handful of minutes the day I bought it. Perhaps this has always been how these games worked. Just a few hours of main content (with plenty of additional content in the first one), and I'm just romanticizing my memories of them. Perhaps it is subjective, but my harshest criticism for this game is that, for me, it doesn't capture the magic I had of playing the first game for the first time.

I'm happy with my purchase, and I will enjoy the time I will spend 100%ing it. I really hope that they continue this series, but I also hope that there is some freshness brought to the puzzles themselves. Fingers crossed for some additional free content in this game like the first one had (although, I understand making these games is very expensive and the employees need to eat, so I don't mind supporting that, too).

If you loved Just Cause 3, don't get this game. It's a waste of time, effort, expectations, and money.

I had low hopes for this game and I still was disappointed. I knew it wasn't as well received as Just Cause 3, but I figured, "it's still a Just Cause game, so what could they mess up so badly to make it not as good as JC3?" I have around 160 hours on JC3, which is the pinnacle of what a Just Cause game should be, in my opinion. The graphics, while not being super realistic, are beautiful to look at. The design of the map (both in-game and in-menu) is easy to learn. The UI is intuitive and simple. Everything is well-explained. The combat is easy but fun. The enemy bases are very enjoyable to take down.

JC4 is pretty much the opposite of this. The graphics are beautiful, but not as easy to comprehend as JC3. The design of the map feels consistent throughout the entire world (it looks like the map does have different biomes, but I have yet to get to that point) and feels like a chore to understand. The UI is extremely complicated and doesn't make any sense. It's explained to you okay, but it feels like one of those games where you constantly forget the mechanics of the interface. The combat is boring, it feels slow, and it doesn't make you feel like a god who can take down an entire army if he has a couple of grappling hooks. Enemy bases are confusing because the chaos objects, as they used to be called in JC3, aren't as easy to identify.

Playing this game just makes me want to play Just Cause 3 again.

Edit: Which I did... I actually went back and am currently replaying the entire main JC3 storyline, re-liberating all of Medici, and man, it makes me want more. I'm gonna try this game again, and really try to put effort into getting past the tough parts, and see if I can somehow change my opinion... I really want to like this game. I'll report back after I've come to a conclusion.

Edit 2: I wrote that first edit back in February of 2020. Clearly, I didn't find the motivation or time to give it another try. Recently, I played JC3 AGAIN (which just goes to show you how good that game really is). I believe it's my third time 100%ing the third game. I knew going into it that, if I was really going to commit to another run, I could surely commit to giving Just Cause 4 its fair shake.

Here's the thing. Rico's voice actor and look changed from the third game. I can learn to live with that. Some of the foundational mechanics are different (wingsuiting/parachuting feel different, tethering is extremely different, gunplay, etc). I can learn to live with that. What I can't learn to live with is the utterly confusing mechanics of literally everything else. Everything from the design of the world to the in-game map to the basic UI (in-menu or HUD) is SO CLUTTERED AND CONFUSING.

"Heat" doesn't work like it did in the previous games, which has yet to be explained to me; "liberating" areas is no longer done by destroying chaos objects, instead replaced by an unsatisfactory mechanic in the menu; and on top of all of the cluttered UI, for some reason, Rico now has an AR lens, which seems to add NOTHING AT ALL to the game, only making the HUD even more distracting.

I'm honestly not sure what else to do. I'll probably drag myself through some more of the game until I get tired of the downright horrendous UI and the weird implementation of what I can only describe as all of the mechanics from Far Cry 4 and Far Cry 5 combined. Maybe, in two years, I'll replay Just Cause 3 again.

I've played an entire day of this game, and somehow... I don't regret it. I think that means something! 8/10

Edit: I 100%d this game about three years ago. Around every six months, I have to go back to it just to get it back to 100%. The dedication of the devs to continue adding new, free content is unparalleled to any other game I've ever seen, it's quite the accomplishment. But please stop. For my sanity. Please.

Edit: So, after sparking my interest again, the game called for me to achievement hunt it, so I did. Getting the S ranks wasn't as difficult as I had imagined. I think that, when I did it the first time, I had assumed that you would need to do all of the levels on the hardest difficulty to get an S ranking, since it grants you a difficulty bonus. This is not the case. The S rankings are achievable on the lowest difficulty. Achievement hunting it was not the most fun I've ever had with achievement hunting, due to the very repetitive nature of garnering all S rankings, but, while I had moments of tear-out-my-hair frustration, it was still moderately enjoyable. Overall, the game was worth it.

Original review:

I like this game a lot, but it has a big flaw: The difficulty. This game is most definitely a checkpoint game. You go into a room, fight the enemies, learn their location, possibly die, and then you'll know what to do next and how to win next time (with style). However, I like achievement hunting certain types of games. I've got all the achievements for Human Fall Flat, Portal 2, Just Cause 3 (technically, I'm one away), Superhot VR, and Modern Warfare Remastered. It's fun when the game knows how to handle achievement difficulty. However, this game doesn't. The achievements seem reasonable, but getting S rank on all levels, at least to me, seems like an impossible task. Even the first level isn't exactly easy to get S rank. It's one of those things where you just have to sink 5 hours into one level to get that S rank, and that takes the fun out of it. Repetition is fine, but not to that extreme.

I may just not have the necessary skills to do so. I'll admit, I'm not exactly the best at the game, and I think it just takes time to possess the skills necessary to be good enough at it to get those S Rankings. I don't think I've ever been good enough at games like these to be able to fully achievement hunt them. So, considering that, I'd recommend the game for how much fun it is.

Playing the game itself is great, and learning how to do cool stuff in slow-mo is extremely fun. I'd often kick around a pan for half the level (even going so far as to take it to places it obviously wasn't meant to go into, which took like 5 minutes), and the freedom to do so is awesome. The mechanics are pretty easy to learn, although I wish that I had bound the weapons to easier keys earlier. A main con for me, is that picking up the dual pistols/smgs doesn't replace the single pistol/smg, which is a bit confusing and just ends up cluttering the weapon menu. Other than that, the story was entertaining, although a bit trippy, and the gameplay was awesome. I'd recommend this to people who are looking for a quick, fun game that you can sink like 5 hours into in one day. I played on the harder difficulty, but not the hardest, and still had a relatively easy adventure (although at times it got a bit rough). For price, I'd say about $15 USD would be max recommended price (I picked it up for like 16 or 17), but $10 would be a great price.

This game was a roller coaster of expectations, but one that eventually leads to disappointment. I'd say this game was fun about half of the time. Let me elaborate:

• The locomotion in this game is fun and smartly designed. Being able to look through the portal to see where you're going, or what's ahead, is ingenious.
  
  
• The voice acting was pretty good, and the robot's lines made me chuckle.
  
  
• Lots of little things around the levels that are slightly humorous, mostly on pieces of paper.
  
  
• Killing robots. This may be an obvious one, but chucking those knives to have them perfectly stab a robot's "eye" was quite satisfying.
  
  
• The level design was good, for the most part. It was colorful and fun to learn, save some levels.
  
  
• It's a story-driven VR game, and one with an actually passable story! There is like two characters throughout the whole thing, and only one of them speaks to you directly, so it's not exactly the most engaging story of all time. But, hey, story-driven VR games are so hard to find, it's kind of nice to just have one.

• Throwing objects was clunky, and sometimes quite glitchy.
  
  
• You're sort of expected to learn things as you go along, and sometimes you'd just be stuck in one area, teleporting around until you either somehow do the right thing, or you cave in and look it up. I understand that sometimes puzzles can just go over your head, but I don't like wandering around blind, only to find out that the thing you were scouring every little place for was a paper note. Not a good feeling.
  
  
• There were these rooms that confiscated all of your weapons and items, that were almost entirely pointless. Yeah, they made things a bit more difficult, making me stealth my way through the level, instead of using brute force, but ultimately, they were just annoying and didn't add to the experience. I got this game to throw knives at robots, so let me throw knives at robots.
  
  
• Eventually, towards the end of the game, everything started breaking. Graphics started flashing, and not loading in. Entire other rooms looked like blobs of color. I was sent codes (you put these into doors, elevators, or fax machines to progress) that were incomplete and didn't work anywhere. I was given instructions that made no sense, considering my current progress in the level. I eventually had to restart the level (by killing myself) multiple times, for it to finally work. Then, at the end of the level, right before the elevator (which takes you to the next level), there was an item confiscation room.
  
  
• The last level. (spoiler warning, sort of) Broken or not, I still wouldn't have been happy about it. The game switched its tone in an instant. The fun and colorful level design was thrown out the window. Its successor? A monotone gray environment that made me lose track of where I was every minute. All of the lights were turned off, with no way to turn them back on. The music also changed, to something much creepier, and in some parts of the level, it would go mute. You'd hear this deranged voice over the loud speaker, like someone escaped an insane asylum and decided to mess with the broadcasting system. There was no sign of humans or robots. As I moved on, the level became messy, overwhelmingly so. The roof was perforated with holes (which you could teleport up in to), halls turned into mazes, and vents to secret side routes dotted the long, grey walls. Still, even further in the level, there was no color, and no objects of comfort like there was before (such as paper notes, computers, or cookies). As I grew closer to the area I was searching for, I saw a robot in a broadcasting room. This robot was akin to the enemy robots I had seen before, but was bigger, bulkier, and had a human-like voice. Somehow, I must have let him see me, because next thing I knew, he was sprinting at me (the other robots don't run). I jumped about 10 feet, not expecting this game to turn into a horror game, and freaked out. I started throwing items (I had no weapons) at him as fast as I could, to hopefully knock him over. Nothing worked. It was when I was sure I would die that I realized he couldn't harm me at all. I knew he was meant to, but he couldn't. He would swing his arms at me, and nothing would happen. He'd just follow me everywhere and issue threats. He was still somewhat creepy, but since nothing could happen to me, all of the horror aspect went out the window. Then everything broke. There was a mechanic where you could turn the lights back on, however, as soon as I would turn them on (since he was following me), he would just as soon turn them off. Without the lights, I could barely navigate the level. However, for some reason, I found the item I needed. I'm not sure if it was because the killer robot was broken, or if I just happened to stumble upon it by absolute chance, but I'm fairly positive that's not the way it was supposed to work. There was no puzzle or anything, it was just a keycard to open a door I needed to go through. This led to a room that had a puzzle in it (a fairly obvious one), and that led to an underground train station. And then the game ended. It was that abrupt. In fact, the credits almost jumpscared me because I wasn't expecting it. I was disappointed to say the least.

Ultimately, this game isn't worth $30, nor is it worth the $15 I paid for it. If you can get it at $5, sure, that's an appropriate price point for this game, however, anything above that is too much. The bugs and sudden change of atmosphere ruined this game for me, which sucks, because it had so much potential. It felt like the developers were suddenly unhappy with a simple stealth, knife-throwing game and wanted to create a horror game, but didn't feel like making an entirely new game. If this game had a bit of a livelier tone, managed to maintain that tone throughout, fixed the bugs, and made the puzzles more intuitive (but more difficult), then this would be a solid game. 3/10

I played this game to chill, listen to some nice music, and hang with Bennett Foddy.

Ended up going to the hospital for high blood pressure. I can no longer listen to elevator music or Bennett Foddy's voice.

Let me just get straight into it, this game is great. Although I might not have a good pro-con ratio, the game's great. However there are some things I didn't like.

Pros:

• The visuals are stunning. The art is just spectacular.
  
• The story is great, it really puts you inside the world of Firewatch.
  
• There are a bunch of little things scattered around the map. For example, you can find a turtle. Another example, there's an old broken down house you can go into, and then a raccoon jumpscares you.

Cons:

• The gameplay is sometimes choppy and you can get lost easily.
  
• Some of the story is a bit random at times, although this goes both ways, because it adds to the suspense.
  
• The ending seemed abrupt and unsatisfactory.

Overall, I really like the game. I think I even played it twice. I'd say 7.5/10.

This game is definitely worth the $30. I would've paid $60, and it's still in Early Access. There are some glitches and things that happen, but never anything to really ruin the experience. Imagine Arma 3 and H1Z1 KotK mixed. Except better.

Edit: It got bad. It's not even worth the disk space.

I bought this in the Humble Indie Bundle (it was the one you had to pay the most for, and understandably) for $13. I have to say, it was the best 13 bucks I've spent. I love this game to bits, and I'm not even finished with it yet! The mechanics are amazing, the game looks awesome, the story is cute, and the characters are well-built. I heard that the dev team took 8 or 9 years to make this game, so if you look at the price mark and think it's too high for an indie game, think again. I would've paid $60 for this game, looking back.

Imagine CS:GO and Call of Duty had the perfect child.

Pros:
1. Not a lot of whiny people.
2. Good game mechanics.
3. Great balancing.
4. Great teamplay.
5. Not repetitive.
6. Great visuals.
7. Good community (I kind of said this twice, but seriously, most of the people you meet are really nice.)
8. Not pay to win.
9. Not a lot of bugs.
I could really keep going on, but I'll stop here.

Cons:
1. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ happens sometimes, and although it's rare, it can be quite frustrating.
2. Ranked system.... Isn't the best (Btw it counts down, so Copper 4 to Copper 1, etc, then Plat 3 to Plat 1, then Diamond).
3. Hitboxes are somewhat wonky (they're fixing them, though.)
4. The "netcode", as some people like to call it, can be frustrating at times. This is known in the community as "Peeker's Advantage".
5. Salt happens often, and although there is a mute button for people, it doesn't mute their chat, to my knowledge.