I was pleasantly surprised with the previous DLC for Just Cause 3. Sky Fortress was quite a change of pace; not too long but the new mechanics added a breath of fresh air to the flying mechanics in the game.
Which has disappointed me even more that the Mech Land Assault Pack seems so drab and lifeless. The new vehicles and weapons don’t feel like they add any new elements to the game. The DLC is horrifically short and feels like it is just a booster to prep you for the final piece of DLC rather than a standalone quality addition to the game.
In this DLC, Rico is informed of a mysterious group called ‘The Black Hand’ who are secretly transporting people to the island of Lacrima, an island off the north of Medici which has mysteriously reappeared thanks to its relevance. This is all the explanation Rico needs to continue on the typical rampage of salting any earth between him and his enemy in the name of helping the people of Medici.
What really is the focus here is the additional content for land assaults. This was a difficult task anyway, Just Cause has always prided itself on a three axis approach to violence and land vehicles are already clumsy to control in the game. The Mech addition just seems both pointless and hopelessly underused within the DLC adding to the feeling that this is just booster content for the third DLC piece.
I can’t deny that the Mech’s are fearsome vehicles. While the movement feels slightly unresponsive and delayed the damage they can cause is immense. All the Mechs come with an infinite ammo rifle as well as the GRIP device, a sneakily named gravity gun knockoff with a pulse ability to push objects away.
But the Mech just doesn’t add anything to the affray. Land vehicles in the game were clumsy to use anyway, especially the motorcycles which I find basically unusable. The Mech is no better, the controls still feel like they have a delay when moving and throwing a large number of objects caused my game to have temporary freezes, even with a GTX 970 running the process.
This is exacerbated by the lack of content within this DLC. Lacrima has only 4 areas to conquer, yet although there are more bases to take over the whole thing feels shorter as you can just bombard in with the Wingsuit and raze everything. There are also only two story missions, and as such only two points where you are forced to use the Mech, which makes it feel like a slightly forgotten mechanic, wedged in because it is the name on the box.
This all accumulates as a slightly disappointing DLC. The addition of the rocket wingsuit in Sky Fortress gave me false hope that this would also be a good game changing piece of DLC. Those hopes have been dashed. If you’re a hard core Just Cause 3 fan you’ll probably pick this up regardless just to have the full collection of DLC for the game. However if you are a little more discerning, I would give this a miss. This is a rather disappointing sequel to a promising first piece of DLC and only worth of a 4.
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