Just Cause 2

First of all, I played this on a Steam Deck. If you're planning to do the same, make sure to disable the DLCs, otherwise the game will crash. The DLCs are purely cosmetic anyway. Overall, I enjoyed Just Cause 2, even though the story is definitely not its strongest aspect. It was the perfect game to play for an hour in bed before going to sleep or during my train commute to work. Causing chaos to unlock more main story missions was fun. There are plenty of side activities to earn Chaos, and they're varied enough that unlocking the next story mission never really felt repetitive. I wouldn't recommend doing much more than this though. If you try to complete everything, the gameplay will start to wear thin quickly. One thing that did bother me was the checkpoint system. The game only saves when you start or finish a mission. The "Save Game" option literally just saves your current checkpoint. That means if you spend time causing chaos in the open world and then die or quit, all that progress is gone. I eventually got into the habit of only stopping after starting or completing a mission, and fortunately there are plenty of missions, so it wasn't a huge issue. You can also just start en abort missions and trigger the checkpoint. The destruction, gunplay, and overall chaos are where the game shines. The grappling hook is incredibly fun to experiment with. You can throw enemies off railings, pin pursuing vehicles to the road and watch them crash, ... Shooting also feels very accessible thanks to the very forgiving enemy hitboxes, making it a great game to casually pick up and play on controller. I also found myself occasionally slowing down to take in the world. I'm not going to pretend it's the most detailed open world ever made, but standing on top of a mountain overlooking the landscape or cruising through the rivers and coastline genuinely transports you to Southeast Asia. In fact, I still have the game installed because I could see myself returning just to spend a mindful walk/drive/flight/viewpoint around in the world. Overall, I'd definitely recommend Just Cause 2. It may not excel in storytelling, but it's a fantastic sandbox for pure fun, and it definitely made me look forward to playing Just Cause 3.