Just Cause 3: Bavarium Sea Heist Review

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Rico Rodriguez,  the rough and ready action hero who is part human part flying squirrel, returns in what is the final of Just Cause 3’s DLC packs, the Bavarium Sea Heist.

The Bavarium Sea Heist continues the trend set by the previous DLC’s in that it adds new missions, vehicles and weapons around a theme.  As the name implies, this DLC’s theme is sea based (with the previous DLC packs, Sky Fortress and Mech Assault being based around Air and Land respectively), and as such adds a new boat to play around with, a new lighting gun to blow stuff up with, and new sea based structures to attack.

Having left it a while since my last foray into Medici I must confess it was with mixed feelings that I returned.  As I mentioned in my review of the Sky Fortress DLC (found here), I had parted company with Just Cause 3 feeling pretty happy with what I had accomplished, and to be fair to the developers at Avalanche Games, it is with this in mind that the DLC aimed.  The Bavarium Heist is not so much intended to add more to the story of Just Cause 3, but more at encouraging people to revisit  and play the game in different ways, messing about with the various gear and gadgets while at the same time exploiting the physics sandbox that they have created.  If you are looking for the story to be meaningful or fleshed out in any way, this DLC will not be for you, however, if you enjoyed messing around in the main game with the various toys at your disposal there might be something here for you to get your teeth into…maybe.

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The question for me is, do the toys that Bavarium Sea Heist provide enough of an incentive to jump back into the action?

As with Sky Fortress and Mech Assault, he DLC can be started separately, having already completed the main campaign, or else you can play it alongside the main game provided you complete the mission “Connect the Dots”.  This will then add a mission marker to your map for the first mission of the DLC, “The Setup”, which lays out the formation of what is to come, but if you have played any of the other expansion packs, Bavarium Sea Heist plays in pretty much the same way – attack a target by destroying various structures, completing missions to unlock new toys to destroy the various structures, and so on and so on.  There is a certain sense of de ja vu going into the DLC, and having already completed the main game I felt slightly overpowered going into these new missions that were on offer – where once I had to plan and think carefully about my strategy and the targets I needed to take out first, I could now charge in guns blazing not overly concerned at what I hit so long as I kept moving and shooting with my overly powered weapons – in fact, my main reason for dying early on was by killing myself in the explosion caused by the stupidly powerful (and equally satisfying) M488, that I had already unlocked when I completed the main game.  The question is then, if I already had a weapon that powerful and fun to play with, why did I want or even need any more?

The answer is, I didn’t.  The game provides two new additions to your arsenal with the final DLC – the Loochador, a boat with turbo, machine gun and homing missiles, and the eDEN Spark, a lightning gun that can summon down a sustained beam of lightning and blow up whatever is in its path.  Once unlocked, both can be used in the main game, but as with the previous DLCs, both make Rico stupidly overpowered and take away much of the challenge that the main game contained, and, having already completed the main campaign, on their own they were not enough to make me want to start over and do it all again, overpowered or not. This is a quite a strange dilemma to be hung up about, but it feels like this is what the DLC is trying to offer the most of – new and exciting toys to play with, but in comparison to what has already come before in both the main game and previous DLC’s, the ones offered here fall a bit flat with the missions come off as boring and repetitive with nothing new on offer as a result.   This is true of the story which follows the recurring set up – eDEN, the evil big bad, has this technology that is super powerful and dangerous, so Rico, go and get it, and then you can be super powerful and even more dangerous, but the point is, you were already.

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Playing the Bavarium Sea Heist I was trying my best to give it a fair crack of the whip – I had enjoyed my time with Just Cause 3, and I know from countless YouTube videos and internet meme’s that some people are still having fun experimenting with the physics and what can be done with the tethers and the grappling gun and what not, but that is not me and in that regard Bavarium Sea Heist just feels like one DLC too far.  I even tried attacking missions without using some of the overpowered gear from previous DLC’s such as attacking a structure without using the Wingsuit boost, but weirdly this made the game less fun because I knew they were there to use and I felt like I was unduly making things harder for myself and taking some of the intended fun away.

If you purchased the Season Pass you would be a fool to skip this content as it is already bought and paid for, but if you have played either the main game or the previous two expansion packs and are looking for something else to spend your money on, the Bavarium Sea Heist is only for the devout among you who want to see what new and illustrious ways you can demolish the various structures Medici has to offer, but be warned, you might be disappointed with the end results.

Rating 5

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Sony Playstation 4 code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

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