Whoa there, Momma, this is a big one. We're talking super big here folks, the kind of expansive, rolling, never-ending gaming area that makes San Andreas look like a postage stamp. Just Cause was sold to us on its size and, for once, size really is everything. What new boy developer Avalanche has managed to do though is combine enormity with quality - a rare achievement these days.

So then... the plot! Well, because this game's a biggie, it's a little more complicated than the usual. There's no GTA drug baron wannabe, no climbing through the ranks disposing of enemies as you go, in fact, this is more Mercenaries than GTA. There are various factions living and operating within the island system, and we must use them to our advantage in order to complete our main objective of overthrowing the island’s government. There's the dictator himself, armed with a powerful military and attack choppers (he's good for supplies by the way), then there's the resistance. These chaps will offer up important safe houses that double as check points and drop-zones. If you die, you can re-spawn in any safe house on the grid, perfect considering how large it is. Then, the last two factions are warring drugs families, who'll offer greater monetary rewards, vehicles, and weapons for sabotaging and wrecking the rival family's efforts. Play these four different sides off against each other successfully and, so the theory goes, you'll overthrow the government. This is it though - you're pretty much guaranteed not to play any missions for at least the first five or six hours of solid gameplay.

Avalanche has been clever you see, it has made this world for us, and has positively encouraged us to just get out there and have fun. There's no instant five star wanted rating if we cross a border, no invisible walls, it's just there to be played with. The advantage of this is unclear to be honest, but it's a defiant statement from Avalanche. It's saying, ‘we're confident enough in our game that we can unlock everything at the beginning and you'll still be enthralled by it. And are we? Well, yes actually. We like the idea of unlocking sandbox games as we go, but having one so large, and so vast means you're best just getting on with the missions and slowly exploring the maps piece by piece anyway. And what if you get lost in the myriad of trees and faceless inlets? Call in a vehicle drop and get out of there. Simple as. Want an extraction to take you back to the nearest safe house? You can get one of those too - a perfect, indispensable option that makes the intimidating size of the game that much more user friendly.

Avalanche has made the act of exploring the islands easy as well. Within the first couple of missions, Rico (our greasy hero) has a grapple in hand and, with a little skill, is able to grapple everything from chugging mopeds to hellfire-spitting Apache choppers. It's all there, on a plate, ready to be guzzled up.

The vehicles themselves are a vast and varied bunch, with lowly tractors and trucks plodding about in the countryside, and sports cars nipping about through city streets. Although they're fine, functional beasts, there's never a particularly 'stand out' car that grabs your attention as it might have done had this been GTA. Just Cause cars are just that little bit too generic, lacking the fun of golf carts and ice cream vans. That said, they do go fast, and fast is good (unless the handling is atrocious as we discovered with some of the peasant trucks). Speed is not only fantastic for covering large distances quickly, but because it allows for spectacular stunt sequences, namely off the tops of cliffs. See, that's where Just Cause differs from other sandbox games; it encourages you to perform maddening stunts at maddening heights because it wants to show off the superb parachuting function (you could also call it the paragliding function if you grapple the back of a vehicle).

This extra build up of height brings new depth to the game, and allows seamless movement from vehicle to vehicle. There's nothing to prevent you from driving one car off a cliff, jumping out, then using your grapple mid-descent to climb into a plane below. It's a complicated manoeuvre mind you, and one you'll have to try again and again to get right, but hey, there's got to be some challenge, right? That's where the missions kick in. Boy, some of them are hard bastards. Breaking into a prison is all well and good, but trying to liberate an entire city when a fleet of government helicopters is chasing you from the rooftops is hideously hard, while the speedboat chase through numerous chasms, firing off round after round of mini-gun spray is thrilling stuff. You're not likely to find anything subtle with Just Cause, but if you're after missions that require you to leap from one pant-scorching situation to the next, you're in for a treat.

Technically, Just Cause is something of a looker (who'd have thought it? It achieves under-the- bonnet as well as the surface!). There are virtually no draw-distance hassles - a remarkable achievement considering the size of the map.

Clouds and mist aren't there to cover up dead areas, because they operate as part of a unique weather system designed to give us 'real' weather patterns. No, on a clear day you can literally see for miles (presuming you've not got three dozen killers trying to drive you off a cliff that is). Tiny details can prove a pain though. The cycles of the day are far too quick, meaning half of the game is played at night (which cycles around every fifteen minutes or so). Nothing actually changes on the ground when it goes dark either, so people still go about their day, the traffic remains the same, it's just that it happens in near dark - a pain. Also, it seems the game isn't quite able to cope with large explosions. When dog-fighting another chopper, or intentionally crashing a plane into a city, the larger vehicles just sort of implode and disappear rather than explode as we'd have hoped. Kinda takes the wind out of your sails a little, especially when you've set up some elaborate scheme to take out as many goons as possible.

Gripes aside though, Just Cause is a brainless, clichéd, yet incredibly enjoyable extension of the sandbox genre. By introducing the innovative grapple and parachute, it opens up the genre in ways that even GTA has yet to do. For a debut effort, Avalanche should be proud. Juggling impossibly huge gaming areas with varied, consistent, imaginative gameplay, it has managed to create a slice of Southern American comic violence that begs to be played. Sure, it's scrappy around the edges, but when a game offers up a map so large that it bends light, you can't help but doff your cap. Great stuff.

1. It's huge and packed with things to see and do. Combining size with quality is a hard job, but one Just Cause does very well!
2. Oooh... sexy draw distance (or lack of). Many games would die to know the secret to such long, luscious draw distances we're sure!
3. The grapple! The parachute! By including these two babies, the game opens up even more than it would have done on the ground.
4. The map is open from the very beginning, and with constant vehicle drops, getting around is a joy rather than a chore.

1. If we had to choose one, it'd be the day-night-day-night thing. It's just not wanted. A little less night time would have been welcomed.

Packed with all manner of hidden gems, vehicles and weapons. An incredible experience you can't miss!