The Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod was released earlier this week, adding multiplayer support to the tropical island of Panau. It instantly became our mod of the week , and we jumped in together at lunchtime to see if we could survive the chaos.
No-one survives the chaos, it turns out, but that's okay, because a barrage of ridiculous things are happening around you all the time . Here are but a few.
Andy grabbed onto someone's chopper and wouldn't let go
The Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod lets you teleport to various checkpoints with a quick chat command. First stop: the airport. We'd played an early beta test of the JC2 multiplayer mod, and already knew that airports tended to be a hotspot. We were not disappointed. The sky was full of spiraling jets and attack choppers trying to shoot each other out of the sky - the perfect opportunity for a spot of trolling.
In Just Cause 2 you can press F to grapple distant vehicles. If you hit a chopper, you'll dangle haphazardly beneath with a gun in your free arm. Normally choppers are piloted by passive NPCs, but in the multiplayer mod they're piloted by angry, angry humans. There's little a chopper can do with an illicit passenger, though. This person wobbled around trying to shake Andy off, and then tried flying low to scrape him against a building, to no avail. Andy was soon killed by stray bullets.
An army of jumbo jets tried to bring down the Mile High Club blimp
Our next stop was the Mile High Club blimp, a party boat suspended high above the archipelago. This place was so manic that we stayed there for the remainder of the hour.
You can't bring down the Mile High Club blimp, but that didn't stop players from trying. We were playing on a pretty lawless server, which means anyone can spawn any weapon or vehicle they wish from a menu. Naturally, players started spawning the biggest planes they could and repeatedly rammed them into the blimp. The blimp withstood the charge and gradually became enclosed in a collection of blackened jumbo corpses.
Tom outran a crashing jumbo jet
The last place you'd want to be during a jumbo jet vs. blimp free-for-all is on the deck of the blimp. It's mostly given over to a snazzy neon bar, but there weren't many drinkers around on account of the risk of being completely squashed. In an accidental moment of dramatic self-preservation, I zip-lined across the deck as one landed behind me. It screeched to a halt a few metres behind me in this picture, taken moments before I was shot by an attack chopper.
People start "dangle jousting" with machineguns
The skies are full of fire in the Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod, in the open server we played on anyway. Some servers require you amass points to purchase weapons, but with hundreds of players, each with their own attack chopper or rocket launcher, our collective hour was incoherent, but wonderfully manic. The carnage was so intense we felt a bit aimless at first, but as soon as you start setting challenges for one another the mod comes to life.
In a savvy move, Avalanche have knocked 80% off Just Cause 2 on Steam . The mod is free, and also on Steam, so there are few barriers if you want to try it out yourself, and I'd certainly recommend it. I'd also recommend turning off the chat with F3 if you do, though. It's a bit of a free-for-all in there.
