The voice acting is so bad. It’s unbelievably bad. And the scripts don’t help at all.

I’m back to playing Just Cause 2, which is sort of like Grand Theft Auto set in a lush tropical paradise, but sillier in every possible way, vis a vis the grappling hook that makes your character seem like a Bionic Commando wannabe. Police chopper chasing you? Why shoot it down? Hook onto it, beat up the pilot, and fly it yourself. In fact the game makes it easier to do that than to shoot the damn thing down. Same thing with cars, boats, and jet fighters that should be moving fast enough that you’d rip your arm out of the socket if you tried.

But it’s that kind of frenetic overblown action movie garbage that makes it a blast to play. This game is pretty much the definition of “stupid fun”. It’s mind-numbingly simple to cause all sorts of havoc… in fact you’re supposed to, the story won’t progress until you cause “Chaos”, which pops up on the screen in big flaming letters. You can’t get the next story mission until you’ve blown enough shit up. My kind of game.

The problem is that each story mission comes with a cutscene, and I’ve arrived at a point where the screen fades out to launch such a narrative moment and I physically cringe. I’d rather watch Manos: The Hands of Fate objectively and without comedy commentary than see all of these. The developers let you skip the cutscene, but you can’t skip the voice from your in-game PDA as you get further moronic, stilted instructions.

Might start playing the game muted.