Square Enix and Avalanche Studios are unveiling the next installment of downloadable content for the Just Cause 3 silly shooter game that debuted last fall. Just Cause 3: Mech Land Assault debuts in early June.
The DLC is aimed at keeping the excitement going for Just Cause 3, which is one of the more creative shooters to hit the market in recent years. It’s like Grand Theft Auto for tropical island warfare, and now the new DLC introduces a new mech assault vehicle that produces hilarious results. I played Mech Land Assault hands-on at a recent Square Enix event.
Just Cause 3’s previous DLC, Sky Fortress, came out in March. With that DLC, you could play with Rico’s wingsuit and add a rocket to it. He could fire rockets and shoot his machine gun in mid-air, making him pretty deadly in the skies. Now with Mech Land Assault, you can get into a mech that looks like a walker with an oversized left arm. That arm has a gravity device built into it that can suck anything within range to the arm. Then you let go, and you can toss that thing a hundred yards or more.
You can pick up almost anything that is trying to attack you. I picked up infantry soldiers who were shooting pea shooters at me. I picked up motorcycles and jeeps loaded with soldiers. I picked up armored cars and tanks. I even knocked planes and helicopters out of the sky. It made me feel nearly invincible. The only thing you can’t pick up is another mech controlled by another human player in multiplayer. The physics is pretty realistic in the game, even for such a fanciful weapon. So you could pick up a tank and toss it at a watch tower and see the explosion take out the tower.
Above: Just Cause 3
I was tossing enemies around a small base on the tropical island. Reinforcements kept showing up and getting more and more powerful. First, some jeeps and motorcycle soldiers would show up, and I could get rid of them quite easily. But I always discovered that someone else had showed up because I was getting shot at. These shots caused actual damage to my mech. So I had to keep on picking up vehicles and tossing them back at the new arrivals. I lasted quite a long time before the collective impact of the jets, tanks, and helicopters eventually took their toll.
Tobias Anderson, the producer of Mech Land Assault, told GamesBeat that the storyline for the DLC will span about three to four hours. But I can imagine that you could get much more time than that by just playing with the mech unit for a long time.
Above: Just Cause 3 has some new DLC coming that makes land mech combat goofy.