Just Cause 2

Haul up the map and apart from admiring the topographical changes as you move your cursor (which make it easy to understand relative heights), you can enjoy the sense of scale. A vast playground isn't always a delight - as Avalanche itself knows only too well after the muted response to the first Just Cause - but the ability to experience so much of it at once, at high speed, without your console crying itself to sleep afterwards, probably should be.

Mind you, that core "chaos" can be a double-edged sword, and it's one that Just Cause 2 runs the risk of impaling itself upon if it's not too careful. Approach the game in the wrong mood and the inching, cumulative impact of a dozen unsuccessful attempts to simply go to a waypoint is enough to wear you down by itself.

The grappling hook is wonderful, it turns out, but climbing tall buildings with it is not. The black marketeer, meanwhile, may be able to deliver things wherever you are, but he will only deliver you to a small range of waypoints. And the control scheme may have a vocabulary wide enough to drive a Baby Panay statue through, but it's a fiddly language to learn, full of buttons doubling up and counter-intuition.

Still, while it may sound like a strange observation, perhaps the most encouraging thing at this stage is that the game's cut-scenes are as devoid of logic and conviction as the accents of the protagonists are devoid of sense. Baby Panay lies at the end of a long narrative road, and you travel down that road by supporting rival factions and connecting with local operatives along the way. Whether it's a snatched conversation with an alcoholic gambler in a regally carpeted skyway, or a serious discussion with a heavy-duty resistance kingpin in a dingy weapons cache, the dialogue and delivery - particularly Rico's - is reliably dreadful.

It's encouraging because the one thing Just Cause 2 really needs, and on a regular basis, is a bit of downtime for the player. A chance to restore balance and establish a new starting point. Ignorable cut-scenes are just that. Check your email, or text your mother, because as soon as everyone shuts up, it's back to the chaos.

Thanks to Rico's varied toolbox, Just Cause 2 may be chaos, but it plays out with a personality that you feel responsible for defining, and instead of being precious about its limitations it's sufficiently self-aware to exploit them. It may be an anecdote machine starring the world's most conspicuous secret agent, but hopefully upon quiet reflection it will be the game's unsung composure, rather than its random brilliance, that everyone is left to remember once the shooting ends. We'll find out in a fortnight.