I've finished my time with Just Cause 2 and I'm tormented by mixed feelings about the game. Now I experienced great moments of testosterone soaked euphoria as I caused countless things to explode. Yet, I also suffered through major stints of frustration and doldrums. So in order to sort out my feeling for Just Cause 2 I turn to Sigmund Freud, Austrian Neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis.

Freud said that my psyche is split into three parts: Id, ego, and super-ego. The designers of Just Cause 2, also seemed quite privy to my psycho-trinity because they seemed to take advantage of its principles.

First, the Id--The pleasure seeking part of my psyche, driving me to avoid pain or unpleasantries. In order to satisfy my Id, Just Cause 2 gave me the fictional tropical island of Panau and a vast number of ways to destroy it: An arsenal of guns and explosives, a grappling hook to grab and tether on anything, an entourage of vehicles to drive or explode, an armada of boats, a fleet of planes and helicopters, an infinite parachute with quick deployment and retraction capabilities, and conveniently labeled building to destroy; it was a vast open world that followed fantastical rules of physics and was nicely set up for me explode with visceral delight. My Id loved Just Cause 2.

My Id was enjoying flying a plane into gas station and opening my parachute moments before crashing, thus, saving myself and blowing up both gas station and plane. This behavior was only reaffirmed by the fiery word "Chaos" on the bottom of the screen. However, my gleeful romp of wanton explosions was too good to be true. Enter the Super-Ego, the part of my psyche that tells me I need to function in an socially appropriate fashion. Just Cause 2 buckled under the Super-Ego pressure and placed a nice agency mission marker on the map. Agency mission represented some structure in the game, leading me to that ever present goal of completing the story and winning. I ignored the marker for a while, but the Super-Ego pestered me, why are you playing a game if you're not going to try and win? Very true, I agreed. Eventually, guilt took over and I hiked over to the agency mission marker.

After failing the mission for fifth time (this time for accidentally running over my escort), my Id was not pleased by any means. Just Cause 2 was doing an excellent job of pitting my Id and Super-Ego against each other.

So my Ego had to step in and do its job of satisfying the Id in realistic ways, implementing some defense mechanisms. With Just Cause 2, my Ego hit me with some rationalization. You have to have some sort of means of progression becuase you get have everything from the beginning, my Ego told me, and with the completion of these agency missions you open up more stuff from the black market which you can use to decimate more things. Plus, the missions aren't that bad, my Ego reasoned (that would be denial). So I reluctantly grinded through the agency missions.

My Freudian Theories may not be perfect, but it points a weakness you'll find in a lot of open world games, the actual story mission aren't that fun sometimes. Now the obvious answer would be to satisfy both the Id and Super-Ego and make the agency missions more engrossing and entertaining in Just Cause 2, but we might have to wait until the third installment to see if that pans out. But maybe there's nothing wrong with breaking down the Freudian paradigm, maybe it's just fine to run around and blow up everything, titillate your Id and call it day.