Impressive world, but its all repetitive and eventually boring, and its filled with some painfully terrible voice acting
Story
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I don't know why I'm writing this, usually when there's a story in a game (and when isn't there), I gotta write a section dedicated to how the story is, and to be honest I don't want to do it on this one, cause if you ask me, there is no story whatsoever. You play as Rico Rodriguez, who comes to Penau, who's under the rule of Baby Panay (seriously?), a dictator, and since the country used to be a US ally, Rico has come in (or dispatched to by The Agency) to get rid of our evil dictator Baby Panay (that sounds incredibly stupid to even pronounce) by chaos.
The story is the bare minimum of effort here people. There are only 6 story missions and the story here is so short, you don't get to care or know anybody at all. It's not helped by some god awful twists (in case you're wondering, yes the dictator can take several shots and not die) and some really cheesy dialogue. It's terrible and painful, but at least it's short, and you don't play the game for its story.
2.0
Gameplay
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At least the gameplay isn't terrible, as its story. It's more or less like the first one, though it's been tweaked a bit. There's no lock-on for instance, which is good considering it made the first game too easy, though it may take a while to get used too. And there's no a grappling hook! Which you can use to grab on to cars, ground, buildings, people, planes, etc. It's actually a bit fun to use it and it'll make carjacking a lot easier and enemy killing a little more fun.
The game's structure works like this: You go to some marker, take a mission or a challenge, then you're sent to complete them, which is simple. You can take missions from The Agency to advance the story (which you really shouldn't, but they give trophies at least), or faction missions which involves you taking some place over, or just hijack a plane or something to get a certain person. Personally I value the faction missions more; at least they throw some variety, even if it means hijacking something. The Agency mostly has you going from point A to point B to blow up buildings and such. They aren't bad, just repetitive, unlike the faction missions.
Speaking of The Agency, I wonder what the hell they were thinking, when thinking about how Rico should help Peanu, because officially (or unofficially), he's there to help, and how does he help? By destroying everything around him! You go destroy oil platforms, water towers, electricity, statues and windmills. This guy's an American Al-Qaeda! He's basically running a country dry of water, electricity and what not. All we need is for him to seize control of his own group and start taking over the country and become the next president.
Outside of the missions, you can race with cars or places, or go treasure hunting for the many collectables. There are faction items, black boxes and lots of upgrades and their scattered all over the island, and the island is very, very huge, so happy hunting! Sadly exploring the island isn't as smooth as we'd all like. The controls are clunky for starters. Moving around on foot is alright, but the car handling is very lose and flying isn't' any better either, and using the grappling hook to climb buildings is really awkward. Sometimes it'll pull you up to where you want, only to instantly let go, instead of sticking to it. You can buy weapons from the black market, but it takes ages, because you can only buy one item at a time, and if you need another one, you have to go all the way back and sometimes suffer through the same cut-scene and then select the new item, etc. And there's a few bugs as well, cars driving without drivers, save files that doesn't work sometimes, visual glitches, the usual bugs you get from a big game that has seen the team trying to polish it, but figured it would take ages, so they didn't bother finishing.
The biggest problem (as if the controls weren't bad enough) is how repetitive it is. Always you're going around destroying things and it does get repetitive after a while. Take over missions (that is taking over locations) is fine and all, but you're always destroying the same things and there's very little variety. If you get bored of it after taking over just a few locations, then you should be happy, because there are only a dozen more locations, with the exact same thing. It doesn't take long to finish the game thankfully (only around 6 hours), but getting 100% is going to take ages. My bro played it for 27 hours and he's only got 30%, so it's going to take ageeeeeees.
5.0
Graphics
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The environments are actually a bit worth exploring, because they honestly look beautiful. There's a lot of variety in the environment, so it's good to look at, and it even has a lot of hidden tributes and the island of Lost :O That being said, the character models looks average, the cut-scenes are average and there's some visual bugs at times, and the draw distance is bad, slowly rendering things, even if you're at a height where you should be able to see it, it makes the roads look like there's just a lot of ground and no asphalt.
6.5
Sound
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If you really want the game (and why would you?), you should get it on the Xbox 360. That way you can play your own soundtrack and never have to listen to the god awful voice acting. It's over-acting at its worst and it's painful to listen to. The game also joins the list of entertainment that has cheesy dialogue intentionally; however this is so cheesy it's terrible, not hilarious. If you have the PS3 version, then you'd be better off muting the TV whenever someone's talking, because trust me, it's going to be painful if you don't.
3.0
Overall
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Just Cause 2 has a big, beautiful and impressive world, and while exploring it can be fun, the gameplays just too repetitive and eventually becomes boring. If you're a fan of the first one, then of course you'd like Just Cause 2, but everyone else should steer clear. It may be fun at first, being an American Al-Qaeda, but it quickly becomes boring.