Avalanche Studios released the fourth entry into their massive open-world action series two weeks ago to middling critical success. The team just released a first big patch for Just Cause 4 which aims to improve a myriad of technical issues players have been experiencing since launch.
In a blog post on the Community hub of Just Cause 4 on Steam, developer Avalanche acknowledged the poor technical state of their game many users have been complaining about. The new patch aims to alleviate exactly those numerous issues by addressing game crashes and technical bugs. Here’s what you can expect from the patch:
– Numerous stability fixes
– Improvements and fixes to menu navigation for mouse and keyboard users
– Support for remapping of movement keys
– Improved vegetation rendering and asset updates
– Fixes to some texture mapping issues
– Increased mouse sensitivity range
– Corrected specialised vehicle support for mouse and keyboard players
– Fixed issue with steering flying vehicles with keyboard
– Fixed the disabling SSAO option in Graphics menu, which resulted in broken Ambient Occlusion
It’s a good start but technical issues were only one part why we were left disappointed, which you can read in detail in our review. Many games launch with bugs, it’s pretty much the norm these days. Especially large, sandbox titles like Just Cause 4 can present a challenge for developers to ship bug-free. But what users have received with Just Cause 4 is more than the norm it seems, with the game getting hammered on Steam, with huge numbers of negative reviews. Many of which lament the technical state of the game.
A real shame, as Just Cause 4 could have been the return to form for the series which seemingly peaked among fans with the second game. Its sequel, Just Cause 3, also had a rough launch across all platforms, mainly again because of technical problems. After many patches, Avalanche managed to win back its fans, so it’s even more frustrating that the newest game is repeating the mistakes of its predecessor.
Avalanche is promising that this first patch is only the start and that the team is hard at work addressing other issues users have been complaining about. Will it be enough to turn around the damningly low user score of just 34% on Steam? Time will tell. At least, users know that the developer has a track record of supporting and improving their game.
