Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

I was happy to see Just Cause 2 finally get a patch to 1.02 yesterday here in the US on the PS3 (the Xbox 360 and PC patches should already be out now) and had the chance to take it for a spin last night.

The official word is that the patch sets YouTube movies as “public” by default, fixes issues that would stop people and vehicles from spawning, changes enemy AI so they do not fire on the player while struggling with an enemy in a vehicle, increases the frequency of seeing the Vanderbildt Leisureliner vehicle, and “numerous stability improvements”.

I’ve been playing this game for a very long time — I’m over 79 hours into my first playthrough — so I was able to notice a difference right away, almost all for the better.

In the past YouTube support was pretty badly broken. I was usually able to upload a YouTube video once during a play session, but if I tried to do so again later during my play session the game would hang, requiring me to quit out to the XMB and lose any unsaved progress (not much is lost thanks to frequent checkpoint saves). I was able to upload four or five test videos in rapid succession in my first playthrough which tells me they’ve fixed this.

Also related to video capture on the PS3 is a well-documented bug (in the forums anyway) where the game would stop suddenly after an extended play session and tell you the system had reached its limit on recording time. You would be prompted to discard the recording (or save it), and then your game and controller settings would all be set to zero: no volume, all hud options at lowest settings, controller options all pushed to lowest sensitivity, and so on. I would have to go into each settings area — video, audio, and controls, and push “Set to Defaults” to restore them, and then invert the Y-axis the way I like it before continuing to play. It was very annoying, and with this patch, while that pop-up message occurred, my settings weren’t lost. Progress!

The rare vehicle mentioned in the patch is the Vanderbildt Leisureliner, and it’s one of the 104 vehicles you need to drive to get a “Try Everything Once” trophy. The official message boards are littered with frustrated posts searching for the bus in the mountains, and it’s not parked anywhere by default — you have to catch it on the road driving around. I was able to find it, and used the newly stabilized YouTube functionality to capture finding it along with a peek at where I saw it on my map in-game.

The AI change that stops soldiers from firing on you when you’re taking over a vehicle — ostensibly to give their pal the driver or pilot a chance to stop you — is most welcome. Once you’re in the driver’s seat they resume shooting, so it’s not like you get a free pass, but at least I’m not getting vehicles blown up out from under me during the hijacking attempt anymore. It’s quite annoying to be on the verge of throwing out a chopper pilot (“Get. Out.”) to make your escape only to be grapple-cabled to a burning helicopter fuselage plummeting to the ground a second later.

It might be my imagination but I think the game is running slightly better since the patch — Rico’s animations seem a bit snappier — but I did have what I think is my first fall-through-the-world glitch happen, too. I’d stepped off an oil rig and after I fell down through the water without swimming I quickly paused it and saved my progress in a new slot to see if I could salvage my progress. I reloaded (which puts you at a stronghold) and was safe and sound to continue playing.

Have you tried the game with the new patch on your favorite platform? Let us know what you think.