Batman would be jealous. We just fired our grappling hook at a vehicle traveling at 60mph — while standing on the roof of our own speeding Humvee — and then tethered the other end to the strut of the suspension bridge we were careening across, rubber-banding our pursuer’s ride back into a fatal, fireball-inducing face-to-face with the infrastructure. A sly grin and a Dave Chappelle–ian “Oh snap!” was how we expressed our shock and surprise.

And that was just the start. Merging bits of the Dark Knight with equal parts Bionic Commando and Grand Theft Auto, Just Cause 2 takes the potential-packed concept of the Xbox-built original and extracts a more concentrated dose of fun for its wildly redesigned Xbox 360 sequel. The options to exercise your sadistic side seem virtually endless — as do the activities and geographical landscape in this gleeful open-world actioner.

Considering that we spent our entire 30-minute-or-so play session just goofing around in the gameworld — our friendly Eidos rep actually had to kindly nudge us along to each new mission objective after we lost ourselves in tethering objects together and giggling maniacally at the results — we’re not sure Just Cause 2 even needs a storyline, but it’s got one just in case. Reprising your role as Rico from the first game, you discover your old mentor is missing, along with valuable intel he possesses and a substantial amount of money. You’ve been sent to find him and “solve” the problem.

We hopped in during the middle of the game, and in fact we didn’t even play a main story quest. Instead, we were set up with one of JC2’s myriad faction missions in the middle of the desert. Our goal? Grab a hostage and bring him back to the mercenary who gave us the job, and then get paid.

First, we had to drive out to the base where the hostage was being held. It was no short trip — not in a gameworld that feels roughly the same size as Oblivion’s province of Cyrodiil. We made it by grappling onto the roof of a moving vehicle, pressing Y to slide into the driver’s side, successfully completing a quick random series of on-screen button prompts, and then commandeering it. The base, naturally, was crawling with resistance when we finally arrived. Using the grappling hook to propel ourselves up to the roof of one of the buildings, we then used the high ground to pick off the most immediate threats. Before long, we’d made our way to the target, grabbed him, and stolen a Humvee for our escape.

As we began our drive back to the drop-off point, our Eidos rep reminded us that, being in a Humvee, we didn’t need to stay on the road. Right then. Cutting straight across the desert, we managed to stay well ahead of our angry pursuers, completing our goal and collecting our payday.

The epic finale of our hands-on time — once again reached only after polite prodding by Eidos as we continued to experiment with the grappling hook and physics system — tasked us with scaling a massive four-tower skyscraper called the Panau Broadcast Center. Here we had to grapple our way up to the satellite dishes atop each tower and align them; after that, our goal was to reach the weak spot on one of the antennas, plant a bomb, set it off, and watch the whole thing come crumbling down. Ascending the tall towers with our grappling hook was tricky business, but the payoff came when we rigged the explosive and then jumped off the tower and detonated the bomb as we descended. Where’s our cape and cowl when we need it?

Controls seem to be Just Cause 2’s only stumbling point right now — we had a lot of difficulty trying to master the shoot-the-ground, parachute-into-the-air maneuver, for example. We know it’s do-able, though, because we watched our Eidos rep pull it off effortlessly and at-will, and the dev team still has plenty of tuning and polishing time left. Once you’re comfortable with the controls, it seems like a lot of grappling hook and a little imagination will be all you need to have endless fun in Rico’s vast world.