Mercenaries 2: World in Flames Review

Explosive Sequel Provides Hours of Destructive Entertainment

Aug 31, 2008

Releasing August 31st, this new game promises hours of explosive good fun with a next gen edge. 8/10

Who needs a deep story, a unique role-playing experience and brilliant character development when there is an open-world where you can spend hours upon hours just blowing stuff up? Admittedly, this is the draw for many to Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, developed by Pandemic. While the substance my be thin, the fun is in high quantity.

Coming three years after its predecessor Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, which was available for Playstation 2 and the original Xbox, this sequel promises to bring next-generation graphics and gameplay to it's sandbox world where nearly everything is destructible and the explosions come fast and plentiful.

Background

The three mercenary heroes from the first game are back in this one and each one offers a different perk during gameplay.

The game is set in Venezuela where a military coup, that the player helps start, has put a millionaire drug lord and businessman named Ramon Solano in charge as dictator. After getting the mercenary's help, Solano betrays the deal, refuses to pay and puts out a contract on the player. After escaping his clutches, with a backside injury that becomes a running joke, the game begins with the player choosing to ally with different factions, providing various destruction for hire, in order to fund a private military company (PMC), as well as a vendetta against Solano. In the mercenary world they live by the motto: "Everybody Pays".

Gameplay

The gameplay for Mercenaries 2 is pretty straightforward third-person controls. To complete missions the mercenary will be able to pick up many different weapons either as drops throughout the game world or from defeated enemies. Each merc is equipped with a PDA that he or she can use to use to review objectives, set waypoints on a GPS mapping system. Once players have recruited a helicopter pilot,they'll be able to order in all kinds of special drops with vehicles and weapons to use along the way.

While there are specific missions that move forward the storyline, when not on mission the world is an open field where players can feel free to fulfill all kinds of other contracts, hijack vehicles, blow things up, steal munitions or fuel and make cash, all of which will better prepare them for missions that may be proving troublesome. Hijacking vehicles from enemies, such as a tank, sometimes involves button pressing mini-games, but is always a fun way to get a new ride. After obtaining a grappling hook, players are able to hijack helicopters in flight.

There were some areas where this reviewer found glitchy gameplay, particularly when in the midst of several trees. The driving physics are considerably unrealistic, but admittedly fun. The innocent bystander AI leaves much to be desired as some citizens will unwittingly get scared as players are barreling down the road past them and instead of running for the hills, they run directly in front of vehicles, killing them and costing the player precious cash bribing the media to not report on the incident. Players are penalized every time an innocent dies.

Probably the best advance over the first game is the addition of online cooperative play. One of the things this reviewer felt would have made the first edition even better was a multiplayer aspect. While multiplayer versus play is still missing, the added option of drop-in/drop-out cooperative play with a friend online makes for a great time. Some of the missions are much easier with a friend anyway and so this is a wonderful addition and a very good selling-point for this game.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics are nothing super ground breaking for next-gen, but they're very good. Obviously a step up from its predecessor in this respect. The cutscene animations are decent, but again nothing to drool over. Where the game excels is in visually and audibly depicting the amazing explosions and destruction that are the centerpiece of the action.

The cutscenes are pretty well-written and very comical, but the one-liners the mercs utter during actual gameplay are very repetitive and eventually stale. It appears the developers only recorded a few key phrases from the actors and the game repeats them way too often and there's not a lot of variety there.

Parental Notes

For parents, it needs to be pointed out that the T-rated game does include a continual use of an epithet for one's backside over and over again, and of course violent, but not bloody or gory, content. For the most part the violence is more reminiscent of The A-Team than Saving Private Ryan. As stated before, while the destruction is open-ended, there are penalties when innocents are hurt even when accidentally.

Final Thoughts

The story and character development is fun but not incredibly deep, but in a game where there is a wide open world and virtually unlimited tools of destruction, obviously the story is only secondary. Mercenaries 2 is ultimately just a fun campy good time with lots of diversionary adventure. Hardcore Call of Duty 4 fans will likely not appreciate the lack of realism, but may enjoy it for a more light-hearted romp in a destructive playground.

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames releases August 31, 2008 on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC. Visit the Official Site.

The copyright of the article Mercenaries 2: World in Flames Review in Action Games is owned by Jeffrey Ford. Permission to republish Mercenaries 2: World in Flames Review in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.