Whoa. This is a PS3 game? The first impressions of Mercenaries 2: World In Flames aren't going to be dislocating anybody's jaws in amazement. Do not adjust your sets and all that, but this looks like a buttered-up PS2 game on first booting up. But then a friendly airstrike kicks in, and that subtitle, World In Flames, comes alive. At least
fire and destruction and choppers fire-balling into big trees is properly this-gen.
It's hard to see exactly why Mercs 2 has been held back for well over a year. The core gameplay has hardly been altered since I played this last July; the missions, general game structure and mechanics were all in place, and they were pretty polished too. Instead, the online options have suffered the cull, with play 'limited' to online co-op and nothing else. It was too tricky to have the original idea of fully free-roaming multiplayer implemented - as it caused all sorts of problems with the rest of the game.
When you consider the size of Mercs 2's theatre of operations, full co-op is a hefty achievement. At first it was going to give each player total freedom, but in a map some 64 square kilometres big, that would have been unworkable, so now players are tethered together.
The ties that bind There is considerable slack to the leash though, and many of the missions are tailor-made for a twin assault. Early on there's an opportunity to impress the president of Universal Petroleum, the ruthless mega corporation hellbent on taking over Venezuela, by rescuing one of her executives from Venezuelan Liberation Army kidnappers. It involves choppering in radio beacons to three enemy bases and clearing out any opposition. At such an early stage in the game it's pretty tough - I had to restart a couple of times.
With another player things were considerably easier. I stormed the gate of one base, blowing watchtowers and gun emplacements to bits, while he blew a hole in the wall with C4 explosives and sneaked in around the back to destroy the barracks. In retrospect, it was quite odd in that mission to find a UP base and a VLA fortress right next to one other. Perhaps rival military factions get preferential tax breaks if they set up shop in the same neck of the woods. Must get a bit hectic when rival squaddies go out for lunch. One thing's a constant in Mercs 2 - each side frequently takes shots at the other. A feeling of a country being torn apart from the inside permeates the game. The occasional building is raised to the ground and civilians run around panicked.
When you're presented with a seemingly living city, the times when the rules get broken become all the more glaring. Chaos in a war-torn environment is fine, but random behaviour grates. Civilians darting in front of your vehicle are a right pain in the arse, and this even happens when you take it slowly, giving you a $5,000 fine. Sometimes, Forces friendly to you will also inexplicably get under the tracks of the tank you happen to be driving, blowing themselves (and you) up, while incurring the wrath of that faction to boot. Still, for the most part, that thin veneer of realism just about holds.
Balancing act Once in the swing of the game, the idea is to get as much work as possible from each of the warring factions without pissing their enemies off so much that they go after you. This is a delicate balancing act, the trick to which is alternating - providing, of course, that you want a more rounded game.
You could always just side with one faction for the majority of the game - but then you'd be missing out on blowing the shit out of everybody. And that's half of the appeal knocked out in one fell swoop. Missions vary from picking up VIPs to chasing down dissidents and getting them out of the way so that guerrilla warfare or oil piping is not impeded. In general they follow a similar pattern. You're given your mission, you search around frantically for something to get to where you need to be in, you skitter through one of the many townships trying not to crush civilians (doing so incurs a whopping $5K fine - the cost of paying off news crews to keep it quiet) and then when you get to your destination, you generally blow the living Jesus out of the area with a combination of handily placed tanks, discarded rocket launchers and called-in airstrikes.
There's no place for stealth here, just like the first game. Mercs 2 is brash, loud and ultimately, a great antidote to Metal Gear Solid's finesse. Subtlety is nowhere to be found here. The head scratching extends no further than trying to decide whether to order a full-on tank strike over an armoured car supply drop. Aside from the main missions, there are numerous pick-ups to be found and smaller, well-paid odd jobs scattered about the place. You'll come across huge crates of cash and tanks of fuel lying around. Make sure and grab the cash.
Drop the pilot Once you've completed a certain part of the game, you get to recruit a chopper pilot whom you can call in to airlift such goodies away. Be careful who you pinch it from, though. I made the mistake of chucking a smoke marker down by a fuel tank in a UP compound, thinking that as I was in their good books, they wouldn't mind if I helped myself to some of their supplies. Wrong. A quick call to check that I wasn't supposed to be doing that, and all of a sudden they let me have it. So I jumped in a car and bolted, as you do.
But the longer you spend immersed in Mercs 2's world, the more you become aware of its shortcomings. Dialogue repeats annoyingly fast. Vehicle handling is a little twitchy. The main problems are the missions themselves. They're just not involving enough to really grip you. This is a massive game world with loads to do, yet you'll never find yourself spending hours playing it. You'll dip in, get bored and then go back later. The Co-op mode is fun and certainly helps draw you back into the game, but World In Flames won't set your world alight.
Simon Bramble
// Overview
Verdict
Mercs 2 is disappointing because its execution doesn't live up to its ambition. Though big and bold, There's a feeling that you've
played it all before. And you have.
you forgot to mention the biggest problem fool the online is made region so you cant play your frend in the u.s or down under i would give it a 5.0 becouse of this new trend EA are doing with there co-op games army of two was the same.
i had this game on the xbox but it killed itself in the cd tray one day leaveing masive circuar scraches makeing it unreaderbal but i managed to get 12 hours out of it before the dog nocked the xbox over killing its self.
every time you go to get in an enimy tank or helicopter be preped for a button bashing quicktime event there there every time you want it.
also i found when you get the opertunity to go find these people UP find a thret and you choose to take them alive insted of dead for the exter cash DONT take a tank with a npc at the turret.
I cleared out the area, went and handcuffed the guy, i was waiting for the chopper to come and pick him up and gess what happend!?
the ai that was in my tank desided that the guy i was trying to take alive curently slung over my sholder was still a thret, hoped in the gunning seat of the tank and proseded to fire the cannon at him! while i was holding him?
ye real smart AI
i dont think i will bother replaceing this game and its the last one will get from them
all the reviews i've read of this are pretty spot on: The sounds get repetative, the graphics aren't great and its exactly the same as mercs 1.
What i loved about Mercs 1 was that you could choose any drop in or air strike, and the price would be deducted straight from your account. with mercs 2, you actually have to go out and buy things seperately. and if you run out, your pretty much screwed.
The most annoying thing about drop ins is that you can only select 3 at a time. if you want to call in an airstrike you have to go into your PDA....go to airstikes......select the one.......click yes to replace........go back .......press circle to go back and not select........ and this gets pretty stale considering mercs 1 had them all in a huge list.
and when you pick up some oil or cash, it just respaws later? why? so you can just use a glitch and just pick it up over and over. i like to plan things strategically so i dont run out of oil, but theres no change of that happening now.
but there is one thing that all the reviews ive read have also said............and thats that its pretty fun blowing shit up. Theres a giant faction building that i smile every time i allok at cause i think "when im done with them, thats goin straignt down". driving tanks is pretty fun too, i got a huge bill for totaling up the civilian kills.....
Hope this adds a little more depth to the other review. overall if you dont buy it, but the old one or rent this one.
What was they thinking with mercenaries 2 at all, i mean honestly they had it pretty much spot on with mercs 1, all they had to do was give us the next gen graphics, tweak it a little, and voila.
instead they give us not so next gen graphics, dodgy vehicle controls, quite the opposite of its prequel, for me theirs only 3 great things, the size, the explosions, and the online co-op, that takes it away from from the rest of the been their done that titles on the market.
However with the amount of time spent waiting for this game, in high anticipation i felt like i had been the one to climb to the top of mount everest, only to realise id climbed the wrong one.
apart from that enjoy, the game has its finer moments, just wont appeal to everyone.
I think this review is a bit harsh, sure the game isn't perfect but many of its short comings can also be seen in GTA 4, yet its review scores didn't seem to suffer for it.
What we have here is a huge 3d environment that you can bombard with heavy munitions till your hearts content, watch buildings collapse around you as you go on a tank rampage. Sure you might get fined the odd $5000 for collateral damage, but you'd have to be piss poor at the game for this to make any impact on your finances, its the equivalent of being fined 1p for speeding in the real world.
In summary if you can't have fun while playing this game then there is something seriously wrong. Also for the dude who reviewed the game, I'm a casual gamer these days and even I managed to complete it without going online to find someone to hold my hand. People moan about games being too short or too easy, yet the minute they are faced with any sort of challenge they start crying about it being too hard. :)
