User Review : Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

Engulf the world in flames...albeit the bug ridden country of Venezuela

A few years ago Pandemic Studios went from an unknown development team to one of the most popular in the industry. With games like the two Star Wars Battlefront games, the Full Spectrum Warrior series, Destroy All Humans, and of course the debut of Mercenaries. They aren’t by all means known to be the best developer out there, but when both them and BioWare merged it seemed we had a super-company on the horizon (until they accepted a buyout from EA). But the past two years it seems Pandemic has all but vanished off the radar. It seems all of their focus was laid upon Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. It’s been a bumpy road for the sequel, as it was often delayed and took its sweet time in development. Though I am happy to see a developer spend its time on one game and really try to push out quality, Mercenaries 2 isn’t exactly material EA wants to broadcast as company quality.

This is not to say Mercs 2 by any means is a god awful game, quite the contrary it’s a solid game hidden in a bug-ridden world. I have played the original, but I never gave it a full go. I remember playing the demo of it for weeks on end before the game came out, but never picked the game up until just about two years ago. I played it on my Xbox 360 and the game didn’t run that smoothly via the backwards compatibility emulation so I sold it off within a week of owning it. I decided just to hold off until Mercs 2 to get a grasp of the universe, but I liked what I saw in the original. You start off the game as one of three characters of your own choosing. I went through the game as Mattias Nilsson, since he can regenerate health faster than either Chris Jacobs (who can carry more ammo) and Jennifer Mui (who can run faster). However the main goal of each character remains the same. There is hardly any differences in story for whoever you choose to be. That isn’t exactly a let down, as the game gives you a choice of your main character but it would have increased replay value if the game were to have different stories for all three characters. That is wishful thinking though.

The setting for the second installment moves on from North Korea to Venezuela. The world of Venezuela inside the game is expansive and does take a good amount of time to travel around by your choice of foot, boat, vehicle, or helicopter. There are planes in the game but unfortunately they are just for use of bomb runs and not accessible by the player. Every single vehicle, boat, and chopper can be hijacked, some harder than others. For instance for basic vehicles, like a Raven (allied truck type vehicle), it’s extremely simple to hijack. But let’s say you find this high tech chopper you want, it will be a bit harder to hijack though eventually it comes second nature to you once you do it a few times.

Like a lot of other third person style games, the game milks quick time events. Want to hijack that Scorpion chopper? Quick time event. Want to defeat a boss? Quick time event. Where the game lacks challenge is that quick time events don’t differ when it comes to the same event. Using the Scorpion chopper as an example again (the Scorpion chopper is a Venezuelan Army helicopter), everytime you hijack one it is the same quick time event. The sequence never differs. Now the sequence would be different if you were to hijack a Liberator chopper instead (a Liberator is an allied helicopter). It would have added a lot more challenge to the game if the quick time event sequences for every single vehicle in this game were randomly generated.

Speaking of challenge; well if you are looking for a difficult game, look elsewhere. Mercenaries 2 is an extremely easy game to go through and beat. The AI does put up a fight and you will die sometimes, but 90% of the time you die from just being stupid, or from one of the numerous bugs in the game. If Venezuela is anything like that portrayed in the game, then I feel bad for the population there. Not because of its dictator leader or the conditions of its economy, but because people get stuck in trees, vehicles magically disappear right in front of you, and objects such as cargo holds and even boats will be stuck floating in the area. As stated earlier, Mercs 2 is a solid game hidden in a bug ridden world. I can understand the developers adding some kind of “realism” when they had your character slow down when entering brush and tree areas, but it gets downright frustrating when you seem to be jump a tree rather than just trying to get through to evade enemy fire. And numerous times it has happened where I would call for a helicopter to either escape enemy fire or just to fly from point A to point B where the chopper would land and then just out of nowhere magically disappear just as soon as I was about to enter it. Not only does that frustrate you but it does cost you money and fuel.

Fuel is the currency of choice when it comes to ordering airstrikes, vehicles, and weapon drops. You use actual cash to purchase such items from shops spread across the entire region, but you need fuel to call them in and access them. Venezuela is filled with fuel and cash; which makes me question why the economy is so piss poor there. As you drive/fly through the map you will notice on your map numerous areas where you can steal fuel, find crates of cash, and even get airstrikes at no charge to you.

If you go through Mercs 2 just doing the main missions to beat the main storyline, you are looking at perhaps an eight hour game. You are required to do a few side missions for a variety of factions to be able to get to the final mission, but story length is not a strong point to this game. To complete everything however you are looking at a solid 15-20 hour game. By everything I mean finding all spare parts (collect these to get custom vehicles from your mechanic), completing all objectives for all factions, unlocking all weapons, as well as achieving all achievements/trophies (PS3 Trophies added week of October 27, 2008). For a game like Mercenaries 2 where it is an open world environment, you should expect more variety in objectives and unfortunately the game likes diversity of such matter.

Now that we have gotten through some of the game’s rough edges, let’s get to what makes Mercenaries incredibly fun…total destruction. Everything is destructible in Venezuela, and by everything I mean everything. Every single bridge, every single wall, every single building, even trees, are all targets for you to obliterate. This game packs the heat when it comes to weaponry. Pistols to machine pistols; basic assault rifles to heavy machine guns; rocket launchers to anti-air launchers; and all the C4 buildings can consume. There is no weapons shortage here and you are influence to destroy everything and anything. You even are able to hold the power of god in your hands…if you know what I mean. I know being able to destroy any building in a video game may make it sound like a terrorist training tool but lets be real here -> this a video game. If you drop the power of god in Venezuela, there would be no life left after the explosion. Yet after I dropped a couple of dozen, life prevailed.

There are penalties however. Don’t forget this a T rated game from EA. This is not GTA by any means. If you kill a civilian you are penalized with a fine (but by time you are 1/4 through the game losing such little money from a civilian death doesn’t really matter to your in-game wallet). There are also penalties when it comes to taking things from your factions. You have several factions in this game, which include the P.I.A.V., Universal Petroleum, Pirates, China, and Americans. Each faction headquarters has either airstrikes and/or fuel tanks you can nab up to your inventory. However take them while someone sees you could cause them to radio you in. If they successfully radio you in, the faction loses respect for you and will become more hostile towards you. This also can happen (obviously) if you start shooting up a faction headquarters. You can prevent hostile actions by a faction by killing the person radioing you in. Though if you don’t leave the hostile area after such an action the faction will be going after you. When you leave and return to an area without being radioed in the faction will act like nothing had happened.

Overall, Mercenaries 2 didn’t receive as much accolade as its predecessor but it’s a fun action game to pick up and play. I should mention there is multiplayer as well in the form of co-op and adversary modes. The multiplayer seemed like a last minute add on, and the server connections aren’t the most outstanding. Now-a-days you can find this game brand new for as low as $35-45. I’d say for that price its worthy of a pick up and play through. But for the full $60, I’d say pass til a better deal emerges. Mercs 2 could have been something excellent, it just faulters in a bug ridden world and lack of mission diversity.