Time to blow more stuff up! - Mercenaries 2:World in Flames

Back in 2005, game developers Pandemic and LucasArts released
Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction on the original Xbox and
PlayStation 2 systems. This game was one of the few that was able to
take the sandbox game-play of the Grand Theft Auto series and put a fun
and exciting spin on it. As in the first game, Mercenaries 2 is a
third-person sandbox game with a few additions and improvements
including an online co-op play mode, an upgraded physics game engine,
the ability for characters to swim and a cool option to burn stuff in
hopes of creating more chaos.

The game has three characters from
the previous game to choose from including Chris Jacobs, Jennifer Mui
and Mattias Nilsson. You get to choose what character to play and each
has his or her own unique abilities to get the job done. The story
places the player in pursuit of a drug lord named Solano who contracted
the services of a mercenary (that’s you) and then gives you the finger
instead of paying you your hard-earned cash. With the overthrow of the
Venezuela government, Solano takes the reins as a dictator, and thus
takes control of the country’s oil supply. As this chaos ensues, other
factions arise against Solano and as a betrayed mercenary, you side
with any of them to seek your revenge and maybe make some pocket change
along the way. At its heart, Mercenaries 2 is a game about finding
trouble and blowing stuff up.

Sure, having detailed characters with a plot that’s bigger than any one player and including harsh realities of geopolitics that hold true in the real world, this game is really about causing chaos and having the weapons and vehicles to do so. The look of this game is what one should expect as far as environments and graphics. Never having been to Venezuela, I can only guess that this is as close as I will get to seeing it. The lush jungle and modern buildings are very well done. If you have a decent sound system then booms and explosions will set the tone and help keep you in the action.

As a sandbox game, Mercenaries 2 allows you to have almost complete interaction with your environment. Blow up buildings, trees, doghouses and whatever you want. You can steal almost any vehicle like tanks or helicopters, but you do have to jump through some hoops like completing certain objectives to get what you need. There are not a lot of these sequences, so watching them more than a few times can be tiresome. Even though this is an open-world game, you can’t go anywhere you want. Like Grand Theft Auto, you have to unlock different parts as you play, so it does take some effort to move along.

Unlike the GTA games, Mercenaries 2 has a fun sense of humor that pokes fun at even itself and doesn’t get too dark even with all the destruction going on around you.

If you liked the first Mercenaries game, then this will fix the things that were missing and keep the things that made the first game fun. The world in which you play is extremely large, twice the size or more of GTA IV. Overall, the game does have some issues. For example, some of the less-important character models look like Xbox or PS2 graphics, and there are a few noticeable glitches in the driving and such, but overall it’s a solid game and at the very least will keep you busy blowing stuff up.

Mercenaries 2:World in Flames
★★★✩✩

Publisher- Pandemic Studios. Rated- T for Teen. Platforms- PC, PlayStation 2, 3 Xbox 360. Retail- $39.99-$59.99

This article appears in Sep 18-24, 2008.