Mercenaries 2 Offers Open World Thrills
Sandbox-style games are some of the most popular on the market. Games like Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row have sold extremely well, in part because of the freedom they offer. But not all of these open world experiences are limited to urban underworlds. The first Mercenaries game on the Playstation 2 and Xbox was an excellent game that went outside the city, and helped to expand the horizons of open world environments. Its successor, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, tries to continue this expansion.
Mercenaries 2 puts players in the country of Venezuela in a fake conflict. The government is in turmoil and in danger of collapsing. Of course, everyone and their mother seems to want to choose who gets to run the country. Enter you, the mercenary. You don’t care who wins this little battle. You don’t care what happens to the people. You don’t even care if the entire nation of Venezuela is obliterated.
All you care about is cold, hard cash. There is also the fact that someone backstabbed you and shot you in the rear end. But you can take care of that along the way.
Mercenaries’ paper-thin plot is simply a device used to give players a reason to blow the crap out of anything and everything they want to. There are numerous factions in the game that you can take contracts from. As contracts and bonus objectives are completed, different weapons, vehicles, and upgrades become available to purchase.
Players will notice that there are quite a few missions in Mercenaries 2. Unfortunately, after completing a few of these, it will become obvious that most of the missions consist of one of three objectives: kill a target, blow up a building, or race to a location as fast as you can. There are a handful of other objectives, but for the most part that’s what each and every faction will have you doing.
While these missions are fun, it would have been nice to see some variations to the objectives. Fortunately, there are seemingly an infinite number of ways to take on each mission. Mercenaries 2 boasts over 130 different vehicles, ranging from sports cars all the way up to helicopters that can take out entire city blocks.
The arsenals that some of these these vehicles have are also impressive. Everything from Gatling guns to anti-tank missiles are available to wreak havoc and destruction on your enemies" or the poor sap who was out for a nice drive and just happened to give you a funny look.
Despite the fact that the game features a nice variety of vehicles, the weapons that players can carry aren’t nearly as vast. You’ll probably find yourself sticking with the same two or three weapons throughout the game. A crucial problem with the weapons is that they don’t feel nearly as powerful as their vehicle counterparts. The basic assault rifle is extremely inaccurate and it takes more shots than it should to take down an enemy.
Even though enemies take a while to eliminate, their AI makes up for it. Enemies aren’t really that intelligent. You’ll find one or two enemies in a vehicle who can become a nuisance, but they are quickly eliminated. When enemies fight on foot, they are essentially sitting ducks, just waiting for you to blast them away using your preferred method.
Visually, Mercenaries is very well-done. In particular, the explosions look fantastic. Buildings crumble in spectacular fashion, and off-shore oil platforms burst into flame and light up the screen with balls of fire. Vehicles and weapons are also detailed and polished. The environments are also highly detailed and vibrant.
The audio in Mercenaries is also decent, but not quite up to par with the graphics. While explosions and weapon-fire sounds good, there are some minor, albeit, annoying problems. Characters will repeat lines over and over, and there are times when exchanges between characters aren’t clearly understood or muffled. Characters’ accents are also cheesy, and there are awkward pauses in some character exchanges.
In all, Mercenaries is a solid game and is worth the time to play if you’re a fan of open-world games. Be advised, however, that missions are redundant and that the audio isn’t as polished as it should be. Still, blowing stuff up never gets old. Mercenaries 2: World in Flames gets 3.5 GiN Gems out of 5 for being a solid action title with a big bang.
Developers: Pandemic Studios
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360