Thread: Mercenaries 2: World in Flames Review

Yeah I know ?It?s been out for ages? but I?m a student and funds are short so keep your panties on and read the damn review.

They say stick to what you know if you have no idea how to move forward and by God does Mercenaries 2: World in Flames do just that. Having played around 30 hours of Mercenaries 2, and around 30 seconds of Mercenaries 1, I noticed that not much has changed since the release of the first game in 2005 and the second in 2008. The fundamentals are still the same as apparently shooting willy-nilly from the hip will be as accurate as crouching and aiming from the shoulder.
Let?s have some structure to this review and start off at:

Single player

The story itself is actually quite decent as your character of choice, mine being a Swedish biker with an Air Strike fixation, gets shot in the buttocks whilst running away from the man he had just helped take over a country. Now begins your quest for revenge as you seek out this back-stabbing douchebag one laser-guided bomb at a time. Seeking help from the various factions around Venezuela your objective is to get one step closer to your target before bunker-bustering his arse to the moon. Seems fun enough but there?s so much more that could have been added to. As you progress through the Story factions use you to get a foothold over the adversary and claim outposts. As a mercenary you don?t care for a faction?s plight only the cold, hard cash they pay you to kill things which although is a realistic idea doesn?t do the story any good at all. I personally ended up not caring who?d win even when the superpowers invaded and blew chunks out of each other and only wanted new artillery to use against my supposed new allies and indeed your not encouraged to like anyone as your main target is the aforementioned douchebag. Although I am a revenge-monger myself if I had the power, and the countless air support it would require to bring a country to it?s knees, I would mould a country?s future as I saw fit but apparently Mattias doesn?t give a toss as he?s too busy melee-bashing old ladies to send a message to the ?man?.

Multiplayer

Ok so what about when a friend or random game joiner helps out? Well pretty much the same really apart from the game will lag more, your opposite number will die more and you will turn the game off more. That?s not to say it?s not more fun, it is, it?s just that for all the fun you have the game will occasionally freeze without warning causing you to reload, losing progress and that sense of freedom. To be honest if this game had been made today I would expect a separate Cooperative storyline similar to Splinter Cell: Convictions but you just have to make do and enjoy blowing stuff up together because there?s sod all else to do. Granted having a buddy along for the ride makes doing Fiona?s ?friendly wagers? easier but after you have what looks like a Hitler suit for doing them there?s not much left to do apart from capture HVT?s and destroy buildings. It did surprise me at the number of people who are still online for this so it must be hitting he mark with some souls.

Gameplay

So you get the idea about gunplay it hasn?t changed since the first game and melee attacking a guy will kill him faster than shooting him in the eye. So something else must have been added to right? Well yes it has, the PDA has had an overhaul and is made easier, that?s assuming you master the bloody thing, to plan your route. I?ll be honest I didn?t use half the features in the PDA and instead abused it for Air-Strikes and attack choppers but different people do different things. It does make levelling a skyscraper more accessible though so the positives in this case do outweigh the negatives. Where one area is improved I?m afraid one is left unpolished, this would be the useless stuff. I refer to the ?requirements? for missions to be completed as apparently one man taking 5 helicopters will resolve a civil war shoot out, it won?t. Again, you are never forced to take these options but the memory used to store this crap could be used on the combat system, I?m just saying. That is only a little grumble as the thing that most impressed me was the hi-jacking quick time events. It goes beyond the simple GTA-style car stealing and adds a unique element to it as you take on a Chinese Monk on top of a tank and back-hand him under the tracker tires and drive off. Even with helicopters you can grapple hook up to the door and slam a pilots head into that door before sending him tonsils first into the unforgiving tarmac below but there is a price to be paid for missing the quick time event. Funnily enough missing it and being countered and thrown out of the helicopter will not kill you, just leave you at 1 Hp, it is the fact that you have pissed the pilot off and now he will chase you around the map until one of you are dead which steps up the already chaotic tempo. I enjoyed the chaotic tempo and didn?t try to break the disc after dying at an outpost for the eighth time as I knew I just needed more firepower.

Overall

Mercenaries 2 is an open world sandbox game were you can do whatever you want to whoever you want. Using a laser-guided bomb on an innocent pedestrian is a little bit excessive but it sure as hell is funny. With so much freedom and with so many ways to level a bustling metropolis the mission structure is a little restrictive but you?re not required to do them straight away leaving more room for destruction. In terms of replay value I would class it with games like Prototype as you get to blow off some steam but nothing to rush out and buy if you haven?t already got it. It?s decent and will occupy your time but feels like an original Xbox game with improved graphics probably the main reason why it was never a massive hit in the first place. It is a warm, inviting game but is not enough to turn CoD off for.

Rating: 6/10

Ur review is good but i have to say one thing, it is a game which is good when u play it but when u come back u realise it isnt as good as u thought when u first play it, i prefer the Mercenaries 1 on PS2, that was a brilliant, had many hours playing it

That's exactly it, you hit the nail on the head. It looks amazing from the outset but for such a basic game to be on a current generation console is abit lame. Maybe I wasn't playing it right but i did put alot of effort in, the game just gave nothing back, after the story and capturing HVT's theres only so many buildings you can blow up before getting bored. I'd recommend it for easy achievements but not much more

Good review, I agree with you I thought it was a decent enough game but I felt they had run out of time and rushes it a little it didn't seem finished to me. Worth a go though and its cheap as chips

I like the review and I think it's worth going back and look at the old games as they can be so cheap now,
also some games when they come out get like 10/10 but with couple of years under the gaming belt
you would see they had problems.

Not that Mercenaries 2 ever got 10/10,but 6/10 is fair.

Yeah I gotta admit there are some hidden gems that most gamers won't give the time of day to. I'm not saying Mercenaries 2 isn't fun, it will make you laugh with the insane things you can do, it's just compared to games like Saints Row 2 and even Destroy all human 3 it pales in comparison in terms of enjoyment. I mean come on in DAH3 you can probe people with a pop tart shooter!

i really liked the first mercenaries, thought it was a great game, great graphics and great gameplay for a PS2 game (i played it on PS2)

I remember the first Mercenaries. I played that on the PS2 and thoroughly enjoyed it but because I'd played it, when I bought the second game, I was disappointed because there wasn't the overhaul I was expecting. The linear storyline, the wild and inaccurate shooting and the maniacal destruction all came part and parcel of the game but it just wasn't enough. For a sandbox game, it needed something more and it just didn't deliver for me. I got rid of it rather sharply.