Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

8.0

Format Xbox 360

Developer Pandemic Studios

Publisher EA Games

Genre Shoot 'em Up, Action, Sim / Strategy

18 Comments

Before we get down to the serious business of critically dissecting the best open-world action game since GTA IV, here's a note to show the calibre of Mercenaries 2: World In Flames.

When writing reviews, there's this task called 'screen-grabbing', where some baroque and sinister machinery is used to capture game images. It's a tedious process, and the one bad thing about a job that's pretty much like magic fairy dust falling from the skies 24-7. Well, in Mercenaries 2, it was fun. In fact, in fact it was pretty awesome.

You wander up to an enemy base. You call up some ludicrously expensive piece of military hardware, like a Fuel-Air bomb or - oh, baby - a nuclear bunker buster, and aim at something nearby.

Advertisement:

You then turn your back, swagger towards the camera whilst - if your merc of choice is heavy-hitter Chris Jacobs rather than speedy Jennifer or hardy Mattias - chewing a cigar. And then you take your screen-grab when the world explodes in the background. It's taken steely willpower to avoid just filling these four pages of beautiful conflagration dramatically illuminating hardy men.

More than muscle
In other words there is a lot in this game that remains very similar to the original Mercenaries , which - at its best - was awesomely stupid and stupidly awesome in about equal measures.

But where it excelled in destruction and sheer mayhem, it didn't have much going on upstairs. The sequel adds considerable depth to the original's plus points, without turning it into a serious economic simulation of trying to work out how to get the right amount of Snickers bars to feed your hungry mercenaries.

The core of the game remains the same. While we've now moved onto Venezuela from North Korea, you play one of three mercenaries trying to earn money by fulfilling contracts. These are given to you by one of the game's factions and are - with the exception of something like the occasional linear race mode through checkpoints - about achieving objectives rather than any real specific methodology.

So if you're hired to reduce a skyline into masonry, you're able to approach that in whatever manner you conceive, with whatever weaponry you've got to hand.

From stealing an enemy tank and bombarding it, to covering it with C4 and pulling its trigger as you walk away (probably smoking a cigar), you're left to do whatever you think is best. Or, at the very least, what you think is funniest. And there's always calling down some support weaponry. This is where the game's economic model starts to creep in.

Save the economy
You have an armoury of equipment that you've purchased that you can call, assuming the area hasn't some anti-air defences (the dismantling of which is a major tactical consideration). But it's a case of you actually having them. You've secured five cruise missiles, you can fire five cruise missiles, before having to go back to your contacts and buy some more.

The more curtailing limitation is the amount of fuel that you've managed to acquire - a proportion of which is used for each mission. So while calling in a helicopter to deliver a truck may cost relatively little, calling in a jet to deliver a warhead would cost comparatively more. Making the art of building up your supplies and deciding what to expend in each situation a key element to the strategy.

Another key element is acquiring them. While spending your money is all very well, you need to gain the trust of a faction before they'll sell the really destructive stuff to you. Alternatively, you can just, well, take it. As you're travelling across the world you'll come across fuel-dumps and impressive ordnance, which you can then tag and call in your chopper to pick up and cart off to your stronghold.

Bit on the side
Where the first game seemed empty of things to do, bar the mission, there's something worth stopping for everywhere in the sequel. This carries over to the side-missions. Upon meeting each faction, you're given the location of dozens of minor things they want done - high-important targets neutralised and buildings flattened.

You're regularly on your way to another task and realise that you could take a profitable detour if you just turn left here. The larger faction missions also impact on the world. You assist in storming areas, which opens new bases at which to shop and - just as importantly - helicopter pads for you to use in the game's quick travel system.

There's much here addressing the faults of the original game, as well as playing strongly to the pack-rat part of a human's mentality (who wouldn't stop their car for a chance to get their own fuel-air bomb?).

Trying to enliven duller aspects continues elsewhere, but isn't always as successful. The quick-time events to board fancy vehicles stop you dealing with tanks by just running up to them, but prove more than a little repetitive. But, despite that, it's a fine example of what Mercenaries 2 is most interested in. It's trying to be a really good game.

Simply unreal!
So while the shopping-for-guns feature is about the joy of collecting rather than trying to simulate the PMC-lifestyle, the combat embraces rather less realistic conventions that lead to a vastly more exhilarating game.

For example, when alarms are sounding, certain buildings become defensive strongpoints that continue to spawn soldiers until they're destroyed - like a modern-age Gauntlet.

Later, soldiers will try and call for help - but are clearly signposted so you can take them down before back-up arrives. Taken with the general tongue-in-cheek tone, it feels like all the most-loved 80's actioners: one part Predator; one part The A-Team; all parts destruction.

Its loveability makes its other weakness more regrettable, particularly as they're often in areas where the game's otherwise strong. For example, its destroy-what-you-like engine's a marvel, but there's a bit too much pop-up. It's genuinely well written, but some lines are repeated far too often.

Those moments grate, for a half-second, before something wonderful distracts you from them, and fills your attention with sparkly, brutal joys - like a shiny new rocket on the roadside, a tank that's carelessly been abandoned by its driver, or an explosion so big that it looks like it'll give your average nuclear test insecurity issues.

Which, inevitably, you'll walk manfully away from, whilst smoking a cigar. As is only right.

OXM Staff