GameSpy Review of Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

Here's the skinny on Mercenaries 2: It's a great game full of fun ways to detonate or otherwise annihilate a variety of military targets, but it also has trouble with its framerate, poorly blended textures and sometimes shoddy character modeling. Really, it comes down to a question of whether or not you're willing to sacrifice some graphical fidelity and artistry for a pretty hefty helping of raw destructive power. So although Mercenaries 2 may stumble technically in certain areas, the core gameplay provides a surprising amount of variety in an enormous explorable environment... and enough insane ordnance to blow the landscape to little pieces a hundred times over.





I Will Never End This Mayhem





Regardless of which of the three mercenaries you choose to play as, the story remains largely unchanged. You get shafted by a former employer and embark on a campaign of murderous vengeance that eventually engulfs all of Venezuela in a conflict with global ramifications. Unfortunately, that means that you spend most of the game shooting the crap out of Venezuelan revolutionaries whose voice acting is performed with all of the cultural delicacy of Eric Cartman's impression of "Hennifer Lopez." Ultimately, the battle raging in Venezuela becomes such a big deal that China and "Allied" forces (meaning the United States) need to get their hands dirty as well complete with their own requisite racially insensitive caricatures, so at least everyone gets some ribbing.










All of the ridiculous story exposition is totally beside the point however, because it's all just so much window dressing. The real heart of Mercenaries 2 is in the actual activity of decimation on a massive scale, and the wealth of tools available to help you level the landscape.





It doesn't take long to acquire a support crew, so after only an hour or so you should be able to hijack anything you want (before you can hijack helicopters, you need to have a mechanic in your employ). Hijacking things is one of the best features of Mercs 2 as it gives you instant access to almost every piece of equipment and functions as a pretty handy offensive tactic. Why blow up a tank when you can just hijack it and end up having a useful addition to your arsenal instead of a worthless hunk of smoldering metal?





One of the secondary bonuses of hijacking is the tenuous disguise that the practice offers, because once you've grabbed a jeep or an APC most people (even soldiers and revolutionaries) will naturally assume that you work for whoever's logo is painted on the side. While this is very useful for sneaking into enemy territory and icing a high-value target, the downside is that it works both ways, so even if you happen to score a sweet enemy chopper, you might end up getting shot down by your own allies because they don't know that their beloved merc is piloting it. Still, this little disguise wrinkle adds a cool bit of strategy to all of the raw annihilation.













The Paid, the Bad and the Ugly





Mercenaries 2's overall graphics are a bizarre dichotomy of very detailed and sadly botched. While some textures look fantastic, many others lack detail and have obvious tiling issues. The ocean in particular has very noticeable tiling when flying at even low altitudes. This is a shame, because flying through Mercs 2's Venezuela is really the best way to grasp the scope of the environment, and the experience is sullied a bit by the fact that the water looks like a patterned linoleum floor. When flying over land, things look considerably better as fog-socked valleys give way to tree-dotted foothills and craggy mountains... Mercs 2 can be quite picturesque.





At first, you may think that the explosions suffer the same kind of graphical schizophrenia, but this is likely due to the fact that you start the game with pretty crappy weapons that offer only anemic puffs of smoke. In the later half of the game explosions take on an entire life of their own and every one is as different, beautiful and subtly structured as a snowflake. The Air-Fuel weapons (which come in both huge, jet-dropped and shoulder-launched RPG flavors) in particular look positively gorgeous, first scattering huge clouds of flammable vapor, then igniting that vapor in a cataclysmic furor of flame and smoke. The explosions from the latter half of Mercs 2 are productions in and of themselves and are simply stunning to behold.





It's easy to point out framerate issues and shoddy character modeling (especially on female merc Jennifer Mui) and it seems odd that these problems remain in the retail product. Their juxtaposition next to the grandiose and variegated forms of combustion implies a clear focus on portraying destruction over fleshing out characterization.










Curiously, these unimportant characters (especially the random fodder you meet in villages targeted for your wrath) are a bunch of chatterboxes, constantly nattering on about the same stupid nonsense. When you hear your operator helpfully suggest for the zillionth time that you fly back to the PMC in the event that you feel lost, you too shall be tempted to damn the voice acting altogether and simply turn the vocal tracks off. Of course, the upside to your enemies annoying you with their cloying remarks is that it is all the more satisfying to silence their insolent yapping.





Limited Liability Corporation





Co-op play offers some spice, but it probably isn't the way you want to approach a full playthrough of the campaign since there are some frustrating restrictions. Players cannot be very far apart, so flying separate helicopters is a tricky proposition at best. The second player also is restricted to entering and exiting the store (to stock up on much needed airdrops and weapons) only when the first player does so, but at least their financial stats are preserved so both players draw from their own accounts. With these restrictions, co-op is best used sparingly for a particularly challenging mission or two (and there are missions that are considerably easier with help).





Mercenaries 2 is a lot of fun if you don't get bogged down by its rough-hewn minutiae and relish the simple pleasures of blowing things up. Its carrot-on-a-stick equipment mechanics do a decent job of stringing you along for ever bigger bombs, but still give you a sense of short-circuiting the system through its tantalizing hijacking mechanic. There are definitely graphical problems and sound issues to forgive, but the gameplay itself is very solid and makes this a worthy successor to the first Mercenaries.

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