Players: 1-2
Price: $59.99
Platform(s): PS3 (Xbox 360, PC, PS2, Wireless)
Developer: Pandemic Studios
Publisher: Electronic Arts
ESRB: Teen
Website: Mercs 2
Rating:


Let’s get things straight from the start: the story in Mercenaries 2 is about as deep as Paris Hilton’s concern for your personal well being. Maybe I’m giving too much credit to Paris, but the point is this game has little to drive you forward. What it has instead is explosions. Wonderful bone shattering explosions. In fact, if you don’t have an RPG aimed at someone’s face by fifteen minutes into playing you should put the game down and anticipate the release of My Diary. For those who can stick around you’ll be treated to some jarring bugs and AI problems that’ll drive you insane. But hey, that tank sure did explode real pretty like.

Starting off developer Pandemic gives you a choice of three characters: Mattias Nilsson, Jennifer Mui, or Chris Jacobs. There are indeed minor tweaks in how each plays, but just close your eyes and choose. They are all mercenaries, and they all cause things to explode. A lot. The biggest alteration comes when playing as Jennifer where you’re referred to as a “she” or “her.” As in: “Holy crap! Did you see how she threw a grenade at my buddy and made him into an exploding cloud of human detritus?” Stuff like that.

The game tries to give you a motivating factor with the opening showing you working for Ramon Solano who pays you for your services by shooting you in the ass. So you decide to kill him. That’s easy to understand: guy shoots you in buttock, you kill guy. The rest of the game you’ll wonder where the plot is, and when the rare plot driving cut scene arrives you’ll wonder when you can get back to working with Universal Petroleum to cause havoc for the People’s Liberation Army of Venezuela.



Mercs 2 is a do what you want when you want type of game for the most part. You work with different factions: Universal Petroleum, the People’s Liberation Army of Venezuela, the Chinese army, the Allied Nations, and the Rastafarian Pirates. None of them like each other and you have to be careful who you’re pissing off at any given moment. One job will invariably make a large number of armed persons your sworn enemy. At least until you make someone they don’t like turn into a pile of smoking ash.

It really adds little depth to the gameplay because it is too easy to get an enemy faction on your side. You’re never troubled to contemplate whether you should do something. You just decide what would be the most fun. And that’s what Mercs 2 builds itself up to be. There’s an arcade styling to the gameplay (especially with all of the icons popping up whenever you grab items and weapons) that you never feel a situation could be dangerous. Tactical maneuvers in Mercs 2 consist mainly of running around in the open with the biggest weapon you can find.

The real problem is that, oh man I can’t believe I’m going to say it, after awhile blowing stuff up gets boring. It’s the same thing over and over with no real reason. After a few hours Mercs 2 easily transitions itself into the game that sits in your disc tray while you play Geometry Wars 2 or Braid. Lucky for me I played the PS3 version and have no downloaded games on that system yet. Plus the absolute best thing in the game is introduced in the beginning: the air strike. Essentially you target a location and then call in a huge strike that makes an explosion so big you have to run away. You don’t have to earn something so magical, it’s just handed to you.



The airstrikes are particularly important to those of you who like to destroy everything in the game world. Destructible is an apt description for the environments in Mercs 2. Unlike some games that make such claims this one delivers. You can even leave potholes in the street that’ll stick around until you take a break.

There’s also a serious problem with how the game looks. It’s not ugly, and certainly not a “last gen” visual experience. But the graphics do look like they’re from a game in 2007. Not only that but there are some wonderfully hilarious texture problems and pop in. At one point I turned a corner, walking, and shadows on the next street started filling in one by one. I spent the 10 or so seconds trying to guess what the next shadow to be painted in would be.

I wish Mercs 2 was a bit more than what it ended up being. Even with a some more polish on the AI and graphics I doubt anything except a complete overhaul could help ease the repetitiveness of the gameplay. It’s fun while it lasts, but I just can’t help but feel Pandemic let us down with the game that was delivered.