Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (Xbox 360)

It may not be everything that we hoped for in a sequel, but Mercenaries 2 is still mindless explosive fun.
9/4/2008 8:14 PM | 5 Comments | Page 2 of 3

What's Hot: Taking what you loved from the original (blowing up stuff) and making it even more addictive (blowing up more stuff with a bigger arsenal)

What's Not: Horrendous AI; Cooperative play is more like just getting help; Gameplay broken up by lots of loading time; Repetitive dialogue

Billy Berghammer
Status: Thank you Mario, but the status message is in another castle!

It's a big world, and most of it can be leveled.

Most main missions will see you working to get from point A to point B to accomplish an objective or two. To do this, you'll probably be jacking a vehicle or having one transported in from your arsenal. Jacking vehicles is no longer a standard cut scene, and depending on how valuable the vehicle you're trying to swipe is, the more context-sensitive controller moves you'll need to pull off. There is a wide variety of vehicles for you to pilot, from cars and jeeps, armored transports, tanks and helicopters to jet skis, mopeds and monster trucks.

Mercenaries 2's rides are often as humorous as they are devastating. For the most part, even though I could have a tank or boat airlifted in, I found it more fun to go into a situation without a vehicle and find one myself -- especially if there's an enemy helicopter whipping missiles at you: grappling up into it and tossing out the pilot is ever so satisfying. But one confusing rule that Mercenaries 2 leans on is that vehicles act as armor. For example, say you're in a tank and your health is full, and an enemy blows it up. You'd think that you'd die instantly, but most of the time you'll barely take a scratch. Almost on the brink of death in a mission? Start a vehicle-jacking sequence or hop in an empty one and you'll most likely survive the situation.

Explosions and smoke effects really do look this good.

But blowing up stuff is what Mercenaries 2 is all about, and explosions and destruction look commendable. With most everything in the world able to be obliterated, it's quite surprising that little things like tree branches and brush can restrict movement. The environments vary quite a bit and are populated by a lot of items that you can decimate, but ground textures and vehicle modeling are still simple. What about that new fire engine? Looks like it got cut. For the most part the game runs at a smooth clip, but we noticed a bit of slowdown when we were on the water and destroying a lot of real estate at the same time.

From the outset Pandemic has been boasting about drop-in-drop-out cooperative play, and for the most part it works pretty well. As long as you're logged into Xbox Live, the game can be joined by another player at any time. You can toggle your privacy settings to allow only your friends to join your games, or to allow anyone to help you tackle missions publically. However, only the host will get credit for completing missions, which is a letdown.

Thanks for the help, buddy -- too bad you won't reap the rewards for it.

Friends joining games will receive cash and fuel that transfers to their own game, as well as multiplayer-exclusive Achievements, but even if you both start new characters and play cooperatively, only the host will reap all of the rewards. Another drawback is that you can't be too far out of range from your co-op buddy; you're tethered to stay within a certain distance. The leash is pretty long, but it's bothersome that you can't accomplish separate mission objectives if they're too far apart. All that being said, the game's netcode is solid, and we rarely noticed any hitches in our cooperative matches.

While we wouldn't normally complain about load times, we have to take issue with the constant loading times in the game. There's even loading time when going in and out of conversations with your PMC mates -- which doesn't seem all that necessary, especially since you're just calling up a simple menu. There's a lot of loading, period, which keeps you away from the action often enough to be annoying.

Even though Mercenaries 2 has pretty ridiculous artificial intelligence, an uninspired story supported by mediocre CG cut scenes, excessive load times, and not entirely perfect co-op, I'll still put up with it for how much fun accomplishing objectives and missions can be. The variety of ways you can accomplish goals, a huge arsenal of vehicles and weaponry, and all-out destruction can be a real immature pleasure. While it's not perfect, sometimes a little mindless annihilation is just what's needed to put a smile on your face.

This review was based on a retail copy of the game purchased by the writer.