Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

The male species sure is easy to please. Populate a game with humongous earth shattering explosions and they’ll easily overlook a wafer-thin plot, predictable lead characters, corny dialog, and tons of glitches… or so developer Pandemic would have us think. Luckily for them, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames just about manages to make the cut with this ideology firmly rooted between its legs, making for an utterly brainless yet terribly enjoyable action game. Unfortunately it’s also hounded by nagging issues all through.

In Mercenaries 2 you play as one of three mercenaries – Mattias Nilsson, Chris Jacobs or Jennifer Mui – who after being double-crossed and shot in the butt by Ramon Solano, a Venezuelan businessman-cum-dictator, is left for dead. As if shooting you in the tush wasn’t bad enough, Solano doesn’t even honor the contract you most honorably fulfilled. No one bails from paying a mercenary his fee and gets away with it, so now you have to hunt him down, kill him and his entire entourage (that by the way includes thousands of VZ soldiers) while blowing up most of the country in the bargain – simple innit?

Before you embark on your tour de force (literally speaking) you’ll get to choose any one of the above mentioned mercs, each of which comes equipped with a special characteristic to boot. Jacob can carry more ammo since he’s the bulky type, while Mui can run faster thanks to her agile nature. Nilsson, the game’s poster child, on the other hand, regenerates health faster, making him the ideal choice for your first play through. Also he’s voiced by the uber cool Peter Stormare and hearing him deliver cheesy dialogs like “I yearn for a mission that’s Boom, Boom and Boom” is somewhat of a guilty pleasure.
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The game follows the same sandbox structure made popular by Grand Theft Auto, which means you’re pretty much left to your own devices from the word go. Get straight down to the missions that’ll progress the game’s plot or earn some cash by indulging in a plethora of side quests – it’s all up to you. Money earned in the game can be used to purchase better weapons, cooler vehicles, and airstrikes – the most definitive way to obliterate enemies.

Airstrikes in Mercenaries 2 are of different varieties; you have your regular artillery strikes that are ideal for leveling huge structures, while the Carpet Bomb (my personal favorite) can level an entire block in a matter of seconds. There are various factions spread out all over Venezuela, and depending on your relation with them (hostile or friendly), you could even get a slight discount on the above items.

While a lot of the airstrikes available in the game aren’t all that expensive, you’ll need to have a constant supply of fuel to indulge in these fireworks. Fuel containers can either be stolen (provided you have a helicopter pilot at your beck and call), or be found lying around at certain places in the map, or can even be picked up from the residue of destroyed vehicles (go figure), but for some stupid reason you just can’t buy the goddamn commodity. During one of the latter missions I had over $28 million in my bank with three carpet bombs in my inventory, but I couldn’t do jack (not that I swing that way – har har!) since I didn’t have enough fuel to execute the attacks. I tried blowing up my objective with grenades but that didn’t work too well and I was soon pulverized by a patrolling enemy tank.

Another aspect that didn’t go down well with me was the fact that you can carry only two weapons. Now a game like Mercenaries 2 obviously doesn’t take itself too seriously, so limiting a player’s arsenal like this seems kinda stupid, not to mention contradictory. Speaking of stupid, Mercenaries 2 has some of the dumbest AI I’ve seen in recent times. I didn’t have a huge problem with enemy AI, but the brain-dead friendly AI was something I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy.

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During one of my many side missions I was tasked with liberating an enemy outpost. This basically involved me entering an enemy base, killing everything in sight, and calling in the cavalry who were to enter the outpost’s headquarters claiming it for themselves. While I fulfilled my part of the bargain, my companions decided to camp out of the HQ for reasons unknown to me and I had to perform that mission all over again, wasting 30 minutes of my life. Also when you do call in for reinforcements they’ll pretty much die in a matter of seconds since they love diving headlong into oncoming enemy fire.

The game does offer online co-op (no split-screen love here), during which you and one of your buddies can team up to take Solano down. Be careful though; only the host can save progress, which means if you start playing solo after a lengthy co-op session, you’ll have to start the game from scratch. Other can online co-op the game offers no other multiplayer mode, which is sad since MP in a game where nearly every object can be destroyed would have been heaps on fun.

Visually the game constantly oscillates between impressive and downright mediocre. While all three lead characters are well-detailed, other denizens of Venezuela come off as bland and generic. Also, don’t expect GTA IV level of detail in the city, but at the same time you won’t be disappointed with the visual representation of Venezuela. Pedestrians go about doing their thing and while some of them actually mouth a couple of hilarious dialogs, it still falls a bit short compared to the awesomness that was Liberty City.
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One aspect in which this game excels in is its visceral representation of destruction. Everything – and I mean everything in the game – can be shot, burnt, or blown up. Remember DICE’s Frostbite Engine that boasted of revolutionary damage? Well Mercs chews that up and spits it out in the first few missions itself, where you actually level an entire building (castle is more like it) using an airstrike. Later on, once you get your hands on some serious firepower, you can even lay to waste bridges, skyscrapers and oil rigs.

Not only is the destruction in this game visually stimulating, it also adds a whole new dimension to gameplay. Why barge into an enemy base and take on hundreds of soldiers by yourself when you could just as easily call in a Daisy Cutter airstrike and reach home in time for dinner? Equally impressive is the fact that the frame rate pretty much remained constant through even the most violent of explosions.

Towards the end of the game, Pandemic bumps up the game’s difficulty level considerably and adds in tons of annoying mechanics that reduce the fun factor considerably. A case in point are the annoying foot soldiers who call in for backup every few seconds in the form of heavy vehicles and even more foot soldiers that are a pain to get rid of. Also, some missions have very erratic save points, so there are times when you’ll have to embark on elaborate, multi-tiered missions without a save point in between.

Luckily for Mercenaries 2, all these shortcomings can be forgiven since the game’s such a ball to play. As I mentioned earlier, it’s shallow and flawed, but no other game out there offers such an insanely liberating experience. Since I fall into the ’easily distracted by big explosions’ category, I highly recommend this game to all action buffs out there. It’s not perfect by any means, but as long as you’re one of those who don’t get offended by lack of plot or depth, you’re sure to love this simple but explosive game.