Review: Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (X360)

Okay. I've never actually written a formal review of anything before, so you shouldn't expect a whole lot more than my regular dose of literary genius. Hopefully, if I think this review turns out okay (and if I get good feedback (wait, I need readers for that, right? Shit.)), then I might review other games (maybe Metal Gear Solid 4). Here goes:

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames Review

Every once in a while, a game comes along that looks awesome in the previews, and deep down you really want it to be awesome, but when you actually play the game, you find out it's crap. Okay, so enough about Super Smash Bros. Brawl (yeah, I hated it), let's talk about Mercenaries 2.

There are three Mercenaries to choose from, but most everybody will probably pick Mattias Nillson - the Swedish dude on the cover of the game - because he regenerates health a little faster (one of the other characters can carry more ammo, and the other one can run a little faster), but no matter who you choose, the story is basically the same.

The story, albeit short and rather unimportant, is where you're in Venezuela to do a job for a dude named Ramon Solano, then instead of paying you, shoots you in the ass. In turn, you blow up half of his house, forcing him to GTFO. Now, you can't just let a half-good mansion go to waste can you? No, you take it and use it as your base. Actually, it's a base for the whole PMC (Private Millitary Company) which consists of:

• You (whatever mercenary you chose to play as)
• Fiona, your "boss"
• Ewan, your Scottish helicopter pilot, used to pick up oil and bring you supply drops
• Eva, your mechanic. If you find enough of the 100 Spare Parts scattered across Venezuela, then she can build you custom vehicles, like monster trucks with the ability to jump
• Then finally, Misha, the perpetually drunken Russian airplane pilot. You need him for airstrikes

The story is very simple and at most times virtually nonexistent, just an excuse to blow shit up. It's just six factions fighting over all of the oil in Venezuela, and you go around helping them do various things like capture outposts. You'll want to do the outpost missions pretty soon, because when you do, you can use them as landing zones so Ewan can carry you across the island more easily.

The controls work very well. I especially liked the way helicopters controlled - much better than GTAIV, although maybe not as realistic. Speaking of helicopters, that's just one of the many, many vehicles you can hijack and/or have dropped to you by Ewan. Every time you try to hijack an attack vehicle (i.e. enemy tanks, helicopters, etc.), you go through a short hit-the-right-button-at-the-right-time minigame, similar to Time Gal or the arcade version of Dragon's Lair. Some people think that those add too many breaks in the action, but I think it's good to pause for a few seconds every once in a while. Plus, if you take long enough doing it, then you can possibly regain a few health points.

The gameplay is also quite excellent, although at times the AI can be a bit of a drag. There were times when some enemies would just stand around and not move, not shooting or anything. As bad as the enemy AI is, the allied AI is even worse. There was a mission where I had to fly into an enemy base, save two captured pilots, call an allied helicopter for extraction, and then continue with the mission. So, I flew in, released the pilots, called a chopper in, but nothing happened. The guys just stood there. The AI was too stupid to even realize that the extraction chopper had landed. Long story short, I died several times just because the AI was so stupid.

The graphics are also not quite up-to-par (although the explosions look pretty freaking awesome). They're decent and they get the job done, but I've run in to several graphical glitches (albeit nothing as bad as I saw in Alone in the Dark. Ugh.), but it wasn't anything major. There's also some bit of texture and object pop-in. When you're flying a helicopter, you can see land and water for several miles out, but at times it almost looks like crap because the textures don't get high-quality until you're pretty close (I would guess about 100 feet. It doesn't sound like much, but it's pretty noticable in a helicopter), and the same goes for objects, such as trees and buildings.

There is one huge thing that makes this game stand out from a lot of others, and that is all of the environments are completely destructible, and anything you destroy stays until you restart your system. Destroying things is probably 85% of the fun in the game, and you have plenty of options in how to destroy everything, the simplest being grenades, C4, and missiles from tanks and helicopters. My favorite, however are the airstrikes, and there are several to choose from.

My final complaint, although rather minor, is that the dialogue can get very, very repetitive. There's one line that Fiona repeats every time you leave the PMC when you're not in a mission that I've probably hear 200 times in my 25+ hours of gameplay, and I'm not exaggerating. There's also a few other lines that get old, but none like the one Fiona repeats over. And over. And over.

While this game has some ups and downs (and the way I see it, there are more downs than ups, although the ups are greater than the downs), there's definitely something to be said for a game as buggy and repetitive as this, and yet I still 100% recommend it to almost anyone. It's that good. 4 out of 5.

Note: I haven't even tried co-op yet, but from what I hear, it's even better.

EDIT: During my exploits on the internet, I've found an Official Mercenaries 2 Flash Game, the full version of the song from the commercial and a Making-Of video for the commercial.