Mercenaries 2: World in Flames Review
What would the videogame landscape have be like if
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (from now on called
Mercs 2) had come out last year at its scheduled time after
Grand Theft Auto IV had been delayed? We’ll never know, but if you pick up
Mercs 2 you will undoubtedly see or create some comparisons between the two games although this one has no blood (Teen rating), but is generally more violent than
GTA IV with a bigger variety of weapons at your disposal.
Pandemic decided to once again go the semi-realistic route with basing the game in Venezuela two years in the future, something that country has not been very happy about and have vocally said so. “This is a game after all, who cares?” we might say, although once again Allied Nations (or the “USA” the soldiers are happy to call it before correctly themselves) and the People’s Republic of China show up a good deal into the game to add to the factions and the whole situation becomes all too possible. What does Venezuela have in the real world that the United States and China would want to be in on? Well, oil of course! This game is no different in that respect: he who controls the oil production controls the country is the general mantra.
The story itself begins roughly 2 years after the last game given the ages of the returning characters.
A businessman (who is probably a drug dealer, although they never outright say that) in Venezuela, Ramon Solano, hires you to free General Carmona from his captors. After you do so, Solano and Carmona, along with Solano’s henchman Blanco, turn on you and end up not paying you. You escape the situation barely and make it your job to take down Solano and everyone around him while helping or hurting the different factions much like you did in the last game. First order of business is to attack Solano’s home and take it over as the headquarters of your new PMC (Private Military Company). After that you start helping United Petroleum, the company that drills the oil in the country and the PLAV (People’s Liberation Army of Venezuela), taking up any jobs they need specialized help with. Along with taking the contracts, you also want info about Solano and his people. The factions promise you information as long as you do some errands for them. In the end some give you little to no information and it is up to you to keep them happy or piss them off. As the game goes on you see other factions pop up: Rastafarian Pirates in the northern part of the map, the aforementioned Allied Nations and Chinese contingency and there is always the hostile Venezuelan Army (or VZ) that is hostile to every faction. With each faction you need to balance your friendliness or hostility toward them since they all seem to have their own built in hostility and friendliness towards other factions.
All three mercenaries from the original game make a return: Swedish badass Mattias Nilsson (who I chose to go through the game with), American Christopher Jacobs and Chinese born English citizen Jennifer Mui. Much like in the last game Mattias heals quickly, Jacobs can hold more ammo and Jennifer has the advantage of extra speed. I played through a bit as the other two and felt that all three characters were nicely balanced and voiced (the original voice cast returns) even with the somewhat hokey and almost comedic script. At one point early on in the game, Mattias said the s-word and it was beeped out. I figured a Teen rated game could have that word in it, but who knew. Along with this there is lot of killing in the game, but no blood at all. In fact, Mattias even goes fourth wall on us at one point and says, “so much killing, but no blood…darn T rating” or something along those lines. I got a chuckle out of that, in fact there are some other fourth wall breaks in the game as well to keep the mood somewhat lightened.
Gone is the 52 card bounty from the last game, probably a good thing since I don’t think the US uses it anymore in relation to Iraq militants. This time around you basically take up any contract available along with going through the story sections of taking out Solano and his goons. Each faction will have you do a variety of things, usually revolving around taking over an outpost owned by another faction or saving their key people and bringing them back home. Those are just two examples and honestly the contracts are certainly dynamic enough to seem somewhat fresh. Each contract has an amount you will receive after completion and a possible bonus amount if you also complete other tasks. Along with the faction contracts you can also take out targets and apprehend (or kill) various people located on the map. You have to be careful in knowing what faction owns the section of the map you are in because you don’t want to piss off a friend by taking out their important people for some other faction you may or may not be friends with.
In addition you can also find such things like different kinds of airstrikes, cash and oil tankers on the map.
As you go through the early parts of the game you will pick up some NPCs that will help you along the way. You will have a helicopter pilot who can pick up all the stuff mentioned above when you throw a flare, an airstrike pilot (who also must be drunk to fly well) for those precision strikes and a mechanic to build new items with hidden goods you find around the game world. In order to do such things as airstrikes and cargo dumps you have to pay an oil fee, so it becomes important to refill your oil (you do have a maximum, although you can increase it by paying for it) by going to an enemy faction and steal it from them. You can also steal it from a friend, but you risk the chance of them becoming hostile toward you and it is always good to have friendly factions in this game. Along with those NPCs you also have the use of Fiona once again as the brains behind the operation. You can talk to each NPC and do mini-games related to their specialty, although you have to wager on them and may not want to spend the money in case you fail. You do get extra items and abilities if you complete them though, so that is maybe a risk you want to take.
Much like
GTA IV there is a variety of weapons and vehicles you can use. There are far more weapons and military vehicles and you are able to destroy a lot of things in the game including trees and building in addition to the destruction of vehicles.. The ground vehicle driving is not as cool as in
GTA IV and it doesn’t have any sort of physics system to it and is rather simple in its execution. I’m still not a huge fan of the
GTA IV driving model, so I welcomed this. Boating on the water in a variety small to large boats was actually really cool. You can either find a boat or board another boat and take it over. You usually go into a quicktime event just like you do to take over a tank and other enemy vehicles, but these are rather short in nature and eventually you find the pattern with the vehicle/faction combination. I’ll talk about the graphics below, but the water effects presented in this game are some of the best I’ve ever seen. You can also pilot a variety of helicopters that help you get places more quickly.
There are some minuses to this game though. First off the opening couple of hours really moves slowly. As I continued through the game it became more fun. I guess you can say it is kind of like
Too Human except the campaign here is a bit longer, probably in the 10-15 hour range (I finished the game at 48% done, going to go back and increase that). Once you get the hang of everything and how you go into each contract, the game will open up and become more fun than it starts off as. Another minus, if you take it as such, is that the enemy AI can be quite dumb. They will shoot at you, but when you get within a certain zone to a walking enemy they will stand there and you can easily shoot them or go up and melee them to death. The ones running the vehicles are somewhat smarter, although in close quarters they are also prone to mistakes.
The story itself isn’t superb, but it does move stuff along at a good clip. Another minus is the “fade-in” of some of the graphics. I say “fade-in” because it isn’t really “pop-in”. The far-off graphics are nice, even when in a helicopter, but when you are driving a motorcycle (extreme example), any other automobile or just running around you will see such things as grass, rocks and even vehicles fade into the screen as you come close enough to their “visible cone” for lack of a better term. The graphics themselves are somewhat grainy, but they do their job. The graphics of the military vehicles, stuff blowing up and the water effects are top notch. The roads are not as busy here as in
GTA IV until later, but the graphics outside of being on the ground from time to time are good.
The single most frustrating minus would be the inability to center the camera behind your mercenary while they are running (the R3 button press works when in a vehicle, but binoculars are tied to R3 in run mode).
For over 95% of your gameplay experience (random number, don’t quote me on that) it won’t bother you much, but there will be times where it would come in quite handy and the ability just isn’t htere. In this game you can literally be running toward the screen, but the view will be behind you and then you’ll have to turn the camera 180 degrees. Although this created some frustrating parts,
Mercs 2 doesn’t have nearly the camera problems many other games do.
Mercs 2 also has drop-in/drop-out 2-player co-op. I was able to play a bit with some people I didn’t even know, but as I was playing through the single-player portion after logging into the EA Server that after a while I would be disconnected from those servers but still connected to the Playstation Network. I’m not sure if this is more EA shutting people out of co-op before the actual release of the game today (Sunday, August 31st) since some places sold it early or just a problem on my side and I need to add the possible TCP and UDP numbers from the manual. For what I was able to play co-op with a stranger it was pretty fun and unlike
Too Human you will see all the cinematics and you can even go into the game as your current character with money and oil or a new character from scratch. You are also able to resuscitate your teammate should they die by running up to them and pressing the appropriate buttons that pop up. This adds a
Army of Two feel, although here it is a bit more intense. Having two people taking on everyone instead of just one is quite fun and it would be cool to play through the whole game with just co-op. It just adds that something extra to the game, much like it did in
Too Human on the 360. I have also noticed no Trophies as of yet, so I am guessing they did not make it in the PS3 version.
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is really a good game when all is said and done. The slow beginning gives way to a game that is simply fun to play and almost sadistic in the amount of destruction you can unleash. The driving mechanics may not be on the level of
GTA IV, but the number and type of faction vehicles, watercraft and aircraft far outweigh the non-physic driving in civilian vehicles. Graphic fade-ins, semi-stupid enemy AI and inability to re-center the camera while running aside, this game is easily bigger and arguably better than the original. If you are at all on the fence about this game because it seems so familiar to
GTA IV at least rent it and see if you like it. Venezuela may not be as busy as Liberty City, but there is a heck of a lot more weapons and powerful vehicles you can use to unleash destruction upon the country.
The Good- Game is very fun as you get out of the early stages
- The water graphic effects are fantastic
- Variety of faction, water and air vehicles make up for general lack in number of civilian ground vehicles
- You can blow things up, although not everything is destructible (invisible walls are present at places)
- The NPCs at your headquarters are invaluable
The Bad- Graphic fade-in of grass, rocks and even vehicles as you run or move along in vehicles
- The early contracts are monotonous and take too long to get from Point A to B when you don’t have the options you do later in the game
- Not being able to re-center camera when on foot, but have the ability in vehicles
The Ugly- Getting close to the end of a mission only to die at the last second and have to replay it
*Note: Review is based upon PS3 version of the game. Bapenguin has the 360 version and may be able to comment on possible differences in things I have laid out after PAX.
