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Published : November 11, 2008 |
Author : Chrissy Snow | |||||||||
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Get GameGuideDog.com's: MERCENARIES 2: WORLD IN FLAMES WALKTHROUGH GAME STRATEGY GUIDE now available for you right in your members area and compatable for the MICROSOFT XBOX 360, PC, SONY PS3 Platform. GameGuideDog.Com is dedicated to helping gamers through games. We are confident our support and guides are absolutely the best gaming resource anywhere!
Thanks to the game's recharging health system, you're practically invincible. Blessed with the ability to sprint around even at two points of health, if ever you're in danger of dying you can pretty much guarantee that running away for ten seconds or so will 'run off' those massive shrapnel injuries. With your health guaranteed to rise back up to 60 or 70 per cent in no time, you can simply return to the battle, pick off the stragglers and carry on unimpeded. And if not, the massive amount of health pick-ups scattered with staggering generosity will get you out of a jam. There's a fine line between removing frustration and completely removing any challenge whatsoever, which Mercenaries 2 doesn't so much cross as burn down and stamp on imperviously. With the odds so stacked in your favour, chipping through the contracts becomes a tedious war of attrition as you make your way to another building you need to occupy. Rather than skillfully marshaling your forces and tooling yourself up with awesome levels of destruction, you can just run in like a supercharged Rambo, safe in the knowledge that even an RPG pointed at your face from three feet away can be survived as long as you sprint around the corner and wait for a few seconds. Meanwhile you call in reinforcements (by cycling through the d-pad and hitting the right trigger) and let them do a lot of the dirty work. And if surviving being hit in the face by a rocket doesn't sound ludicrous enough, you'll love the approach Mercenaries 2 takes to hijacking the bigger vehicles such as tanks and helicopters. We can just about deal with the idea that a man could run up to a moving tank, jump on the top it, flip open the lid, drag out the driver, headbutt him and lob a live grenade into the cockpit. But any vague suspension of disbelief is shattering the minute you grapple a moving helicopter, remove the pilot, shut his head in the door repeatedly and jump in to continue the journey - mainly because it's yet another boring excuse to shoehorn a QTE into the game. While it might seem mildly amusing the first couple of times, this is not true of the third, fourth and beyond. Sometimes, though, the game doesn't let you run around like you're in God mode, preferring that you unleash a 'bunker buster' or other type of aerial assault to remove a specific obstacle. But that's really about the extent of the external help you need. Things get more hectic and a tiny bit more strategic as the game progresses, but getting there involves an incredible number of completely unchallenging tasks in the interim. The chances are you'll never see the better ones. In keep with The Law of Openworlds, Mercenaries 2 is also rammed with side missions, including some relatively enjoyable racing, target practice and destruction challenges, and even one involving winching crates within a time limit. If anything, these show the game in its best light, seeing as they generally veer away from its combat and AI, but there's only so much entertainment to glean. Indeed, a lot of people will be tempted to compare Mercenaries 2 to the other crop of sandbox titles around, and in that regard Pandemic's effort falls short of pretty much all of them. Even two-year-old games like Just Cause, Saints Row and even GUN provide superior thrills, and in a sphere now luxuriating in the greatness of GTA IV and Crackdown, Mercenaries 2's poverty is particularly apparent. But it's not only openworld titles that Mercenaries fares badly against; it's most of the third-person action genre as well, and when your game is falling way short of providing the thrills of the likes of Army of Two, you know you've got problems. Some might reasonably argue that the inclusion of 130 vehicles gives Mercenaries 2 the edge, which is a fairish point. They're all easy to control, too. The problem is that unlike, say, Battlefield: Bad Company, the context in which you use them is overwhelmingly uninspiring. Likewise, the satisfying (and visually impressive) ability to blow almost everything to smithereens is a novelty that wears off in light of the ruinously poor missions and catastrophic AI. Question marks, too, hang over the wisdom of designing the game in parallel with the PS2 version. In so many regards it bears all the hallmarks of a last-gen title with upscaled visuals, like horrifically low-polygon, low-detail vegetation. Sometimes it threatens to look quite good, as in the massive close-ups of the lead characters, but there's always something to drag it down, in this case the goldfish lip-synching. Even at its best, the generic art style fails to make a positive impact, and while the engine provides a smooth gameplay experience, it's hopelessly dated next to the competition. It's hard to think of too many experienced gamers gleaning much enjoyment here, and on balance it feels like a failure. Given its troubled, delayed development, hope remained that Mercenaries 2 would deliver on the series' promise. Instead, the usually reliable Pandemic has produced a game that not only fails to compete with any current-generation openworld, but somehow takes a backward step from the original. With uninspiring combat contributing to a succession of desperately poor missions, the only remaining question is whether the developer will get a third chance to rectify matters.
90Variety 831UP 83GameZone 83Game Revolution 82Worth Playing 80IGN AU 80GameSpy 80GameDaily 80Game Over Online 80Gameplanet 79Gamers' Temple 79GameTrailers 79IGN 78Play UK 77Gamer 2.0 77DailyGame 76PSM3 Magazine UK 75Electronic Gaming Monthly 73Game Informer 72Cheat Code Central 70PSW Magazine UK 70Jolt Online Gaming UK 70Playstation Official Magazine UK
It's not brilliant, and it's not terrible. Instead, it hovers in a murky region between the two. [Oct 2008, p.90] 70Maxi Consolas (Portugal) Non-stop action and an amazing destruction engine are the key elements in this sequel, even more ambitious than the original. And it's true that a few flaws, especially in the graphics and AI, spoil the final result, but the mindless fun it's all there. [Sept 2008] 70ZTGameDomain Mercs is all explosions with little care given to the wrappings. The lack of real story actually keeps the game playable and in the future Pandemic may be better off forgoing the pretense of plot. 69PSX Extreme 693DJuegos 68Game Chronicles 60Edge Magazine
The good news for fans of 2005's Playground Of Destruction is that Mercenaries remains an absolute blast. [Nov 2008, p.92] 60Gamer.nl Killing for money is almost as good as gaming for money. That's why Mercenaries 2 is in theory a great game. But three and a half years after the first Mercenaries there hasn't been much of a change. Even the same antique design flaws are still present. Nevertheless the sheer size of the game and ability to destroy almost anything makes up for a lot of ground. 60Ferrago 60Playstation: The Official Magazine (US)
It's an overly ambitious game that falls tragically short of its goals. [Nov 2008, p.76] |60VideoGamer Once you get past the terrible opening missions and start blowing things up with massive explosions there's a game here that is worth a look, but it's criminally unpolished and as such will leave many gamers rather unsatisfied. 60G4 TV 59Extreme Gamer 50PTGamers 50GameSpot 40NTSC-uk Check out this great video GameGuideDog has 'fetched' and 'dug up' for ya! Bigger damage & badder weapons in sequel.
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