Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

Mercenaries 2 is one of those games that is simply there for the fun factor, it's not necessarily there for the storyline or depth. It is just there to give you a hell of a crazy and over the top game that you can just pick up and go nuts with. There's not much to say about it as, like I say it's not very deep in regards to a storyline. Your basic goal is to win the trust of factions and do jobs for them, blowing up buildings, collecting bounties etc. That's basically it and depending on who you are it depends on you carrying out the mission covertly or with all guns blazing.

The main gem of this game is the surprising look and detail of it as due to the size of the map and the destructability, the detail of it is excellent and the displaying of the tropical setting is truly jaw dropping. The vehicles are plenty and range from heavy set high artillery tanks to fast sport cars. Other vehicles such as army helicopters and a range of boats also allow the game to be more flexible and fun.

I must admit that I use the cheats whilst playing the game and just like going nuts and blowing everything up. One of the cooler weapons in the game is the introduction of the Nuclear Bunker Buster. That's right a Nuclear bomb at your disposal. It's not the type of Nuke you'd expect but it's still pretty awesome to target a building and watch the mushroom cloud expel from the grouns with flames afoot.

My review isn't very detailed, but there you go. If I had to tell you one thing that would make you buy this game it would be this. This game is just so much fun I'm not even kidding. Try blowing up an oil rig and then try to tell me that isn't the coolest thing you've done on a game.

best game ever one of my favorite games .the vehicles are awesome and how you hi-jack vehicles is funny especially a tank.to sum it all up its worth it.

The original Mercenaries was one of my favourite games to every release on the PS2. It took Grand Theft Auto to a more mature level, removing the smut and 'glory killing'. You were a tool of war. No longer was it acceptable to kill anyone and get a way with it. You had consequences. The second installment is no different.

I went from being very very excited for this game to release, to 'meh', this looks okay, back to very excited. Lets get the bad out of the way.

First, the graphics. While not amazing 'next-gen' quality, they still do shine in some areas. The world is enormous and the graphics are really what I would expect from such an open world game. Grand Theft Auto IV comes to mind and I would pit what this game has to offer against GTA any day. The textures are pretty low resolution and when you stare at them, they start to look pretty bad.

The physics. Oh...my...gosh...The very first mission I played was one where you were asked to take a load of guns in the back of a truck to a destination. Apparently these guns were made of a very light-weight rubber as they constantly bounced their way out of the vehicle. I was literally about to put it up on Amazon and sell it. But I gave it another try...and another......and I finally got it. There are quite a few of these types of mission in the game that will really have you frustrated. Another reason the physics are so bad is that you can move almost anything by yourself. I'm talking big storage crates that ships carry. Just give it a kick and it moves! Whoops! Accidentally land your boat on the sand? Just kick it back into the water!

The AI. Terrible. There can be some missions where it gets hard (Capturing bounties that are surrounded by 4 AA Guns, 6 tanks, 4 recoil-less rifles, and about 50 guys can be tough) But for the most part, the AI is just plain dumb. You can get about 2 feet away from them before they might start shooting at you. And when they do, just give them a quick flick of your forearm and they drop!

And last, the stockpile system. While it offers loads of air strikes, helicopters, and supply dumps, it is a very frustrating system. In order to get ANYTHING that you own, you have to set it to one of your three 'equip' slots, select it from you menu, then throw a smoke grenade to have your helicopter pilot deliver. Why is this bad? If you're in the middle of an intense mission and you decide you want, nay, NEED a tank, you have to wait for your delivery man to bring it to you! Also, when you die and you're not in a mission, the med-vac takes you back to base and you start over with nothing equipped! You have to redeploy all of your equipment to get ready to go again. Why can't your base have a stockpile of weapons to just choose from?

Now for the good!

YOU CAN DESTROY ANYTHING!!! Literally! There is an enormous oil tanker in a lake that you can blow up. Any building you see is free game. Trees catch on fire. I have not seen anything that I cannot destroy! The ways you can destroy stuff are endless as well. Plant C4 on the building and blow it up. Plant C4 on a truck and drive it into the building and bail out and blow it up! Call in a laser guided bomb. This was the highlight of the first game and it hasn't changed with the second.

The sound is great. The game makes very good use of surround sound and bass. Although, my standard pistol does pack more of a 'sound punch' than my rifle, but at least it sounds cool. All the explosions and gun effects are very nicely done.

The missions. There are not a whole lot of story missions, but the side quests will keep you busy enough. There are 'High Value Targets' to capture and collect bounty on. There are 'Targets' to destroy for each faction. Then there are 3 part missions that progressively get harder, but the reward is greater. You can repeat those as many times as you want. There are also training exercises that you get with your personal faction, the PMC. You Headquarters lady has you sniping, using mounted weapons, etc., all for a wager that you can decide. Once you recruit your Mechanic, Helicopter Pilot, and Airstrike Pilot, they have training missions for you as well; a great way to make money.

The bottom line is, if you were a fan of the first Mercenaries, buy this game! The fun to be had blowing stuff up and wreaking havoc far outweighs an glitches that might be present in the game. And who knows, they may release a patch some day to fix all that.

Mercenaries 2 is one of the funnest games I've played in quite awhile when it comes to mindless action. The explosions and vehicles in this game rival any so far. The missions are all pretty fun and vary between a variety of different activities for a variety of different factions. The weapons are all fun to shoot and the vehicles are all fun to drive. Luckily, all the things I just mentioned are done in such an awesome manner that it is fairly easy to ignore the bad points in this game.

Bad Points: The ending is crap. You would think there would be something a little more thought out after the Americans and Chinese fight for oil in Venezuela. I won't tell you the ending that I saw, but I'll tell you this. It lasts all of less than half a minute and is a non-event. Another bad point is the voice acting which is just EXTREMELY annoying. It makes you want to kill all of the NPCs. On an island that headquarters the Jamaican faction all of the npc's say "hey mon" as you pass by. Sometimes they add a couple of words like "mercenary" before the phrase, but come on. What a cliche. The Australian girl at PMC headquarters has a very annoying voice also. It's like an Aussie Fran Dreshcer (not sure about spelling) that nags you whenever you mess up a mission.

Anyhow, for all my complaints (and I do have a few more) this game is A LOT of fun. Just wait until you get into a Hind gunship and start blasting a village with rockets and throwing troops thirty feet in the air with the nose cannon. Imagine GTA4, but you can blow EVERYTHING up. (including skyscrapers) It's so much fun destroying the gas tanks and vehicles while hovering around dodging AA guns and surface to air missles. I'm not sure yet about replay value as I normally never play a single player game after I beat it. (Unless for nostalgia sake) There is just too many good games out there anymore. Give this a try.

Honestly, I feel like everyone compares all of these sandbox games to the grand theft auto series now. Yes they are similar, but they dont all have to be "perfect". Personally, I thought this game was a riot. It's much simpler than GTA (not that complexities are bad, just makes the game more focused). Yes there was a few times where my health seemed not to change, kind of a glitched version of god mode. The only other bug that I found remotely noticeable was that whenever I called for a supply drop, the helicopter would show up and drop nothing. This happened usually after I went inside somewhere. If I actually had time to call for a drop, this wasn't really a big deal because I'm not usually in any danger when I do call.

I found the game's mechanics no problem. Most of the things these professional reviewers are complaining about are very forgivable in a fictional environment. I can forgive something like how it's much easier to hijack a tank than it is to destroy it. Big whoop. Welcome to video games. They cant all be like GTA and you shouldn't rate them against other games. I would defiantly recommend this to anyone looking for a fun game that has alot of open ended qualities.

It is nice to be able to blow everything up. I like the ability to land on boats with a helicopter and steal the boat, and I like the fact that it draws objects really far away. With this game, though, the glitches and **stupid button combinations you have to do to hijack vehicles** (I won't buy a Mercenaries 3 because of this) kind of make you want to blow the game itself up. The NPCs are dumb as toast. Getting them in and out of vehicles was easier in the first game. The physics seem to be only slightly better than the first game.

Bottome Line: This game can be a lot of fun, its got some re-play value as well, but its not worth $60. Factoring in the frustration from being kicked off a tank time and time because you didn't press X fast enough, and having civilians leap out at your speeding vehicle like depressed lemmings, this game is worth about $15-$20

In a game series that takes the Grand Theft Auto format and adds bigger weapons, vehicles, and explosions, little has changed, so little in fact that it felt like a big expansion pack of the first rather than a true next generation sequel. Game designers have not done much tweaking to the original's formula of blow it up, run it over, shoot, and repeat. It is what made the first such an engaging and fun GTA buzz kill; rather than simply drive around and commit crimes, you could instead drive and shoot a tank simultaneously, level a whole building, or just crush an enemy (and his vehicle). Most improvements are superficial and minor, but nonetheless helpful, and problems are few but still make for a big headache.

The main improvements are in the environment and vehicles. Whereas earlier you played in a grim, almost monochromatic North Korea, you are now immersed in the lush bright jungles, cities, and even slums of a politically troubled Venezuela. It is a massive landscape of everything from shantytowns to skyscrapers, and scared civilians and heavily armed factions. There are more people and vehicles than before, and no shortage of destructible objects either, including trees and every man made structure in the game.

There is also a wider array of vehicles and weapons to employ in your character's violent pursuit of a bigger bank account. Most forces have APCs, tanks (light and heavy), trucks, and helicopters to get the job done, and the heaviest and most well armed vehicles are now available well before the end of the game. Minor changes in these vehicles, on tanks and fighting vehicles in particular, have made big improvements in the fun factor of the game's run-and-gun missions and mounted chaos. Anything with a turret now has a coaxial machine gun, so with a quick tap of R2 you can start spraying troops and light vehicles instead of lobbing main gun rounds or getting out and using the external machine gun. Vehicle weapons are also somewhat stabilized for better shooting whenever you or your targets are on the move. Unfortunately, the vehicle sites have barely progressed, and you still aim-and-guess with a reticle floating in the middle of the screen, the only difference is every target now has a life meter. It would have been nice to at least have a powered site of some sort or even just a thermal site for shooting far targets.

Where this game got better is where it also got worse. You now have annoying vehicle hijack fights that require increasingly difficult button tap combos for better vehicles. A heavy tank is almost not worth the trouble, and determined helicopter pilots will drop you to within an inch of your life if you're not careful. This cutscene action may have worked in Resident Evil 4, but there it was infrequent and well thought out, here it is just a pain.

Shop items and airstrikes, despite having a bigger selection, have also become frustrating in their execution. All things now cost some money and lots of fuel, and most airstrikes are designated with a smoke grenade so you have little time or space to get to safety. Even satellite-aimed strikes have to first be designated and then marked a second time -- no more quick and easy bombing runs or missile strikes. C4 is the far simpler route to leveling all but the biggest structures, and it never requires any fuel.

Sound is as crisp and repetitive as before, if not much more so. Hearing factions babble the same lines over and over again - all in English for some reason - is annoying but can be tuned out pretty easy. As far as audio controls go there are only volume controls for score and effects, but none for the dumb dialogue you are subjected to, including Fiona's, whose "tips" and idiotic banter will quickly make you wish she had been nuked or shot dead in the first game.

The glitches and problems of the past are still here as well. Graphical pop ups, stuck vehicles and characters, along with the occasional freeze - always after completing a big mission, no less - give the whole game the less-than-finished feel players always dread. It is never so bad that it makes the experience totally unplayable but it still keeps it from being the great sandbox game it very well could have been.

Players familiar with the original's style and format will find comfort in this entry, those new to it may find the story and gameplay overly simplistic and shallow. Assuming reasonable sales figures, another sequel is very likely, though given the little change or progress seen here it would not be worth too much anticipation.

This game is simply very good, I liked a lot, the game has some bugs but I recommend.

I asked my wife to buy this game for me last week as soon as I found out the exchange had it on the shelves. I asked her to pick up the 360 version, but whatever the game is still cool... Even with the inferior PS3 controller. I have yet to notice the glitches that everyone else has, but then again I have only played the game for about 12 hours. The graphics, in my opinion are decent; certainly better than most people here have said. The one annoying thing that I have noticed is how the the ai keeps repeating the same little phrases over and over again. It doesn't really get to be a problem, it's just something I've noticed. Also, I wouldn't purchase this game looking for a really deep story line or anything like that. Like the title of this review says, it's all about blowing s--t up. try Bioshock for a deep story, buy this game for good drunken fun.

Well its a good game. It's a sandbox.(GTA style) If you like the first one, then trust me not a lot has changed.

Points I'd like to start off with:

1. Instead of just purchasing weapons, vehicles and air support from the Russia mafia, you can purchase them from each fractions. Each fractions has their different supplies. PROBLEM: You have to purchase them in advance. You can just use your PDA and have them deliver them to you. And once you have purchase them, you have to get a helicopter pilot to deliver them to you.

2. HVT. I can't recall if that is what they were called in the previous one. But their not in hiding. They are actually pointed out in your PDA as well as other structures to destroy for profit. HINT: Don't go after them. You'll need to have them to maintain your fraction's attitude towards you.

Anyways the bad part of the game. GLITCHES-GALORE!!! If they needed more time to make this, they should have gotten it.

1. Threw C4 on tanks and they don't seem to stick.
2. Cut-scenes suck when your hi-jacking a vehicle.
a. They slow you down and give the other enemies a chance to hit and can be a major problem when time is an issue.
3. People won't do the things you want them to do. Like having a rescued pilot follow you into your copter after you have ordered him to. Another is placing your captive HVT into a vehicle to get a quick getaway.
4. If you fall from a helicopter or something and hit the ground, make sure you land on a flat surface. Every time I fell on the side of a mountain, hill or slope, you'll continue sliding until you slide onto a flat surface. It's horrible. You just keep sliding and sliding.

Well that's the major glitches I can think of for now. Also the online multi-player is weak. Just you and another person and you just play the campaign together. No headset communications... I believe.

I'd rent it if your really not into sandbox or GTA. But if your a fan of the first one than get it... maybe. I bought it and can still see me playing it after I'm done with it.

This game should not have been released yet with the number of bugs present. There's too many to list here (about 13 pages listed on the games main forum), but they include things such as corrupted saves, enemies no longer attacking you until you start a new game, several graphical glitches, falling through the ground, coop not working...the list just goes on and on. For me this game is almost impossible to enjoy being left-handed, due to not having the ability to modify the controls and the aim being stuck to the right joystick.

The game has a lot of potential when the bugs are all fixed. If you're willing to brush off all the nuisances caused by the glitches, then buy this game, otherwise, wait until the team manages to overhaul this game and stick to playing the first game. This goes for all consoles pc included. All are equally bugged and in need of serious patching.

If you are some one who likes big explosions and watching things blown up to pieces this is the video game created just for you. Iam one of those who watch TV shows just because it is in High Def or they are showing demolitions of buildings. This is the perfect blend of the two I like, you can blow up ever thing and explosions look fantastic. Huge open world, not very strict mission sequences.

Sure they have never cared about character animations, dialog or AI. Some how people totally mistook Mercenaries for a FPS. This is not a FPS game, this is a Sand box blow up everything Action game. There may not be a pre-defined class where this game fits it in. The closest is GTA with Air Strike. You are never supposed to walk in to a compound and kill one at a time, you are supposed to bomb the whole camp to dust. Sure you can sneak behind blah blah.. dont waste your time. If you are looking for a methodical slow duck and shoot game get some thing else.

The main mission is to do any thing to make money, with the money buy bigger weapons to make your next mission easy. Make money to make more money. There are lot of waring factions who are willing to hire to do what you like most, set every thing on fire. There is some level of favor management that you have to do. It is not a good idea to job for every one; in the latter part it will be hard for to find lucrative jobs.

There are few places where I read, this game is politically biased against south America. It is not !!!! a simple Hollywood B level comical story where every one is fighting for oil. They even pirates :). It is nice to have light hearted story in games. Every thing in the game is meant as pure fun, just do any thing you wish to have a good time. That is all the theme of the game.

One thing I hate in the new Merc is vehicle hijacking. It is a pain with the context-sensitive button stuff. Bigger the vehicle crappy the system behaves.

The game moves at a hectic pace. Atleast give it a rent, the chances that you will fall in love is very high.

I bought this game because it looked fun in the commercial with the "Oh no you didn't" song, and I have to say it is fun to play. I like how you can go all over the place, you can drive any vehicle in the game, and there are many weapons to choose from, and nearly anything can be destroyed.

I would rate it higher, but the graphics aren't nearly as good as I was expecting, I mean they are still good looking graphics, but I think they can be improved upon. Also, a lot of the dialogue is repetitive. The storyline is okay, and somewhat confusing at times.

Overall this is a fun game to play, and I would recommend it to others, but with the power of the PS3 I was expecting a little bit more.

I only just begun playing, but as there are no reviews yet...
"Mercenaries 2" plays pretty much like the previous game. It's quite simple and, very much, fun to run around shooting and hijacking tanks (now as a mini-game) and so forth. You can play as any of 3 (same as Merc 1) mercenaries taking out the bad guys and earning money in the process, this time in Venezuela. So far I've seen no mayor changes in gameplay.
This time your more on your own, though. Having to build up you own merc business. there's a bit more of "management" possibilities, which is fun. Also there's a bit more meaning to working with/against different factions.
I'm not to happy about the visuals, though. Much better than the ps2 game, yes, but hardly what you want from a ps3 game. Also, the colors are a bit to pastel for my taste, and the menus and item-icons are to "happy". I preferred the colder blue-grey world of Merc 1, and the more serious "military"-look of those icons etc.
Still, it is A LOT of fun, and I do play for fun, not eye-candy...