Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

Alright, to start off let's go back a bit. I was online with my now newly suited Swede and my good friend Ricky, and there we were standing on a gigantic oil rig, as I spool up the engines in a squat black helicopter Rick call's in a sub nuclear air strike as he fends off multiple assailants, I'm forced to take off without him in the fray just as the nuke hits and the screen goes white and the explosion racks the place. As I look through my screen, Rick is miraculously still alive and well in the virtual world and I land on the Oil rig to get him, the oil rig that was just nuked. Bits are falling apart of the now supposedly decimated structure so it interesting there's anything left, because A: It's and Oil rig, B: It was just nuked and C: IT'S A FUCKING OIL RIG. But hey, who am I to complain, if anything I'm actually enjoying it, with a friend at hand the experience is somewhat epic to say the least, who could ever grow tired of this.

One week later. Well I'm afraid just that has happened, but how? Mercenaries 2 is in short a free roaming third person shooter that as to it's name sake places you in the shoes of a some what disgruntled figure whom has been shot in the ass, and if you didn't already know that then you must live in a box and have no place with the world of trailers and countless previews. Now the Mercenaries themselves, to their credit the characters aren't all bad, but seeing as you only have three of them and the options for customisation are heavily limited it kind of takes the fun out of it somewhat. But not all of us came for that ever growing demand of custom characters, most people will come for the tender hearted caress of a large propane filled explosion capable of bringing a tear to even the likes of some drug infused, anarchy spreading terrorist, those lovable scamps! You will be finding yourself driving, shooting, destroying and generally causing as much mayhem in the country of Venezuela as is deemed possible by yourself and your contract while on the hunt for the man whom subsequently wronged you in the game's opening. You'll be working with a number of factions to steadily increase not only your profit and your goal of locating Solano and blowing six different types of shit out of him for your some what abused buttock and lack of pay.

Explosions will come ten a penny, the landscape is indeed very destructible, I mean hell, you get paid for blowing up every billboard you see, who can complain with that? You've got a good selection of vehicles to choose from and of course there's always custom vehicles from your base which can often come in handy for added power or just to bugger around a bit. There a literally hundreds of missions, coming from races, to VIPs, to Bounties, to defense, offense type jobs, there's a lot. But this isn't without it's flaws. Combat in Mercenaries becomes very quickly, very bland. Violence has always been a sexy, sinister love affair to all gamers sitting in their rooms at the age of thirty five with their mothers gently calling them for Pizza and sugary goods...Ahem, I digress, ah yes shooting. But the fact is we love it, we love it when we pull of head shots, he love it when we pull out a rocket launcher and blow something to hell and back, regurgitate it, eat it again, shit it out, blow it up and send it to hell all over again, we love it. But with Merc's , somehow, it just get's a bit samey after a while, you'll find yourself scouring every inch of virtual world to locate a new gun with a different sound or effect to keep your mind in check very quickly...You'll find that missions tend to repeat themselves, enemies will be highly predictable and the whole thing could do with a bigger tune up. Who would think walking round a big jungle/ Latino environment would eventually...OH NO! Who saw that coming? Could it not be that my major issue is that this game reminds me a whole lot of Just Cause, sure your not fighting for a revolution, but play the two and you'll see what I mean.

Let's see, I have no complaints about the voice acting, could of been better and could of had more in game one liners instead of just "Whoooo Bumper cars" and "I shall call you, Lovisha!" or however the fuck you spell it. It gets repetitave after a while, not unlike a lot of the game. All those little, clever button sequences you have to don't take long to learn and make part's of God Of War look more original than ever, sorry Merc's but you didn't reinvent the wheel there. In general, you'll either love it or hate it, it's been like that for nearly everyone who's played ok. But if your anything like me you'll probably end up cashing it in just in time for EA's new shit stirrer Dead Space...and a review will have to be done for that one. It's alright, not brilliant, not awful, but it's alright. I suggest having you own opinion because Merc's 2 has received a lot of good and bad feedback from everyone so I really can't say other than my own experiences.