Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is a video game that consists of 10 releases

41 user reviews
2.8 / 5 avg score
Reviewed on Sept. 5, 2008
The awesome destructive potential of Mercs 2 is hamstrung by a litany of technical shortcomings and clunky design.
Read Ryan Davis's full review
Recent Images News Videos Community Guides

The follow-up to LucasArts' Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, takes these guns-for-hire to Venezuela. This sequel introduces drop-in, drop-out online co-op with the availability to play through the entire single player campaign with a friend. Complete with trophy support.

Overview

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is the sequel to 2005's Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, and is being developed by Pandemic Studios and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released in North America on August 31, 2008  on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC and PS2.  Featuring the first game's propensity for explosions with a design mantra proclaiming that "If an object can't be destroyed in the game world, it doesn't go in the game", Mercs 2 had players once again take control of three gun happy, RPG toting Mercs as they lay waste across a fictional Venezuela. The game was released to mixed critical reception, mostly due to some prominent bugs, odd control choices, shallow design,including the fact that these bugs were still present, even after the fact that the game was delayed numerous times, plus the final product was extremely similar to the previous game.

Story

This game takes place in Venezuela where the player, one of three Mercenaries available at the start of the game,  is hired for by the local drug lord Ramon Solano to free a captive VZ general. After Solano's coup puts him in control of Venezuela and its oil supply, he betrays the mercenaries; refusing to pay the bill for the job, Solano shoots the player in the rear( which the game will gleefully point out throughout the rest of the game) . Now that Solano is in control of vast oil reserves, the Allied Nations, China's PLA, the Rastafarian Pirates, the VZ Rebels and the Universal Petroleum Corporation's private army have entrenched themselves in Venezuela in a bid to wrestle control its oil. Now the mercenaries must decide who to ally themselves with and where to tip the balance of power. Players will be able to take missions from the five different organizations as they recover funds and information necessary to take Solano down. You use a nuclear-bunker buster at the end of the game to break into Solano's bunker where you pursue him through a hangar until he jumps into a helicopter, you jump in with him and fight with him through a quicktime event while the helicopter stumbles around the inside of the bunker due to the pilots loss of control. You defeat Solano, return to the Merc HQ, and watch a cutscene involving all the mercs and your field advisor Fiona. She suggest Africa as a new place for the Mercs to pursue jobs,and the game ends on this cliffhanger, suggesting a sequel even though no such thing has been announced formally yet.

Gameplay

Things go BOOM!
Things go BOOM!
The gameplay will remain faithful to the original, which essentially put a war-torn spin on the open-world, GTA style of gameplay, though Pandemic promises to make many changes to the game. Hijacking will now include a minigame that will range in difficulty depending on the vehicle. In addition to choppers and ground-based vehicles, you'll now be able to commandeer boats as well. Mercenaries 2 promises a greater focus on destructible environments, allowing you to knock holes in walls, take down entire buildings, and set foliage and oil spills on fire.


You also recruit your own PMC company, similar to the other factions in the game, to take care of things such as airstrikes, and dropping of weapon caches since the merchant of menace is not available because the Russian-Mafia faction is not present in this game. You can hire a helicopter pilot, and a jet pilot. These Mercs give the player unique abilities such as the ability to call in air strikes,which is a hallmark of  the Mercenaries franchise. Vehicle repair, or medical helicopter evacutaion, are other abilities that can be made available in addition to calling in airstrikes. Destruction is no longer a singular activity. Mercs 2 will feature online co-op action, any person on your friends list (with the game, naturally) will be able to join in on the chaos with a click of a button.

Controversy

Bono, Help Venezuela!
Bono, Help Venezuela!
Because of the games setting (Venezuela) combined with its content there has been some controversy surrounding Mercenaries 2. In a somewhat paranoid way the Venezuelan government saw Mercenaries 2 as a propaganda tool from the US and accused the US government (and more specifically the CIA) of working with Pandemic studios. The Venezuelan Solidarity Network also called for Bono (U2) to help stop production of the "Anti-Venezuelan Shooter" in March of 2007. They received no such help. Venezuela is well known as one of the largest oil and natural gas reserves outside of the Middle East.  Venezuela's  president Hugo Chavez  became briefly famous in the US after making several anti-Bush and paranoid (see above) anti-America remarks at the United Nations Assembly in 2005.
In 2009, the Hugo Chavez -led Nationa Assembly officially banned the sale of "violent" video games, with up to a five year prison sentence for selling these games.  Many people see this move as a response to this game.  Chavez also banned toy guns as well.  Chaves said that video games promote "egotism, individualism and violence", and as a result must be banned.

System Requirements

Minimum System Requirements (Windows Vista)
Processor: Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading/AMD Athlon 64 X2
Memory: 2 GB
Hard Drive: 10 GB Free
Video Memory: 256 MB with Shader Model 3.0 (nVidia GeForce 6800 GT/ATI Radeon X1600)
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible
DirectX: 10
Keyboard & Mouse
DVD Rom Drive (8X)
Internet Connection

Minimum System Requirements (Windows XP)
Processor: Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading/AMD Athlon 64 X2
Memory: 1 GB
Hard Drive: 10 GB Free
Video Memory: 256 MB with Shader Model 3.0 (nVidia GeForce 6800 GT/ATI Radeon X1600)
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible
DirectX: 9.0c
Keyboard & Mouse
DVD Rom Drive (8X)
Internet Connection

Recommended System Requirements
OS: Windows XP/Vista
Processor: Intel Core 2 DUO @ 2.66 GHz/AMD X2 4600 2.4 GHz
Memory: 2 GB
Hard Drive: 10 GB Free
Video Memory: 512 MB with Shader Model 3.0 (nVidia GeForce 6800/ATI Radeon HD 2600)
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible
DirectX: 9.0c
Keyboard & Mouse
DVD Rom Drive (8X)
Internet Connection

Xbox 360 Game Installation

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames requires 6.7GB of space to install on an Xbox 360 HDD.


Game Name Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
Platform(s)
Publisher(s)
Developer(s)
Genres
Add a new genre

Themes
Add a new theme

Original US Release Aug. 31, 2008
need a fuzzy date?
Original US Release


know the real date?
Aliases Mercs 2
CERO
CERO: C
ESRB
ESRB: T
PEGI
PEGI: 16+
1000 Points List
a list of 11 items by G0rd0nFr33m4n
PS3 Owned
a list of 37 items by Ujio
360 Games I Willingly Purchased
a list of 92 items by Lockeyness


BlackWaterCO
195 points

snydertiger2003
125 points

regularassmilk
81 points

zeus_gb
75 points

TheGamerGeek
66 points


You are in Edit Mode. Make sure to save your work at the end!!
  • Submissions can take 24 hours to be moderated.
  • Please leave a comment to explain why you're making this change.
Save Changes Cancel