Everyones_A_Critic

Most people who will buy and have bought Mercenaries 2: World in Flames either A.) Played the original or B.) Love to watch shit get blown up. If you fit neither of these demographics, I can almost assure you that you will hate this game, and you need not read further. However, if you are in one of or both of those groups, you will more than likely really dig this game.

Basically when it all comes down to it, Mercenaries 2 is about capturing outposts for various factions. These factions include a band of Venezuelan rebels, China, the Allied Nations (USA), and even some pirates. You can choose one of three characters, all of which make a mild difference to the experience. Chris Jacobs, the African American mercenary, can carry much more ammo for his weapons than the other two characters. Matias Nilson, the Swedish merc, can regenerate health faster than the other characters, and then there's Jennifer Mui. Jennifer can walk and run faster than the other mercs. Some of the dialogue is different between the characters, but these differences are few and far between. You can pretty much safely play the game with whoever you like best, without worrying about their various advantages.

While capturing outposts for factions seems tedious and repetitive, and was one of the first game's major flaws, the missions have an addictive quality to them. Most of this is due to the graphical prowess of the Xbox 360, and the massive environments able to be created. No more are the repetitive environments from the first game, they've been replaced by the lush and tropical Venezuela, and what a huge country it is. What else makes these missions continously fresh is the prospect of new weapons. The airstrikes in Mercenaries 2 are astounding, and the destructibility of the environments is cause for endless mischief.

The only gripe with these graphics and immense playing space (there are no load times going from area to area, only between conversations and entering faction outposts) is the insane amount of pop-up you get. If you're taking a helicopter, you can see the area load before you, and it's a bit frustrating sometimes, especially when you see an anti-aircraft gun appear when it's too late to dodge.

The enemy AI in Mercenaries 2 is pretty bad. The developers seem keen on the "Quantity over quality" approach and just throw a bunch of stupid enemies at you and give them rocket launchers. This makes some missions hard, but for the wrong reasons. The bad AI is one of the glaring problems with this game. A great example of this is when one goes to hijack an enemy car with a mounted gun on the back. When you jump into the driver's seat, the gunner just gets out and lets you have the car. He doesn't shoot you or anything, and in the unlikely event that he does, you can make a quick getaway in the car.

One of the strategic angles of the original Mercenaries games was choosing your missions for different factions wisely. If you do a mission for one faction, you risk making another one mad. The same system applies for Mercs 2, minus the strategy. One simply bribes the faction with cash and presto, all is forgiven. While this makes the game easier, it draws from what made the first one so good.

Mercenaries 2 also offers co-op play, via Xbox Live. The trouble with this is that it's nearly broken. I was able to join a friend's game instantly, but whenever I would select "search" from the xbox live menu, I would get the sound, but no search would begin. This was the same for both quick and custom match. It's one of the more irritating bugs this game has.

Speaking of bugs, a lot of the achievements in the 360 version of the game are glitched too. I did the required actions for three of these and recieved no points. Let's hope we get a patch out there soon.

When it all comes down to it Mercs 2 is a fun game that has a few serious bugs and glitches. Had the game shipped bug-free it probably would've gotten a much higher score from me. The bonus missions and immense supply of weapons are sure to give this game replayability, and if you liked the first one you're probably going to have fun with this one, but some of the flaws with it are simply impossible to ignore.

In the summer of 2007 Activision released the Harmonix-created Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80's. The game had a solid but extremely short tracklist and very little in the way of change to the Guitar Hero 2 formula. To top it all off, it was fifty bucks! The game was seen as a cash in but saved mainly due to its solid setlist.

Nearly a year after Rocks the 80's we're faced with Guitar Hero: Aerosmith which covers mostly Aerosmith while also including songs from bands that played with or "inspired" them. The game is full retail price at sixty dollars for the 360 version but it's got a lot more to it than Rocks the 80's did. The first noticable changes in the game are the new menus. They're basically Guitar Hero 3 menus but with an Aerosmith coat of paint. It adds a bit of novelty to the experience and helps it to separate itself from being Guitar Hero 3 with different songs. The game's in-game store is called "The Vault" and is home to the game's host of unlockable items. The entire monster set of guitars from Guitar Hero 3 is back in full force along with a ton of new Aerosmith guitars and basses. There's also new outfits, songs, characters, finishes, and even a few "Behind the Music-esque" videos for your viewing pleasure. The trouble with all this is that it'll take you playing the setlist over and over, even creating different bands just to afford all the unlockables. This will be agitating to many, especially expert players who find themselves playing the expert career three or even four times just to get the cash to buy all of the guitars.

Speaking of the setlist, Guitar Hero Aerosmith has some great songs in it. The songs spread from the 70's through the early 90's, the youngest of which being Sex Type Thing by Stone Temple Pilots. If you're a classic rock fan chances are you'll fall in love with most of this list pretty quickly. The solos in the songs are genuinely fun to play, and you'll soon forget how long they go on for. The difficulty of said solos has been scaled down quite a bit, but the timing window for hitting notes has been fine tuned for a more Guitar Hero II style feel. This balances the difficulty out for the most part, but experiened players will blow through the game with very little trouble. The achievements for beating each difficulty are stacked, in other words if you beat expert you'll get the achievements for beating easy, medium, and hard as well as the expert one.

The unlockable songs in the game are all-around pretty good. That is, with the exception of the Joe Perry solo work. The songs "Mercy" and "Joe Perry Guitar Battle" are the only good songs out of Perry's solo work for the reason that they don't have lyrics to them and are really fun to play. His other songs, not so much. The game includes both versions of the hit "Walk this Way" which was a very nice touch. Run DMC even makes it in as an unlockable character, though we didn't know he could play guitar.

You can blow through the single player career in a little under four hours if you're familiar with the concept. The venues are all original and the motion captured Aerosmith members are overall well done. My only complaint was the lack of songs when you're done with it all. 41 songs isn't a bad amount but there are some glaring omissions from the setlist that could've made this better.

The Battle, Co-op, Face-off, and Pro Face-Off modes all make a return to the game, with of course online play over Xbox Live. Some of the songs (Back in the Saddle comes to mind) are really fun to play in co-op because both the bass and lead tracks are really fun. Other songs don't fare so well and the bass/rythm guitarist gets the short straw. What's surprising about the Battle and Face-Off modes is that now they're played on one difficulty over Xbox Live. This delivers a much better balance in multiplayer matches (in Guitar Hero 3, Xbox Live Battles primarily consisted of two players waiting for the other to pick a difficulty so the other could pick a lower difficulty) and makes them a lot more fun. Face-off still feels unbalanced by design, but that's what Pro Face-Off is for. If you want to play locally, then you can adjust the difficulty in Battle, Face-off, and even in Pro Face-Off, which was previously unavailable in past Guitar Hero games.

Finally, there are the game's achievements. They are much easier than the Guitar Hero III achievements but I feel that this is their main flaw. Achievements are a great source of replay value for a game when it starts to get boring and Guitar Hero III's achievements had you playing for months to unlock many of the more difficult ones. It's possible to get nearly 200 Gamerscore just by playing and 100%'ing the first or any song in the game as long as it's above the easy difficulty. There are a few difficult achievements such as getting 325,000 points or more on Train Kept a Rollin' but these are few and far between. You'll find yourself with nearly all of the achievements after a first play through.

If you're a long time fan of the Guitar Hero franchise then there's really no big detering factor that should stop you from liking this game. Newcomers should be more cautious when approaching this game unless they really really like Aerosmith. If you're like me and just love the series then  don't be afraid to walk this way (sorry, terrible pun).