by Kuriakose Saju
I’ve been seeing explosive trailers of this one for some time now. And when I say explosive, I mean that in the most literal sense of the word. In the sequel to the 2005 smash hit Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, we are reintroduced to our renegade heroes Mattias “the Animal” Nilson, Christopher “the Leader” Jacobs and Jennifer “the Femme Fatale” Mui and it’s up to you to salvage some bruised egos. How? By blowing up everything and everyone around you while pocketing some money for yourself on the way!
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (once again, in the most literal sense of the phrase) begins with your character thrust into the middle of some frantic activity, given the mission of rescuing a certain General who is being held captive. It’s basically just a run-of-the-mill day at the office for our modern-day assassin. For people who have never played the game before, the opening mission works as a very nice tutorial, teaching you the basics of gameplay, which is not very different from most first-person shooters out there.
So once you’re down with the basics and you find yourself moving around, killing enemies, picking up ammo and weapons and switching between your artillery, you’ll find that you’ve managed to get past the guards and rescue the captive General. Mission completed flashes on the screen and you jump to a cut screen where you figure what you just played was the prologue.
It turns out the guy who sent you on the mission is planning a takeover of Venezuela and definitely doesn’t want capable people like yourself out there to come and blow his head off one day. So he availed of your services and intends to pay by killing you. Now, you’re not the kind of guy or gal who takes to that very kindly and you try going for the future president’s jugular. Only he’s gone and called his guards and they’re firing like crazy. You escape from there and make it back to headquarters where your compatriots are waiting. Remember the bruised ego I was talking about? The dirty General Solano has to die. Fade out and bam! The title rolls on the screen all ablaze and you’re sitting there, convinced this is gonna be one hell of a ride.
That’s where the game fails to deliver. What starts out as an insane payback trip suddenly finds itself plagued by bugs and glitches, a consistent complaint that has been voiced by players the world over. After about an hour into the game, you’ll suddenly find people you have to save running head first into your helicopter or drowning themselves, helicopters that you’re chasing disappear staright off the map, never before seen towers and turrets spring out of the ground.
Also, the main USP of the game is the unbridled explosions. But after a point, you’ll have to think really, really hard about who you’re killing and what you’re blowing up. Why? Because, in your attempt to get revenge and get rich on the side, you have to side with a variety of rebel factions that oppose Solano. So, you don’t want to be angering the wrong people now, do you?
Still, the bugs should be taken care of with patches that Pandemic Studios ideally should be racing to deliver now. And the faction bit? Like seriously, there has to be level of restraint, otherwise you could jolly well nuke Venezuela and finish the game in the first five minutes. But what is probably the most disappointing and unforgivable are the really poor quality of graphics. A lot of people say that the old GTA (Vice City) had better graphics than this one and I would concur. They could have done a much better job in this department.
The guys at Pandemic Studios have retained a lot of the original gameplay from the first while making some killer value-adds. You now have over 170 vehicles that you can use to get around and that includes boats. You can even hijack helicopters now. Hijacking enemy vehicles are still a huge part of the game and unlike the earlier cinematic rendition, you now have a tiny mini game to complete. Ditto goes for placing satellite bombs, which, by the way, offer THE most awesome explosions over. And unlike earlier, when you buy weapons as and when you need them, you buy stuff in advance and have it delivered to you on the battlefield. One of the salient features of the new title is the co-op mode where two players can complete missions together online. It follows a simple “drop in, drop out” policy where you choose to join a friend’s game, select the character you want to go around blowing thins up as and together, teach Solano not to ever, EVER f*@k with you again
Venezuela apparently had lashed out at the game, accusing Pandemic Studios of covertly sending out US government massages in the game. Why? Apparently, General Solano has been inspired by Hugo Chavez. I would think Chavez needn’t be worried though. The story and graphics is what is considered really weak in the game. What you should be buying this game for are the explosions. Boom! Kaboom! Bam! Besides, it’ll serve as some really good anger management. Stop focusing on the story and go crazy or better yet, get a friend to drop in and plan your own little missions. ‘Coz all of Venezuela is your playground and that’s quite massive. If this were a book, I’d rate it readable but not a bestseller!
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