Review

I think it’s fair to say, I was looking forward to Mercenaries 2. The original was a really entertaining take on the open world adventure, throwing you into a highly volatile DMZ and allowing you to play the various military factions off against each other for your own gain. Oh, and it had huge explosions. With everyone else trying to beat GTA at its own game, Mercenaries was a breath of fresh air. Mercenaries 2, on the other hand, couldn’t be more generic if it tried.

Instead of a warzone, the sequel places you in a picturesque and very wide-open Venezuela. Your ultimate goal this time is to get revenge on a double-crossing businessman by the name of Ramone Solano. To do this you’ll need to build up your own private army by performing missions for cash, once again playing different sides off against each other – this time in the form of an oil corporation, various resistance groups and the military. Unfortunately, getting to these missions, getting anywhere in fact, takes such an inordinately long time at the beginning of the game that boredom sets in far too quickly.

It’s a problem that also afflicted Just Cause, the game this most closely resembles. If you wanted an answer to the question “how big a play area is too big” then you have the answer. If you do stick with the game long enough to gain access to helicopters then it becomes less of a problem, but you’ll have to fight through a huge number of tedious, linear missions to reach this point.

Explosions are nowhere near the selling point they once were either, simply because everyone is doing them better these days, with Battlefield: Bad Company (another EA release) being a shining example. Being able to destroy 90% of what you see is a bold claim, but it’s nowhere near as much fun as it should be! Especially as killing innocent bystanders hits you with a high financial penalty so being careless could set you back massively.

Perhaps the biggest problem of all, however, is the extremely stupid A.I. displayed by both enemies and allies alike. They constantly get stuck on scenery, fall down mountains, get run over or walk right into the epicentre of a huge explosion that you really start to wonder whether this game was play-tested at all before it was slapped in a box and put on the shelf! Having to restart a mission because a character you’re supposed to be protecting essentially committed suicide is more annoying than mere words can describe.

Despite all of this, there are moments when Mercenaries 2 does work, moments when you can simply relax and get on with some mindless destruction and killing. These offer glimpses of the game we could have been playing and do manage to save the game from total disaster.

Pandemic had been a very reliable developer up until this point, but Mercenaries 2 is too big, too stupid, too flawed and too easy to be worth a look. It’s also arrived about two years too late!

About the Review

Platform

Microsoft Xbox 360

Developer

Pandemic Studios

Publisher

Electronic Arts

Released

15th September 2008