[http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v440/JackRubyultima/?action=view¤t=mercenaries-2-world-in-flames.jpg]
Vhere is da Money Lebowski! Ve vant da money Lebowski!
The first Mercenaries, developed by Pandemic and published by Lucasarts, was a major sleeper hit and remains a cult classic in my book. Many claimed it was a GTA clone, and perhaps they were right, but what other GTA clone let you call in an artillery barrage against one guy who pissed you off by taking pot shots at you from his sniper tower?
Now we are blessed with Mercenaries 2: World in flames (now published by Electronic Arts), a game I have been eagerly anticipating since the first time I commandeered an enemy Helicopter, dooming it pilot to a pelvis shattering impact on North Korean soil. While I am excited that the game has finally been released, I must say that there are "concerns".
Story (if it can be called that) & game play
Mercenaries 2 takes place some time after Mercenaries 1 and finds our capitalist heroes in war torn Venezuela, where a young and ambitious politician stages a violent military coup. This is all well and good, except that he owes money to our mercenary and instead of paying up like a good South American dictator, he decides to shoot him/her, specifically, in the "buttocks". Now, our heroes are out for revenge, excitement, and a ton of cash.
Okay, now take the last paragraph and strap a block of C4 to it, get to a safe distance, and detonate because none of it seems that important. It?s really just a weak excuse for a Swedish biker to decimate enemy bases with carpet bombings and in that respect, Mercenaries 2 succeeds? mostly. You have a number of different air strikes at your command, each suiting for your specific needs. Among them, you got your artillery barrage for light building destruction, your cluster bomb for taking out infantry and light vehicles, and of course the nuclear bunker buster, for when you absolutely need to level an entire city without even the slightest hint of radiation poisoning.
Airstrikes are perhaps the most enjoyable experience of the game, although some of them are increasingly frustrating to control. Certain air strikes require you to throw a smoke grenade to target a location. The only problem is that the grenade does not equip like a weapon. You actually throw it AS SOON AS YOU SELECT IT. This lead to several occasions where I called down a cruise missile strike by accident, wasting it and the oil required to launch it. Others require you to use a radio beacon that drops to your feet as soon as you deploy it, forcing you to run your Russian/Chinese/American bum out of the blast radius while dodging enemy fire. I don?t know why you can?t throw it like the grenades but then again, I guess I?m not ?teh smartz? like our heroes.
Mercenaries 2 is a sandbox game in the truest sense of the word. Most of the missions are completely optional "Destroy this building" and "kill/capture that High Value Target" that can be tackled whenever you need extra cash and unlockable vehicles and weaponry. You are never truly asked to do this by any faction and it appears you can complete the games main story quest without even touching them. I suspect this was the game designers wanting to give the whole "Sandbox" impression and it works in theory.
The only problem is that this mission structure makes the main story laughably thin. It distills down to only a handful of actual story missions and a series of "Capture the outpost" missions in which you have to secure a drop-point for the faction du jour. After that, it?s just a series of time-trail mini games and a lot of them are hard to swallow. I find it hard to believe that it is of vital importance to the Allied cause that I fly their helicopter through a series of floating rings (I blame this on you, Superman 64).
On the positive note, the faction system has been completely revamped. Even if you go on a rampage on a particular faction, it won't affect your relationship if you can kill the enemy soldier who tries to report your actions to their leader. This actually gave firefights some depth, as I always had to be aware of that one soldier retreating to get to a safe place to make his phone call. Of course, even if you can?t stop them from making the call, you can always bribe the factions into liking you, but that's expensive and we need money for weapons of raining death.
Graphics
As said earlier, the best thing about this game is the Airstrikes and that stays true even in a graphical sense. Lighting effects for explosions in this game are, by far, the best lighting system I?ve seen in a game this year. When the camera is centered on an explosion, everything around the flames actually darkens as if the retina itself has to adjust to the intense light. Meanwhile, trees are incinerated as a cloud of debris bubbles outward.
Understand that Mercenaries 2 is by no means and ugly game. It has a decent bump mapping system and even destructible environments, something that most sandbox games lack. Yet at times, it?s an incredibly unpolished game. Everywhere I went, I noticed clipping issues and invisible walls. It even got in the way of combat at times, especially when the soldier I'm trying to kill is actually "inside" a rock calling the faction leader and I cant do jack about it.
Oh, and the buildings may be destructible, but impact craters are little more that Manure-looking pieces of mud on the ground. Disturbing to say the least.
Furthermore, the character animations outside of combat are laughably horrid. Things like talking make the characters look like Pinocchio asking Mister Geppetto for more Nukes. Furthermore, during conversations with faction contacts, the characters are incredibly devoid of any emotion, like their wives are off to the side forcing them to interact at some bizarre soldier of fortune mixer.
While we?re on the dialogue, sound is an incredible disappointment. Principle characters come off as tired and forced, while others are irritating. Examples: the "Bro-Ham" Allied Soldiers or the Texas Redneck Oil Mercenaries who constantly complain they are "just in it for the money".
And I don't mind my character shooting off the occasional one liner in battle, but hearing Nilson spouting "Hey you on the .50 cal how bout an air strike" repeatedly made me want to reach in and beat him to death with his own tattooed arm.
Presentation and Conclusion
In a bizarre way, I understand the mission system in this game. You spend less time doing required missions in order to play around and hunt the HVTs and destroy target buildings. This makes the game slightly innovative, but at the same time it denigrates it. Allow me to expand: one of the things I loved about the first game was the mission briefing the faction leaders would personally give you at be beginning of a contract. It made sense because I developed a connection with those characters. They would applaud me when I worked well with them and grill me when I do annoying things like mow down entire squads of their troops. It helped reinforce the point that I was part of a larger world: a world with a sense order in chaos.
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames barely has any interaction with the faction leaders. Most of the time, you?re hanging out with the cookie cutter contacts and they barely deviate from one another. This damages the whole experience, like I?m somehow alone in some weird splinter dimension where I can level half a country and no one would really care as long as I bribed the right faction. All in all, it never feels like my presence is ever being appreciated.
Presentation and conclusion
I cannot fully condemn Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. It?s not bad, or even mediocre. At certain spots, one can note elements of genius, vision, and even raw, uncut fun permeating the experience. The problem is that Mercenaries 2 is, in reality, a sloppy game. The story is handled too quickly and the game mechanics are incredibly flawed. Furthermore, a lot of it seems like Need for Speed underground with guns and air strikes, which I suspect, is mostly EA?s fault.
Rating: Rent it or wait for it.
PS: bonus points if you know how the Reference at the beginning relates to the game
Vhere is da Money Lebowski! Ve vant da money Lebowski!
The first Mercenaries, developed by Pandemic and published by Lucasarts, was a major sleeper hit and remains a cult classic in my book. Many claimed it was a GTA clone, and perhaps they were right, but what other GTA clone let you call in an artillery barrage against one guy who pissed you off by taking pot shots at you from his sniper tower?
Now we are blessed with Mercenaries 2: World in flames (now published by Electronic Arts), a game I have been eagerly anticipating since the first time I commandeered an enemy Helicopter, dooming it pilot to a pelvis shattering impact on North Korean soil. While I am excited that the game has finally been released, I must say that there are "concerns".
Story (if it can be called that) & game play
Mercenaries 2 takes place some time after Mercenaries 1 and finds our capitalist heroes in war torn Venezuela, where a young and ambitious politician stages a violent military coup. This is all well and good, except that he owes money to our mercenary and instead of paying up like a good South American dictator, he decides to shoot him/her, specifically, in the "buttocks". Now, our heroes are out for revenge, excitement, and a ton of cash.
Okay, now take the last paragraph and strap a block of C4 to it, get to a safe distance, and detonate because none of it seems that important. It?s really just a weak excuse for a Swedish biker to decimate enemy bases with carpet bombings and in that respect, Mercenaries 2 succeeds? mostly. You have a number of different air strikes at your command, each suiting for your specific needs. Among them, you got your artillery barrage for light building destruction, your cluster bomb for taking out infantry and light vehicles, and of course the nuclear bunker buster, for when you absolutely need to level an entire city without even the slightest hint of radiation poisoning.
Airstrikes are perhaps the most enjoyable experience of the game, although some of them are increasingly frustrating to control. Certain air strikes require you to throw a smoke grenade to target a location. The only problem is that the grenade does not equip like a weapon. You actually throw it AS SOON AS YOU SELECT IT. This lead to several occasions where I called down a cruise missile strike by accident, wasting it and the oil required to launch it. Others require you to use a radio beacon that drops to your feet as soon as you deploy it, forcing you to run your Russian/Chinese/American bum out of the blast radius while dodging enemy fire. I don?t know why you can?t throw it like the grenades but then again, I guess I?m not ?teh smartz? like our heroes.
Mercenaries 2 is a sandbox game in the truest sense of the word. Most of the missions are completely optional "Destroy this building" and "kill/capture that High Value Target" that can be tackled whenever you need extra cash and unlockable vehicles and weaponry. You are never truly asked to do this by any faction and it appears you can complete the games main story quest without even touching them. I suspect this was the game designers wanting to give the whole "Sandbox" impression and it works in theory.
The only problem is that this mission structure makes the main story laughably thin. It distills down to only a handful of actual story missions and a series of "Capture the outpost" missions in which you have to secure a drop-point for the faction du jour. After that, it?s just a series of time-trail mini games and a lot of them are hard to swallow. I find it hard to believe that it is of vital importance to the Allied cause that I fly their helicopter through a series of floating rings (I blame this on you, Superman 64).
On the positive note, the faction system has been completely revamped. Even if you go on a rampage on a particular faction, it won't affect your relationship if you can kill the enemy soldier who tries to report your actions to their leader. This actually gave firefights some depth, as I always had to be aware of that one soldier retreating to get to a safe place to make his phone call. Of course, even if you can?t stop them from making the call, you can always bribe the factions into liking you, but that's expensive and we need money for weapons of raining death.
Graphics
As said earlier, the best thing about this game is the Airstrikes and that stays true even in a graphical sense. Lighting effects for explosions in this game are, by far, the best lighting system I?ve seen in a game this year. When the camera is centered on an explosion, everything around the flames actually darkens as if the retina itself has to adjust to the intense light. Meanwhile, trees are incinerated as a cloud of debris bubbles outward.
Understand that Mercenaries 2 is by no means and ugly game. It has a decent bump mapping system and even destructible environments, something that most sandbox games lack. Yet at times, it?s an incredibly unpolished game. Everywhere I went, I noticed clipping issues and invisible walls. It even got in the way of combat at times, especially when the soldier I'm trying to kill is actually "inside" a rock calling the faction leader and I cant do jack about it.
Oh, and the buildings may be destructible, but impact craters are little more that Manure-looking pieces of mud on the ground. Disturbing to say the least.
Furthermore, the character animations outside of combat are laughably horrid. Things like talking make the characters look like Pinocchio asking Mister Geppetto for more Nukes. Furthermore, during conversations with faction contacts, the characters are incredibly devoid of any emotion, like their wives are off to the side forcing them to interact at some bizarre soldier of fortune mixer.
While we?re on the dialogue, sound is an incredible disappointment. Principle characters come off as tired and forced, while others are irritating. Examples: the "Bro-Ham" Allied Soldiers or the Texas Redneck Oil Mercenaries who constantly complain they are "just in it for the money".
And I don't mind my character shooting off the occasional one liner in battle, but hearing Nilson spouting "Hey you on the .50 cal how bout an air strike" repeatedly made me want to reach in and beat him to death with his own tattooed arm.
Presentation and Conclusion
In a bizarre way, I understand the mission system in this game. You spend less time doing required missions in order to play around and hunt the HVTs and destroy target buildings. This makes the game slightly innovative, but at the same time it denigrates it. Allow me to expand: one of the things I loved about the first game was the mission briefing the faction leaders would personally give you at be beginning of a contract. It made sense because I developed a connection with those characters. They would applaud me when I worked well with them and grill me when I do annoying things like mow down entire squads of their troops. It helped reinforce the point that I was part of a larger world: a world with a sense order in chaos.
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames barely has any interaction with the faction leaders. Most of the time, you?re hanging out with the cookie cutter contacts and they barely deviate from one another. This damages the whole experience, like I?m somehow alone in some weird splinter dimension where I can level half a country and no one would really care as long as I bribed the right faction. All in all, it never feels like my presence is ever being appreciated.
Presentation and conclusion
I cannot fully condemn Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. It?s not bad, or even mediocre. At certain spots, one can note elements of genius, vision, and even raw, uncut fun permeating the experience. The problem is that Mercenaries 2 is, in reality, a sloppy game. The story is handled too quickly and the game mechanics are incredibly flawed. Furthermore, a lot of it seems like Need for Speed underground with guns and air strikes, which I suspect, is mostly EA?s fault.
Rating: Rent it or wait for it.
PS: bonus points if you know how the Reference at the beginning relates to the game
