Pandemic Studios had an excellent pedigree during the last generation of the system wars. The studio showered the world with three AAA franchises. Full Spectrum Warrior added a new dimension to the strategic warfare genre and emerged as a serious contender against heavyweights like the Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six series. Star Wars Battlefront was every nerd’s (who swore to vanquish the dark side) dream come true.
The original Mercenaries: Playground Of Destruction added a new twist to the genre of sandbox. It capitalized on a mechanic that the original Grand Theft Auto and its sequel utilized, “factions and loyalty”. Players were sent to North Korea as mercenaries in midst of a civil strife and bash the living daylights of political factions, who wanted control over the country. The game utilized the term destruction to an extreme level, by giving the player incessant number of options to blow his enemy apart.
Cut to the next generation, building on the legacy of its predecessor, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames was a serious contender as the inheritor of the genre of sandbox for this generation, but alas it fails miserably in doing so, not only does it manage to bring shame to a genre which has seen maturity in some form by Grand Theft Auto IV (although I personally feel Infamous is a much more mature contender) but also manage to ruin the experience that made the original game so much fun.
The game like the original gives you the options of choosing between three mercenaries. Mattias Nilsson is a Swede who is a jabber mouth, Jennifer Mui can run faster making her effective against heavy armaments, or Chris Jacobs is your typical mercenary right out of a Hollywood movie. Most players are likely to play the game with Mattias because of his heavily tattooed arm, tied goatee, and his ridiculous Swede accent which keeps mumbling the same dialogues a million times.
I played the game as Mattias who gets shot in the buttocks by a dictator called Solano, and travels back to Venezuela to seek vengeance. The plot is clichéd, banal and rhetoric as the gameplay. So there is absolutely no need to exaggerate about its depth and consequence.
The game works on the notions of factions, totaling four in number, Universal Petroleum is the first faction that your arsenal crazy mercenary comes into contact with. It is a petrochemical multinational corporation with the sole objective of mineral exploitation in Venezuela and it requires mercenaries to defend its turf. The next faction is The People’s Liberation Army of Venezuela (P.L.A.V) in short, who harbor Marxist ideologies of a revolution to free the country of a Capitalist coup. The Allied Nations are the good guys who use their technology to keep their oil flow as constant.
The Chinese return from North Korea with their Leader General Peng who has secured a promotion and looks to secure China’s oil interest’s along with their investments in the P.L.A.V and there are the Jamaican pirates high in rum offer the player a variety of side missions and equipment and indiscriminately butcher everything in their path. Each Faction has an alliance except the Pirates and looking at the list it’s pretty obvious. The P.L.A.V side with China and Universal Petroleum sides with Allied Nations. The common enemy all are trying to overrun is the Venezuelan government and its insidious leader Hugo Chavez, sorry Solano.
The gameplay is supposed to be the star attraction of the game. This is the second E.A developed and published game that takes destruction seriously. Everything in Mercs 2 can be destroyed with the right kind of arsenal which lies obstinately present at every corner of the street. The missions from each faction vary to a minimal degree, its either blowing “X” place up and rescuing a hostage or killing/subduing a hostile target or holding your ground against “X” number of enemies till the elapsed time runs out. These objectives can get boring and irritating depending on the level of patience of the player.
The much touted explosion system is also regulated by the player, he can drop bombs on targets obliterating the dust on the ground using air strikes, which needs to be collected by his air support personnel. Bombs range from your traditional napalms to nuclear strikes depending upon the player’s ability to flex his monetary wealth.
Fuel is another important resource in the game, since he is running his own PMC he has to pay for the fuel. Now these concepts as interesting as they may sound are actually vague since everything is strewn all across the map and the player has to rarely hunt or strategize his targets or factions.
Loyalty to factions is another random clause added in the game, since the player will not stand loyal with any faction to complete the game. This gets difficult when his alliance with a certain faction has gone sour and he needs to complete a mission to unlock the next barrage of missions.
There are about 170 vehicles in the game that can be called upon or jacked from any point in the map. Your trusted helicopter pilot will drop all your requirement at the designated smoke on the battlefield, there is however a small catch the entire playground needs to be clear of enemy/hostile factions, even a single shot will fright the so called brave mercenary’s pants and he’ll sputter right off the battlefield leaving the player all high and dry.
Jacking is another important element in a mercenary’s life. Mercenaries 2: World In Flames allows one to jack everything in sight including choppers using a grappling hook (ala Just Cause), provided you have recruited a mechanic. Now jacking a car is simple enough, it barely requires one to pull out the guy out of his seat and impose his buttocks on them, a tank is a different matter.
Ever since Shenmue came up with the concept of Quick Time events, every game seems to have developed an immense attraction towards it, such is the case with Mercenaries as well. The player has to push a required set of buttons before he can sit and fire a barrage of missiles of a tank/chopper, which tends to get annoying and repetitive after a point. I just don’t see the challenge in memorizing a bunch of buttons and mashing them when eventually I know I have the might and power to salvage it.
This is not only a time consuming process but is a cowards’ way of running from a fight, in case the player feels he is running low on health all he needs to do is jack a tank, since during the cutscene he is invincible, he can utilize the time to recover his health.
High class weapons and arsenal can be bought from various factions at the given price, but traveling from one point to another is sort of difficult since, you cannot be directly transported unless there is a helipad which opens up once completing a set of designated tasks. This is again subject to the loyalty to a faction, hostile factions start shooting you on sight.
The level of hostility is another quirky feature in the game, one accidental shot is all what is required to turn a faction hostile, even if the shot is fired during an intense blow‘em up session protecting the faction.
The A.I is just borders ridiculous, this is the second high profile game (Too Human being the first) which has atrocious artificial intelligence. They not only shoot awkward but never rely on cover whilst bombing the player with bullets. Mercenaries 2: World In Flames utilizes its draw distance to make up for the folly, often players will not know where they are being struck from till they look into the horizon for a bullet from 3 kilometers set to strike him.
Friendly A.I. is worse often they will stand around in front of the enemy and start screaming and hollering without firing a bullet. The worst bit comes in the form of unlimited health and the melee attack button, the player will never die in combat, all he needs to do is find a safe place from the bullets and so that his tattoos can use the energy of the sun and recharge his immunity system like Master Chief. Since the enemy only relies on number, the player can run upto them and push the melee button and splatter the deadliest of foes into orange pulp.
The dialogue in the game is another annoying feature for some obscure reason you team mates wont shut up, and keep repeating the same banal dialogue “If you need some assistance you can come and see me” if the player spends too much time roaming aimlessly in the mansion. The enemy dialogue is baseless which is confined to a few plausible screams of a mercenary attacking or cursing in some foreign language.
Mercenaries 2 has a funny way of saving in the midst of a contract, in case of partial failure of the contract the player is transported back to faction’s headquarters rather than the nearest point from the objective. This gets even more annoying since the points are not well connected and obtaining vehicles in an instant is sort of a problem.
The GPS system needs a huge patch for it does not show the correct direction unlike Grand Theft Auto IV which allowed the player ever alternative route to reach his given destination. It often confuses rather than ease the pain of being mobile in a war torn country.
The visuals are a mixed bag as well. The player’s character sports the highest number of polygons in the game everything else seems to have been compromised in this favour because of which the enemy looks dull, the NPC’S look dreary. The characters look like a lifeless body with Havok 5.5 infused within.
A game’s technical ability can be studied in a jungle. A jungle or a densely populated mass of greenery is the one of the most difficult thing that a developer needs to work with, since it relies heavily of draw distance of similar textures (green) thus avoiding pop ins are difficult. Mercenaries 2 shows us that explosions are the only stable visuals in the game, the pop in atrocious and starts getting to you after point. The explosions and fire effects however remain stable and cause no framerate lockouts and function well with the theme.
The Final Word: Mercenaries 2 World in Flames is an abysmal product, it lacks any form of distinction and variety from the current generation of sandbox games. If mindless shooting and destruction is the only objective of your money then Mercenaries 2 is the perfect game for you, else everyone is advised to avoid it at all costs. Pandemic needs to rework the formula and probably get a few technicians on board to solve the recurring glitches and bugs present in the game. These strings of events make the game a strong contender for how to ruin a perfect franchise award.
Graphics: 4.5/10
Sound: 7/10
Gameplay: 2.5/10
Budget Pocket: 0.5/10Overall (not on a average): 2.5/10
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By Neelesh Mukherjee