Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

Aug 13, 2008

After quite some time in the oven, Pandemic's long-awaited Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is just about ready for release. Building on the widely open and destructible terrain of the 2005 hit, Mercs 2 expands upon the original in more ways than simply better graphics and HD resolution. Amidst the talk about the scope of the game's rendition of a Venezuela in need of overthrow (enough to get the real-life government up in arms), one thing's been fairly overlooked up to this point: the game's co-op, which allows you to eject the regime with a buddy. The game's effectively done at this point, so any glaring issues we noticed will likely stick to the final product, but we think that it'll be a fairly fun romp that should steal away some gamers from other would-be's attempting to don GTA's sandbox crown.

The premise of Mercs 2 isn't particularly far removed from its predecessor. As a mercenary for hire, you're working for whatever dollars come your way. Once again, you'll choose from Christopher Jacobs, Jennifer Mui, or Mattias Nilsson as you utilize each character's assets and weaknesses to get the fattest payday. In this case, drug lord Ramon Solano gives your merc a job, then tries to kill him or her, setting off what our EA rep described as "payback, Mercs-style." We got a sense of this sort of disproportionate counter-attack in our hands-on time with a multiplayer session alongside Pandemic.

Mercs 2's co-op is rooted in a fairly simple premise. Pandemic is more interested in making any 2-player action relevant to the campaign. As a result, co-op's the only multiplayer mode. It's all drop-in, drop-out based, and there's no loading when a buddy drops in. As we witnessed from our session with a member of Pandemic Studios, it's pretty simple to play with a buddy. Not long after we saw him log in, we were in a game, chatting about plans of attack.

We played through two levels in co-op. The first found us attacking enemy stockpiles, then attacking a militia stronghold. The section seemed designed to show off not only the strength and scope of Mercs 2's weaponry, but also how much more efficiently you can slice through a mission with a compatriot. The Venezuelan terrain is vast, to say the least; you'll be looking at four times the land found in the first title. We hopped on some jet skis to get from one section to another. During this time, we noticed some problems with Mercs 2 that seem to befall many sandbox titles: there's some pretty glaring pop-in in the terrain, and some of the visuals don't look super-crisp. On the other hand, the number of destructible objects and buttery 60 frames per second help to balance the other issues, which we don't think will be fixed by release time.

Upon reaching the island in question, the mission was pretty clear: we had to attack a few weapon strongholds and "liberate" some bunker busters to attack a military fortress. Of course, that sounds easier to type than to pull off, especially considering that each bunker busters stockpile was surrounded with swarms of armed soldiers. After clearing out waves of enemies, we called for airlifts to pick up each stack of bombs before moving onto another section. This section of the mission could have been done with one player, but using two players allowed us to split up duties into distraction (shooting at soldiers) and attack (stealing the stockpile) not only streamlined the process, but was a hell of a lot more fun than trudging through the experience solo.

Upon reaching the second island, we decided to test out some heavier artillery. Our partner called in a tank and we called in a chopper. With the tank, he mowed through waves of footsoldiers while we softened up watchtowers and ground vehicles. We landed our chopper directly on the fortress and jumped out to blast away at defending soldiers. In this case, a partner came in handy as we set up a laser-guided MOAB (Mother of All Bombs). Granted, in a solo game, we could've set it up and ran as far as possible (and still would've died from the blast), but our partner flattened several walls surrounding the fortress, giving us an easier escape from the fallout of the MOAB.

Mercenaries was all about huge destruction and as the ad campaign stated, "blowing the living crap out of everything." We put that to the test as we detonated the MOAB and nearly killed both of us. When it didn't quite level the fortress, we went to the next step: a nuclear bunker buster. Not only did that take care of the mission, we figured out that we'd been playing in god mode in the aftermath. Everything, including our vehicles, was leveled in the blast. Good stuff, but we don't recommend it at home. These sort of "yes, I can" moments really shine through, and we're looking forward to playing through more of them.

After collecting some dough, we hopped into the second mission of our demo. The AN (Mercs 2's version of the UN) sent us on a mission to recover the remnants of a secret plane that crashed and broke into three pieces. The Chinese military grabbed the parts, and the AN wanted it destroyed. Once again, easier-sounding than accomplished, even with a duo of soldiers strapped from head to toe with nasty guns and a load of airstrikes on hand.

The first piece of the plane was stowed away on a Chinese gunship. After several minutes of firing at the ship with rocket launchers, we were able to scrape together just enough resources to call in an airstrike, which finally took out one of the three plane pieces. In the second strike, we maneuvered in a manner similar to our successful strike in the first mission, with one player softening up the ground troops from the air, while the other plowed through walls with a tank. Neither vehicle survived, but thankfully, neither did the second piece of aircraft. The final section was a bit trickier, though. The last section of the spy plane was located right in the front area of a gated mansion. Neither of us had enough credits to call in a strike or order a vehicle, so one distracted the troops while the other slapped C4 all over the piece of aircraft to detonate it. Again, not an impossible task in single-player, but a far more efficient task in multiplayer.

Once it was all said and done, we're pretty optimistic about Mercenaries 2's multiplayer. We've got some reservations about some of the performance, like pop-up textures and some fuzzy visuals, but the action runs at a rock-solid 60 frames per second. Even if we tested out the co-op over non-retail servers, we're confident into the smoothness of the online experience; we didn't pick up any lag or involuntary player drop-out. There's little doubt in our minds that although Mercs 2 won't be a flawless title, it's got more going for it than it has going against it. We think you'll have lots of fun blowing the living crap out of everything with your friends, whether they're a few miles away or across the country.