PS3 Review – Mercenaries 2: World In Flames

What makes open world games so appealing to a gamer? Well in all honesty I think that it’s the fact that you can do whatever you want whenever you want. Factor in a fully destructible environment and I think you will have a huge market of gamers that you will appeal to. So it looks like it is time for another review once again guys, and this time it will be Mercenaries 2. To be completely honest I bought this title solely for a destruction fix I needed. I am also an open world/sandbox game sucker. I just love being able to do whatever I want in a game. So let’s go ahead and get to the review. For those that don’t know the format I will tell you my likes, followed by dislikes, and then at the end I will tell you whether to buy/rent/or stay away.

What I Liked:

• -Explosions/Destruction—need I say more? This game is fully destructible, and when I say fully I mean FULLY. You can never know the satisfaction until you take down a gigantic oil rig while you are on it until you do it. The same goes for bridges.
• -Map—it is a very good size for this game. It’s not too big, and it’s not too small. In all honesty it is a lot bigger than I thought it would be. It offers a variety of areas. Some of the funnest things occur in the jungle settings.
• -Ability to fly—any open world game that doesn’t have flying in it is  lacking in my opinion. While you can’t fly planes you can use helicopters.
• -Co-op Online—this is the way one of GTAIV’s online modes should’ve been. You can play out the entire story online with cutscenes and everything. Players come and go as they see fit and it doesn’t interrupt gameplay at all.
• -Airstrikes—this also falls under explosions and destruction, but they are still a lot of fun to do.
• -Items to be picked up—there are items that must be marked and signaled with a smoke grenade to be picked up by your helicopter pilot. These items include cash, weapons, oil, etc. They are placed all over the map for you to find throughout the game.
• -Weapons—while it isn’t that deep of a weapons selection it more than adequate for the game. Rocket launchers, pistols, sniper rifles, AK’s, C-4, grenades, etc. Those are just some of the weapons available for the player to use.

What I Disliked:

• -Graphics—while they aren’t necessarily bad, they aren’t good either. To me they are somewhere in between Kane and Lynch and GTAIV.

• -Camera—it can be a pain at times by not responding when it should.
• -Vehicle Handling/Physics—it’s not good when you hit a biker at full speed and he sort of just bounces off your car and then keeps going after that. While that doesn’t happen all the time, it shouldn’t happen at all. If this game had GTAIV’s vehicle/physics system it would be a lot better. This is the main flaw in the game in my honest opinion.
• -No planes to fly—there’s helicopters why aren’t there planes available for the player to use?

Buy/Rent/Stay Away:

Now I know this review is a tad bit short for my style guys. In fact this is the shortest review I have ever done in my entire life. But this game is pretty much straight forward. It’s an open world game that throws story out the window, but brings in the ability to destroy absolutely everything on the map. Everyone out there knows it has it’s faults, but it definitely has it’s pluses. That and it fills a lot of open world fixes until Saint’s Row 2 arrives. But in it’s own right I feel that the game is it’s own accomplishment rather than just a filler game. It is just fun despite all the flaws. If you can get past all of the flaws I would definitely recommend this title for you. So at least give it a rent if you are unsure about it, it is at least worth that.

PlayStation LifeStyle’s Final Score Repetitive gameplay can become irritating. Everything in this title is destructible! Co-op is fun, but even that becomes repetitive over time.