Mercenaries 2: World in Flames [Xbox 360]

"I'm currently playing this through on the xbox.

I've read that this game is populated with a number of glitches, but after about 10 hours of game play, I've only come across/noticed one. I blew up a building that was on stilts, there was one enemy still inside the rubble, when I walked up to the rubble, he fell through the floor and I could only see his head above the rubble, and his legs under the building. Other than that I haven't experienced any freezing, or seen/noticed any enemy personel/vehicles disappearing, etc.

As many reviews state, the AI is pretty horrible, and so is the accuracy of most of the hand held weapons, incidental dialogue can get quite repetitive, anyone that isn't a main player in the story lines look identical and rather bland.

Now that being said, this game is FUN. You don't need huge amounts of tactics, you're capable of taking out overwhelming numbers of enemy's, and unless you do something REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY stupid, it's almost impossible to die in combat. On the 360 the explosions and destruction are just so much fun, and look pretty nice.

If you're looking for a tactical / realistic game or a deep story line, stay well away, but if you ever wanted to be Arnie in Last Action Hero, Stallone in Rambo, or Bruce Willis in Die Hard take a look at this game. It's no brain, action movie fun, minimal frustration due to difficulty levels, and the game is designed so you can play for short 15-30min bursts of destruction, or long playing sessions (of destruction)."

"I’ll come straight to the point. As a sequel Mercenaries 2: World in Flames fails to impress me the way its predecessor did a few years ago.

Back then - in 2005 to be precise - I couldn’t stop playing because of the stunning visuals and the brilliant mix of free roaming and lineair mission based gameplay it had to offer. All of this combined with plenty of humour, crisp controls and an almost fully destructionable playground made it a joy to play.

So when I inserted a recently purchased copy of Mercenaries 2 in my Xbox 360 I was a little bit shocked to be honest. Maybe because I had exceeded expectations or maybe because I’m spoiled to bits having non-stoppily played that other free-roaming-third-person-action-game recently released: Grand Theft Auto IV.

Ah well, at first glance the game looks and sounds amazing. Pretty scenery, colourful backgrounds and some nice sound effects. You soon get to blow things up though, and it has to be said, the explosions are without a doubt done extremely well. But play a while longer and you will begin to notice some minor flaws in the visual and animation department. The main characters for example are very detailed but the enemy soldiers and the civilians all look very much the same: there isn’t much variety between them. They look boring. As a matter of fact, the civilians actually look and behave like they’re bored. They are walking around aimlessly, like zombies, repeating the same sentences over and over again and not making any sense often. Mercenaries 2 may have an enormous virtual playground with cities, villages and woods for you to play in but it all feels a bit empty and shallow.

There is more unfortunately. It looks like there hasn’t been put enough attention to the animation of the vehicles. And handling of these vehicles also feels a bit to be left desired. It all seems a bit static. The same can be said while you are riding a motorcycle for example. You can ride as fast as you like, but when you bump in at an upcoming car at highspeed you don’t get launched from your bike. No, instead you stay seated on your bike, even whilst spinning around like mad. Not very realistic in my opinion.

But that’s not all. When you’re shooting at enemies, their dead bodies disappear without a trace. I know this is because of memory restrictions or something like that but hey!, I wanna see how many victims I’ve made. So Pandemic, if you guys are reading this, please get it right the next time and let those bodies pile up in a sequel!

Having said all this of the above, I admit I’m a bit harsh on Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. Okay, it feels like this game was rushed somewhat but that doesn’t mean it is no fun! There is plenty of humour, even more fire-fights and there many missions available, different enough from each other to ensure you won’t stop playing for a long time. The only multiplayer mode available is co-op multiplayer. There are no player versus player or capture the flag modes unfortunately, but the co-op multiplayer mode that IS available more than makes up for this loss.

And the explosions, oooh don’t forget the explosions! I gawed at my television screen like a drooling idiot the first time I ordered an air strike on a huge building meaning to be destroyed. The impact those bombs had were H-U-G-E.

To put it briefly, if you aren’t fastidious, you don't mind a few flaws and most importantly, you like to blow things up big time, then this is the game for you."