[XBox360] Mercenaries 2

[The Chupster]

Holy snap!

If you haven't played the original Mercenaries, you missed out on a helluva game- think GTA in a 3rd world country where there's a ton of military vehicles and a bunch of bad bad terrorists to put away, earning you cash.

Fast forward to Mercenaries 2. This game does everything the original did- and does it better.

Graphics are really good, framerate is damned solid from the couple of hours I've been playing, vehicles actually control differently and it works like a dream. I can't think of a complaint.

If you see it, it can likely be blown up. You won't be deforming the landscape with massive explosions, but if it's a structure, item, or person, you can blow it up, burn it, or mow it down with gunfire. And this time, they paid attention to the mapmaking- if you feel like jumping into a vehicle and ramping it off of some of the awesomely-constructed geography, you feel free to do just that! Nothing beats hopping in a sports car and hopping a hill, hitting a wall and having the explosion blow you backwards.

The only complaint I have so far is that it's pretty difficult to die. Once you get down to single digits in your health, the screen goes red and whatnot, but you'll regenerate if you can get away from whatever's killing you and stop taking fire for a few seconds. Hell, you can also take quite a bit of damage, even if your health is all the way down to one- you will die eventually, but you almost have to wade into a hostile situation with a buttload of baddies before you're really in danger.

The control scheme borrows liberally from GTA, even if the buttons are mapped a little differently. When you're on foot, you have a reticule with a circle that shows you basically where it's possible for your bullets to go. Slow down a little and you get more accurate, but not horribly so (you won't be pinpoint shooting with an assault rifle). Crouch by holding down the left trigger and you'll get somewhat more accurate. Y button jacks vehicles, A button jumps- and the only thing I can complain about in this game is that there's no way to grab structures and climb over. If you can't jump over it, you have to go around- no climbing up or vaulting over walls.

Other than that, if you like your GTA with a little more action, this game is definitely for you. The flame effects and explosions are cool as shit, and when you try to jack a vehicle from an opposing faction (such as a tank or whatever), it enters a neat little button-press 'puzzle' like a lot of the bits from God of War. Succeed and you have yourself a nice little tank. Fail and you're gonna get hosed and splattered, unless you're just a nimble lil bastard.

And a BIG bonus (for me anyway) is the voiceover work. Yes, the standard lines are sort of cheesy and they get repetitive quick, but I started off my game with Mattias Nilsson, the dutch/whatever guy with the fauxhawk that I played in the last game. Imagine my surprise when, a couple seconds into the opening cinematic, the game lets me know that he's voiced by- wait for it!- Peter Stormare, one of my favorite actors. No, I'm not joking. Anyone who watched the first couple of seasons of Prison Break know what I'm talking about- Stormare played John Abruzzi, a mob boss stuck behind bars that went a little crazy and, well, I'm not gonna spoil it for anyone, but dammit, he's awesome! Also played Lucifer in Constantine. Hell of an actor.

Phil LaMarr's in there as Chris Jacobs, another one of the characters, and I'm pretty sure Ewan the chopper pilot is Glenn Quinn, the guy that played Doyle on Angel for the first handful of episodes.

Ah, geekdom. Anyway. lol

So anyway, if you like running around and killing bad bad people, or just wanna blow up some buildings (which you're gonna need to play for a while to do, I mean, you need cash and connections to get you the air strikes unless you're gonna go all gung ho with a missile launcher or something), this is the game for you. And it has online multiplayer! I mean, c'mon! (I haven't played it yet, but I hear it's the same as single player with 2 people running around, and that was all sorts of fun with Crackdown back in the day.)

You know you want it! ;D

[Mizer]

Yes, I do want it. I might be getting it this weekend actually. Is the campaign pretty much like the original? You get intel on enemies and then go to your contacts when you have enough?

[The Chupster]

Actually, it's sort of the other way around- basically you make nice with a faction and they give you jobs. There are standing contracts (like 'kill x number of members' or 'destroy x number of [specific vehicle name]s') that the group will honor. Then there are outpost-specific contracts that you unlock by freeing an outpost from an opposing group. Sometimes this'll be something like "protect x and get it/them/him/her from point A to point B," but usually it'll be freeing the next outpost. Then there are faction contracts issued by the main HQ, and finally there are standing contracts on HVT (high value targets) where you're supposed to 'verify' them- basically, capture them or kill them and take a pic. These missions are the most like the deck missions from the last game, and there are standing contracts on buildings that they want destroyed.

You'll get a set of contracts from each faction in the game, but unless you just piss 'em off, you'll start off working for an oil consortium. The next group you'll probably work for are some guerillas, and typically they'll have you attacking the oil group. A quick tip: you can bribe groups to get back in their good graces, but expect to pay about 3 million each time, no matter how badly pissed they are (or aren't). To avoid paying multiple times, finish up all of one group's missions for you, then work for the next one and do all of their missions before bribing the first group again- otherwise you just end up losing a lot of cash. The guerilla group has a lot of oil company HVTs, and it's damned hard to capture or kill one without being detected unless you just kill them (sacrificing half of your pay for 'em) and wipe out the outpost they're at to drop any witnesses. And you'll have to do it while in a faction vehicle on top of it all. It's simpler to just piss them off and pay them off later.

I know there are other factions too, I just haven't gotten that far yet. But DAMN do I like blowing shit up! And the unique vehicles you can unlock are badass.