The moment I sat down for the first time and played Mercenaries 2, I could swear that I had been on that beach before. The very first level, still in tutorial mode reminded me of a very early pirates game. Even as I was moving forward up the beach into the interior of this island, I'm thinking is this some kind of joke? Have they recycled an old videogame?
The thing that makes Mercenaries 2 feel like that is that it can be pretty clunky. I tend to like very fine control of my drivers and shooters, and of course since I'm an old Virtua Fighter guy, that holds true for my fighting as well. Since I can do all three of these, ok well it's just a melee button, I want it to be better than it is. Furthermore this is a big grainy looking environment. Nothing is anywhere near as crisp and clean as PGR or any Tom Clancy Title. So I'm starting to yawn, but I keep playing. It helps that I've racked up 200 points in achievements without having put in many hours at all.
Soon I realize that I've been playing it a lot longer than Army of Two, something that didn't last long on my box at all, and Army of Two was a lot more precise that M2. Soon, I'm realizing that I kinda like this game because I'm starting to see how big the environment is. It's very, very big. I mean it's about as big as Burnout Paradise and just as seamless. OK I'm starting to get it. It doesn't hurt that I rather dig the black guy avatar.
Then I realize that I can jack cars and motorcycles like in GTA. It's not as smooth but OK. Now I'm starting to actually really dig the game for all its simplicity and grainyness, there's a hell of a lot to do. Then after about three days of playing it, finally I realize something that I hadn't really noticed. Almost every damned thing is destructable. Here I am playing with a kind of tactical and clinical precision, even with this monster jumping car called Cacharro de Muerte, and I've failed to realize... Well I failed to realize until I got my hands on a tank.
So I've got this this tank and I'm in this little fishing village on the island across the channel from the Jamaican pirates.. and I realize what I've just said as I'm swinging the turret around having blown up half a dozen corrugated steel shacks. Then just for the hell of it I aim the big gun at a building. Boom! Wow. I gotta get one of these things in one of the cities!
I haven't yet, but I have gotten myself some bunker busters and a lot of C4. There's nothing quite as cool as sticking a pack of C4 on a small building that contains guys annoying you with RPGs are hanging out in. Well, actually putting together a several semi-wrecked jeeps in the middle of an intersection and dropping a grenade on them and watching the cascading explosions. Then again calling in an artillery barrage against a five story building and watching the whole thing collapse is pretty cool too.
There was another game which was somewhat similar to this one, where you're a commander and you could call in a bunch of supplies to be dropped on your locale. It was a lot more squaddy than this one; in M2 you're pretty incredibly indestructable. A one man wrecking crew. I've walked away from exploded fuel depots and swam a quarter mile in 30 seconds, but there are still some pretty hairy challenges.
M2 has a very high brainless fun factor but also calls for a bit of thinking. I think I'm going to hang onto this one and play it all the way through. Coop is pretty stupid, rather like coop on Too Human. Hey I've been playing Too Human did I tell you? Another time..
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