Assassin

Ever since I saw this game on the last E3 I had been looking forward to it. What they were telling about the game sounded awesome to me: order in nukes and monster trucks at any point you like. How could this game not be awesome? Last week this game finally got released!


The story
In Mercenaries 2 you obviously play a mercenary. After doing a mission for a guy called Solano, who is an important person in the country (Venezuela), you get screwed over. He doesn't pay you and you get shot in the ass by one of his men. After escaping you seek revenge: 'Everybody pays...'. So the first thing you do is find a base of operations, and what's better than Solano's villa? So you basically just run/drive in, destroying everything in your path and claim the villa. After doing that, you can start plotting your revenge by finding out where Solano is hiding.


GTA but better
You play this game kind of like you play a GTA game. You play in third-person view, meaning the camera is behind the character you play. Just like in GTA you can walk around the map, stealing cars, doing missions for various factions and shoot people for money. The difference with GTA is that you can do even more in this game. For example, after recruiting a jet pilot, you can bomb any given place on the map. An enemy camp giving you trouble? No problem, just send an airstrike to take care of them! Ecerything can be destroyed, building, trees, you can basically obliterate a full block if you like. Like airstrikes, you can order various things. After doing some missions for factions you will unlock new things. You can buy these at their shop and then your helicopter pilot can fly in at any moment you like and drop the item you requested. These items are vehicles (cars, motors, boats, helicopters) or guns/ammo. If at a point you feel like driving a fast sports car, no problem! You just have one dropped in!


The factions
During the game you'll meet various factions for which you can do missions. There's the UC, which is an oil company, the guerilla's who fight for Venezuela's freedom, the pirates, and later the Chinese and the Allied forces. By doing missions for them you can unlock new vehicles and weapons to drop in. Their bases also function as helicopter pads, so if you make friends with a faction, you can fly in whenever you like. Every faction has mission to take over camps and claim new bases. By doing this you won't only get a new helictoper pad, but you will also unlock more fuel storage, which you can then buy in their store. You will need this to order airstrikes, or have your helicopter pilot drop things.


Buggy
Mercenaries 2 is a great game, but has some problems. I myself have noticed a couple of them. For example, sometimes when ordering my helicopter pilot to pick me up, he won't take off. He just stays on the ground without doing anything. Another bug I've had with the helicopter pilot is a little more lethal. In the game, if you get out of the area you can visit, you will be told to return to an area you can visit, because you are being tracked using cellphones and there is no reception in that area. Sometimes when ordering the helicopter pilot to drop you off somewhere, instead of going there he just flies to the edge of the map. If you stay in a zone you're not supposed to visit for too long you simply die, which is not really something you want to do. I've also had some troubles with textures not showing properly and making an account to play online. I've heard Pandemic is already working on a patch that should fix a lot of problems though, so this is no reason not to get this game.


Could this game BE any more awesome?
Mercenaries 2 is a lovely sandbox game, with even more freedom than GTA. Everything can be destroyed by any means you like. You can go and destroy some camps, or just drive around, looking for money and bombs to pick up. If you like the idea of such things, get this game!

8,5/10

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Safinn

Looks very good. I'm not sure about buying this. I have GTA so I think I'm just going to stick with that. Great detailed review but I'm saving for Fifa 09!

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xzKinGzxBuRnzx

This game is great. However, I was shocked when I loaded up the game and saw it had no campaign or network play. I big let down for me.

EDIT: Sorry everyone I just now saw that it did have a campaign. I just over looked it. Thats great!

Crimping Zombie

I don't mean to be rude to the developers or anything but Graphically this game looks disappointing. I was waiting so long for a next gen version of Mercenaries. I was a major fan of the PS2 game, but from what I have heard and seen this looks like a let down

Do you know if those screen shots are finished products?

Safinn

Yea the graphics dont look so good. I think it's because it's a big game so they can't jam too much into it.

I think they are finished product photos.

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elamre

it's almost done with downloading. i like the freedom of it. but does it supports nvidia?

xzKinGzxBuRnzx

yes it does support NVIDIA. It's work fine on my 8800 gtx. Though I am a little disappointed with the graphics. Still a great game though.

spamking

I'm hoping to have some time to try this out on my PS2.

InsaneNutter

Another good review here Assassin, are you still enjoying the game?

The graphics are not the best I agree but the game play is ok, This is as good as I could get it looking on my pc with a 8800GT

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Assassin

I stopped playing for a bit after getting all the HVTs for everyone actually. I like the side stuff like that more than the actual missions. I'm still hoping for a patch to come soon, I'd like to finish it without being scared I'll run into some random bug that kills me and makes me loose my weapons.

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