Mercenaries 2 - First Thoughts

So I've played through the tutorial, acquired my base, done some of the weapon courses, and completed a mission; so what do I think so far? Umm yeah.

You get a choice of three player characters - don't bother, seriously don't bother. Fast runner (female of course), fast reload, or fast health regeneration. There's a reason the box art features only one guy; yup fast health. The other two are pointless you can either nick a car or duck out the way; and reload time is short anyway.

The only difference you get is how the other players react to you and the looped witticisms you keep spouting for 'events' such as running over an enemy. Come on people get with the 21st century - sure give me a basic body template to pick but allow me to tweak the three parameters rather than present me with a take it or leave it stereotype.

Graphically it's not excellent. It's not realistic a little cartoony, which can work, but you can see the engine was built with the PS2 in mind as it looks like a high-end PS2 release rather than a next-gen console version. Even with the low-polygon count and woefully blocky vegetation the PS3 still can't cope and some tear was visible.

Controls are standard third-person and respond well enough, but suffer in that you can't move and aim at the same time. Sounds fair enough, but it seems at times simply turning counts as movement and snaps you out of aim mode. Add in the normal flimsiness of stick controls over mouse and weapon accuracy that can see you unloading a non-aimed assault rifle at a guy standing 10ft away and missing every time and fun it's not.

The camera happily floats pointing in the same direction you're facing, but can still get a little screwy if you've got your back to a wall. Try to drive backwards and it'll switch from front to rear view, but it's sluggish at doing so meaning you have to drive back or forward a distance before it switches.

Weapon-wise you're stuck with two, your default assault rifle and a secondary weapon you have to pick up - so far machine gun rules just for the rate of fire. The tutorial kindly tells you how to cook grenades before throwing them, useful in that my selection was placeable remote charges - I wondered why they weren't being thrown very far and not detonating.

Getting around is made easier with the GPS. Simpy pick a location, set a beacon and the GPS will plot a route to it via the roads; and only via the roads. If you pick a location off-road it'll take you to the nearest road point then stop. It's not bad, in fact it's pretty good as it updates in zero-time; miss a turn because of a barricade and the direction line on the map will instantly adjust, better yet because of the way it shows directionality you can even plan a little in advance and purposely skirt around areas.

Enemy-wise the AI is dumb - brickwall level of dumb. Heading to my first proper mission at Universal Petroleum the guards kept talking about the enemy being there and then turning and shooting at their own building at enemies that are circling around the building in jeeps - on the road outside, behind the containing wall that surrounds the building.

It's also difficult to tell factions apart, if the target goes red I shoot, if the target is blue I don't - so can you please tell the blue-targets to stop shooting at me when I tootle up. This reaches stupid levels when asked by the CEO of UP to place some listening devices around the city one of which is at a UP facility. Would they open the door - nope; would the stop shooting at me - nope.

What gets even worse is the respawning centres - these featured in the previous game and should have been killed off then. Basically you get a barracks that keeps popping out an enemy until you blow it up; great unless you haven't got something to blow it up with.

At this point we reach what is for me the major problem of the game - no in-game load and no abort mission ability. Start a mission and you have to go through with it until you're dead, in the above example that means guiding a chopper into an area under heavy fire from a respawning bunker you can't blow up because you've nothing to blow it up with.

This flaw even raised it's ugly head in the weapons training where for fun you make a wager on succeeding or not. Shoot down the 50 statues in the time limit with the emplaced gun; a sign perhaps that they weren't statues they were busts on plinths huh huh he said busts. Anyway taking them down isn't too difficult until I just nicked one slightly and it toppled off behind the plinth - the indestructible plinth. So wait for the time to run out and lose money or abort the mission - oh wait I can't abort; I'll reload instead - oh wait I can't do that either. Yup you have to exit all the way back out to the main menu then reload your way back in again. How could they not have spotted this in testing? Sure it prevents the constant save/reload cycle, but damn it an abort misison without penalty should jsut be there for this type of game.

Heck even the boasting of the character having won was drowned out by the chu-chunk Wager Won graphic coming in; so what's the point of having him/her speak?

So from that you might think I don't like the game, in fact I do it's vaguely cathartic to run around shooting at everything and watching big explosions I just have to ensure I don't take it seriously enough to care about achieving the perfect score so as to avoid the need to constantly abort reload.