Mattias Nilsson, Chris Jacobs and Jennifer Mui are the mercs featured in Pandemic's and Electronic Arts' latest open-world warfare title: Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. The name is appropriate enough as the mercenaries strongest point is for blowing everything straight to hell, which usually results in a massive explosion, followed by smoke, flames and ensuing panic among any present civilians as they attempt to run and drive away from the ensuing war that is taking place before their very eyes. While you can pick from the three above mentioned characters to play as, the basic story remains the same, they all get shot in the ass. The mercs are in a war-torn Venezuela, here you can choose to assist several different factions as they all battle it out for the country's oil. On your first opening mission, before getting paid for an accomplished contract, you are betrayed, shot at, yet manage to leap to safety in the open sea, though not before taking that dreaded bullet to the left ass cheek. And so, the revenge plot begins – this is about as deep as the story and characters can get, which is as deep as a bullet in the behind. At the end of the day, the mercs and everyone else in between always get paid, but does Pandemic and EA's latest open-world warfare prove to be worthy of your payment?

Gameplay:

Mercs 2 can take a little while to get into, upon first playing it can seem rather disappointing, rumble for the most part seems to be lacking with no rumble upon firing any weapons or crashing vehicles, the only time it becomes apparent is when you decide to bring down a nuke or some other devastating brutal device around yourself and the surrounding area, and even then it seems exceptionally weak. Mercs 2 without a doubt does most certainly have its issues, there are many glitches in the game for one, some of the more notable issues from personal experience include (some good glitches here): shooting at an enemy jeep thus killing the driver, running over to said jeep and finding nobody in the driver seat and turning around as the dead body falls from the sky, literally 2 feet in front of me. Some glitches are rather frustrating, but I found that the most amusing of all, as well as the above mentioned. During my playtime on Mercs 2, I unlocked about 200GS worth of achievements without even having played online yet, some of these included the achievement for playing with a Mercenaries 2 developer online, earning $1 Billion in-game (nowhere near this amount) and an achievement for completing the game, which at the time I had not yet accomplished, and then some more. Though obviously the latter was one glitch I was rather content with, there were some other instances of glitches, the worst one being whilst in a boat's gunning turret, when leaving the turret I was literally under the boat, unable to get out, though before resulting in a re-loading of my game-save, I managed to get back on the turret and exit without issue, after a few rather strange moments. Mercenaries 2: World in Flames has since received a title update, which may have addressed some of these issues, though it seems unlikely that all would have been eradicated. Other than the game's glitches there are also some rather questionable gameplay design choices. For a game that is all about blowing the crap out of everything and all enemies in-sight, I find it rather strange that you are required to press a face button to pickup ammo for your currently held weapons, for switching weapons it is obviously understandable, though when in the heat of battle, and low on ammo, it is not so much fun running over the enemies you have killed repeatedly tapping the Y button in the hope that you can scrape together some ammunition in order to fight back before being killed, it's a rather small issue which you quickly get used to, though running over weapons and automatically grabbing the ammo for your equipped weapon would have been more ideal. For a game that is all about destruction and chaos, the general shooting mechanics, which work efficient enough, but are not so hot – the lack of rumble feedback whilst firing weapons makes this stand out more than it should do. You can hold up to two firearms simultaneously as well as frag grenades or C4, the latter of which requires a second press to detonate. Firearms include recognizable tools of destruction, such as the AK-47, RPG, shotgun, sniper rifle, mini-uzi, stinger missiles and more. Mercenaries 2 is all about the explosions, this is where the game is at its best, and that is when having to attack a rather large outpost, with tonnes of enemies, and being able to at will, call in all manner of support in the way of artillery strikes and the like, and even a spot of helicopter and tank-jacking as and when required. Another rather annoying issue is that you can only equip a total of three drop-off items, these include bombs, weapons and vehicles, accessed using the d-pad, that is once you have selected your three preferred items from the main menu. The issue here is that if you're in the middle of a warzone, which typically you will be, then you want to call support in rather promptly, you might want a crate with a rocket launcher dropped off or an AK-47, and if not designated already then this requires pausing the game and going through the main menu selecting the desired item, and then have it replace one of your other items, then return back to the game and signal for the item to be dropped off. This seems rather cumbersome, I can understand that due to a good magnitude of options that you should only have limited quick selections during gameplay, but if you're in the menu, it would be convenient to select the item you want and have it deployed from the main menu, instead of having to replace an item which you'll only end up switching back to your preference of kit once the other needed item has landed. Support later in the game proves to be vital as you build up your Private Military Contractors, these include a hot Australian lass, named Fiona, who keeps you up to date during missions and current objectives, as well as some later recruits who also prove to have their uses. These include the Irish helicopter pilot, Ewan, who you should be accustomed to rather quickly as he is essentially your taxi throughout Venezuela, thus being able to drop you off at acquired heli-pads from capturing outposts from your contractors, and being on good terms with them ensures a quick arrival via chopper thanks to Ewan, which may save you a potential foot-trek, car hijacking, driving, swim and boat journey. Ewan also proves vital in your findings, if you find large stashes of cash, bombs or even fuel tanks, then Ewan is on hand to pick this stuff up provided you signal him by way of smoke, he can even drop off acquired weaponry and vehicles for your own use including tanks, military jeeps and boats. You'll also later on acquire a jet-pilot, though albeit a drunken jet-pilot who goes by the name of Misha, who is easily the most amusing character in the game. Provided you have acquired enough fuel via. Ewan's pickups, then Misha and his drunken jet-piloting skills will be on hand to drop artillery strikes, nukes and all other manner of explosive damage to cause instant death to your enemies – just be sure to take a couple of steps back from the inbound explosive disaster. The beautiful Eva is your on-hand mechanic, she fixes anything and everything and as with the previous recruits she can provide specific training exercises for you, among all the recruits you can do several varying training missions such as targeting bombs for the drunken Misha to deliver maximum impact via. his jet-plane, get used to some helicopter piloting and pick-ups thanks to Ewan's missions and more. In fact, many of your contractors who you will do business with like to put you through your paces, such as delivery crates of knocked of booze or drugs, which must be safely delivered to receive payment and complete the mission. Whether it be for P.LA.V., Universal Petroleum, United Allies, Pirates or the Chinese, it all follows a very familiar structure throughout. You also have a radar and map, the flashing icons on here indicate current available missions, completing these thus opens up other available missions and so on at acquired outpost locations, in this sense Mercs 2 is very basic, as are the actual missions themselves, though some do prove to be more entertaining than others. While for the most part you will be traveling back and forth between missions in the hope of acquiring information on the whereabouts of one Roman Solana, the guy who double crossed you and who is responsible for the bullet in your ass, and no-one sticks one in your ass and gets away with it. His involvement in the storyline is one of a rather political nature as he takes control of the oil in Venezuela, it is up to you to do petty jobs for the likes of the mentioned factions, all of whom usually end up pitting you against each other, so it is also important to juggle your friendship with these factions if you have not completed all your missions for said attacked faction, otherwise you'll be paying millions of dollars in bribes to regain their trust and to get the right to take on their dirty work once more. Hi-jacking vehicles works considerably well, if a helicopter is close enough you can grapple onto this (batman style) and upon reaching the choppers door you have a button press sequence like cutscene to deal with, usually this involves two button presses, one to open the door and the other is essentially a tug of war thing with the pilot, which typically results in bashing his brains in with the door before chucking him out. Tanks can also be hi-jacked in a similar fashion, though if there is an enemy on the tank's gunner turret, he will need to be taken care of first. Generally, while hi-jacking these particular vehicles is useful, it's almost too useful and as such makes the game far too easy. You could quite literally run by a dozen enemies, some of which may not even bother to shoot at you, hi-jack a tank and then be in quite a powerful position to take out several enemy buildings using said tank, and call in something like an artillery strike to pick off any stragglers, or you could just use the rather powerful laser guided bomb to destroy the area and wipe most enemies out instantly. The only issue in calling Ewan or Misha for these drop-off items, is that you are left vulnerable for the few seconds whilst you go through the couple of preferred items, basically you can't move until you have highlighted the item you want deployed and chucked out a smoke to signal for it, thus leaving you vulnerable for a good couple of seconds. It's often tempting to just steer of course and bring down every building, vehicle and civilian in-sight, though rather annoyingly you do get penalized for every civilian killed, but if like me, you'll end up with a bank balance of several million pretty quickly, so you can afford to not care who you incinerate. Perhaps this is yet another glitch or rather just something overlooked, but I find it strange that civilians have bullet-proof glass on their cars, civilians can not be killed when shot at through the car windows, though they do panic, get out of their protective dome and run away, screaming, and they typically run in your direction.

Graphics:

Mercenaries 2 is not a great looking game overall, there's plenty of bad textures, made all the more noticeable in the in-game cutscenes, out doors in particular basic things such as grass look rather unnatural, and there's also some other effects such as the odd bird flying about and bits of what look like flames popping in for a few seconds of visibility, which just looks rather exceptionally unfitting. There is graphics and even item pop-in galore, for example if you mark an item for Ewan to come and collect for you, don't stray too far away from it, if you go far enough away that it goes off your radar area, then it disappears, and Ewan reports that there is nothing to pickup and returns back to base. Speaking of pop-in, this is something many games suffer from, including the mighty open-world Grand Theft Auto IV, it is considerably more noticeable in Mercs 2 however, especially when driving vehicles, it's as if you can be traveling too fast for the textures and items thus pop-in too late, so they often appear right in front of you, things such as bushes and some light bumps in the road can appear literally just a few feet in front of your moving vehicle. On the plus side, I personally like driving in first-person view, which you can do in Mercs 2, though obviously it makes the pop-in issues all that more noticeable. While the surrounding textures may not be vastly detailed and do lack punch, there are some things which look better than others, and react to your actions in a rather realistic manner. Trees and bushes for a start, drive vehicles or blow these up and watch as the leaves scatter or the tree tips and crumbles to the ground. The main characters player models appear more detailed than anything else, even right down to Mattias' haircut, which tends to sway as he runs about the playground, he really does look like one angry tatted merc, albeit with a sense of humour. After playing the game for a couple of hours you get used to the blandness and lack of bright and outstanding colours, upon first meeting the Pirates faction in the game, who are Jamaican, there's bright lights galore here, and for a few moments, in the dark at least, the bright coloured lights make for a much more interesting view. Given the scale of Venezuela in the game, the framerate does hold steady, even when battling multiple enemies and bringing down the bombs with explosions galore, this in particular is the visual strong point for Mercs 2, bring down a variety of different bombs, seeing the jet fly overhead delivering the bomb, the impact, explosion and after smoke, as well as any buildings in its path crumbling to the ground with a massive cloud of smoke, it really is a visual delight in this regard and is the most satisfying experience to be had from the appropriately named, World in Flames.

Sound:

The only real issue with the game's sound is that there is just nowhere near enough variety in the voice-overs, while the basic sound effects do an admirable job to represent the on-screen action, whether that be explosions, shooting, and driving many vehicles include tanks and choppers, all of which sound believable enough. The breaking point here is in the voice-overs, they are just terrible for the most part and with every character in the game repeating themselves constantly, including your PMC team, it becomes tiresome rather quickly. There's only so many times you can put up with Fiona saying “If you're not sure what do next, come back to the base and I may have some advice for you.” That one sentence is heard the most, basically if you're not in a mission, you will hear this every minute or so. Many enemies also repeat themselves, you could snipe someone off of a turret, then a near-by enemy will yell at “There's no-one on that turret, I'm manning it!”, boom head-shot, 10 seconds later and the exact same process repeats, and of course more noticeable half the enemies while yelling at you, and looking at you, don't even bother to shoot you anyway. For a game that has you running, driving and flying to various locations, most of which can take a while to get from point A to point B, a radio of some sort would have been ideal, if not outlining your recent activities, just something with some appropriate music to suit the game would have been fine, some music will kick in occasionally on some missions, but this is few and far between. Luckily we can at least listen to our own tunes thanks to the 360 Guide's music player.

Longevity:

Mercenaries 2 can be quite tiresome rather quickly, though once you break some more ground and have more options available to you, namely when you acquire Misha, the drunken jet-pilot, things get more interesting as you can bomb the hell out of anything and everything, after this things pickup rather well. While the game is in a large map, you are essentially repeating the same process, over-and-over again; talk to a faction leader, do some mundane mission such as driving boxed parrots to a new location, without losing too many of them out the back of your truck, bumpy roads and enemy chase downs and all. Then you typically have to attack an outpost, killing all enemies, signal in the faction that you're currently working for so they can take and control the building. This is actually pretty fun depending on how you approach it, typically there are plenty of enemies and vehicles attacking you, so you can go run-and-gunning, or decide to end things more abruptly with the assist of Misha and his jet-plane (being sure not to destroy the main building that the faction you're working with wishes to gain control over). World in Flames also offers up 2-player co-operative over Xbox LIVE, though rather disappointingly there is no split-screen or system link options. The co-operative play adds that little extra to Mercs 2, and it's all the more enjoyable when blowing the crap out of everything with a buddy, which is sure to add some considerable replay value for Xbox LIVE gamers.

Overall:

While riddled with glitches and some questionable gameplay direction, once broken into further, Mercenaries 2 despite its issues is actually a very enjoyable and addictive game. The gun-play leaves much to be desired but the explosions and the effects that come with a crumbling building, there's just something about that which never gets old. Mercenaries 2 very much feels unfinished, while it is no doubt an entertaining romp, the dull story, lack of character depth (with the exception of Misha, just because he make me laugh) and really irritating repeated voice-overs from everyone all add up to a game that needed some extra development time, ultimately it could have been so much better than it is. If you like your open-world games, guns and massive explosions then Mercs 2 will set your world on fire, and should still please open-world fans despite its many faults. It just may be worth waiting for the bargain bin sales or opt for a rental instead.