Mercenaries 2: World In Flames Preview

by Tom Hardman - 2008/08/05 4:27am

Putting out the fire with big ass weapons!

It seems a long time ago we were first treated to some rather enticing pictures of the follow up to one of the previous generation's triple-A titles. Mercenaries: Playground Of Destruction set itself an impressive benchmark in the realm of sandbox games and achieved a large following as a reward. Pitting a lone mercenary against an entire army hasn’t changed as Pandemic Studio’s goal in this second venture, and with all signs of early media boasting about how far the sequel will take it, this one's been on our radar for some time.

Development has been a long process; we know because we’ve been hanging from each screenshot and snippet of footage. Reminders have been consistent and certain events involving the new game's host country and their displeasure at the fact the game promised an unparalleled level of destruction across their sovereign soil. Shirking off any controversy though, the game has delighted us all with recent gameplay videos and developer insights.

Set in Venezuela, the game looks ready to be the story-light explosion-heavy affair of its predecessor making gameplay, accessibility and open-ended jaw-dropping mechanics the real seller. The beauty behind the original was the ability to complete set missions in an order of your choosing, in a manner that matched your play-style the best. Mercenaries 2 looks set to build on both aspects and give it the next-gen twist to take it to the next level.

As the development team and publishers have pointed out on numerous occasions, the golden rule behind the game is, should you ask yourself if you can do something, the answer is yes. This means obstacles in the previous game can now be overcome, leaving things up to you with very few restrictions. You can carry out a mission in a wild variety of ways, from the more traditional creep and snipe, to a run gun and bomb, or to simply levelling the surrounding buildings.



Rest assured though, Mercenaries 2 won’t simply be a blind-firing shooter with little afterthought for tactics. From what we’ve seen, the game will throw multiple challenges at you from the off, resulting in a fast-paced game where you have to use your ingenuity, quick reflexes and imagination to overcome the odds. By providing a range of choice beyond your average sandbox game, the title looks to stay fresh through each playthrough.

That’s essential news considering the lack of online multi-player. Whilst it might seem a little crude to leave off the online element of the game, it wouldn’t surprise us to hear difficulties had been met trying to factor in the amount of possible destruction from eight or more players into the game's engine. Aside from any limitations, the gameplay mechanics simply wouldn’t hold true. The game has always been about wreaking mass havoc on a largely cannon-fodder based stronghold across a series of locations. By putting in versus multi-player modes the destruction would be quick, final, and unfortunately mutually effective, making a fast-paced game of laughs into a pit of despair.

Never fear though, Pandemic has us sold on one online aspect of the game. Co-op multi-player will be featured for the first time, allowing you and a partner to team up online and take on the main campaign. They’ve not announced any limitations in this method, and have made numerous hints towards how it can be incorporated into the battle. Split up and take on hostiles from different sides, or combine the might of assault and support, ground forces and air forces to win through. The decision and freedom is literally yours to do with as you wish.



If an open-world full of combustibles wasn’t enough for you, be prepared to encounter an arsenal of weaponry and gadgets unlike anything seen before. A long list of support options awaits you from the comparatively timid air-dropped jeep, to the much more direct tactical nuke. A plethora of modified vehicles and air strikes will back up the range of abilities you have. Using a grapple you can effectively pluck helicopters from the control of the pilots by attaching yourself to them mid-flight, and swinging up to them to fight them for the stick.

The polish we’re seeing already is fantastic, explosions rock the screen, debris litters the roads from a carelessly strewn cluster bomb and the action still remains as slick as the first. Branching out into new levels of destruction (somewhere around the ‘total’ mark), adding new vehicle types such as boats and hinted at features such as the ability to scale buildings with the use of the grapple has certainly turned World in Flames into your world.

Whilst the chance of getting a hands-on preview is unlikely, we can only theorise as to how the controls play out. So far the vehicles look fast enough and action looks fluid enough to know that there’s little to worry about. Its first outing never had us cursing our controllers and there’s no reason to suspect things have changed. When it comes time to review World In Flames, we're sure we'll end up labelling it 'must buy'. There are few games that have made us crack a smile like this.