When I was young, I did not own a sandbox. My parents were not cheap, my dad just didn’t want it messing up his lawn. So when people tell me that open ended games are like a sandbox, I fell like I have no idea what they mean. What I do remember is going to the beach and stomping on other kids’ sand castles. Partly because I was an asshole at age 6 and mostly because I liked to see things get knocked down. If you like blowing up building after building with every way possible, then Mercs 2 is for you.

The story behind Mercs 2 is not the game’s strongest suit. Basically, your Merc is betrayed by a Venezuelan businessman who is overthrowing the government. He decides not to pay you and now you declare revenge on him and all those within a 10 mile radius. You will find yourself working for any one of the 5 factions in the game doing varied missions in order to gain intelligence on the whereabouts of your enemies. You will, however, piss off other factions because they all don’t like each other. If you rob from the UN to help the Chinese, don’t expect the UN to be happy about it.  It’s a good strategy to stick with one faction until you are done with them to avoid the heavy bribe required to make them friendly again. Hostile factions not only will deny you contracts, they will fire at you whenever you pass by.

The game play is almost identical to the first game. Your character is a lot stronger than the enemies and is borderline indestructible. This can make the game easy at times, but since you are almost always alone, it’s a nice way to make the game fun and not utterly impossible. The three Mercs are basically the same except for a few traits. Mathias has a faster health regeneration, Chris can carry more ammo, and Jennifer can run much faster. Outside of what they look like and say, they aren’t too different.  One thing you will notice is the dialogue, which is repeated ad nauseam. You will hear the same few quips every time you kill someone and this is quite often. The beauty of Mercs 2 is that you can complete a mission anyway you want. Here, the end always justifies the means. You can roll in with a tank or fly a chopper in. As long as you complete the goal, you get paid. This truly lets gamers decide how they want to experience the action and what makes Mercs 2 so much fun.

The game is not without its flaws, and these flaws are glaring. First, the enemy AI is bad. They will shoot at you. They will shoot each other. They will shoot at the ground or in the air. This wouldn’t be so bad except when you are trying to capture High Value Targets (HVT), it can be frustrating if a soldier shoots an RPG at the HVT, killing them, and negating half your reward not too mention the achievement for capturing all 50. Soldiers will kill each other all the time and, though funny, the reckless abandonment the enemies have is debilitating when you have to keep people alive and are penalized for sheer carelessness. You will notice collision detection issues, especially with helicopters landing and using the winch. Sometimes emplaced guns will fire for no reason at nothing and other times enemies will be stuck between solid walls of concrete. You see their guns sticking out but can’t hit them.

The lasting appeal is both great and awful at the same time. No one was expecting online multiplayer because calling in air strikes on each other probably would not work. There is so much to do in the game and hunting for the 100 spare parts crates around the map pays huge dividends. Your mechanic will be able to make special vehicles for every 10 you find that can be airlifted in and they are a blast to use. This game was supposed to feature a great co-op, but it’s online only. Super weak. Secondly, the game is brutally easy when you have two super soldiers on the same team. The game does not increase in difficulty with multiple human players. This was most disappointing of all.

A wise man once wrote that games are supposed to be fun. It’s true that we want to be scared sometimes, challenged sometimes, even frustrated sometimes, but in the end, we want to have a good time. Mercenaries 2 is one of those games that is by no means perfect, but a blast to play. There are some glaring AI glitches, some collision detection, and other caveats aforementioned, but when all of the smoke clears, Mercs 2 is a lot of fun. So much fun that the game has a high replay value with no multiplayer. This game falls in between a buy and an extended rental. I know there will be DLC released for it someday and if you have as much fun as I did, you very well may want to pick this up. It’s a great way to keep you satisfied until the game crazy fall season begins.

Overall: 8 out of 10

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