Mercenaries 2 World in Flames: A bunker buster to the face is just how I say hello

[Ixus Illwrath]

Peter Stormare played the German Nihilist Karl Hungus in The Big Lebowski & Mattais Nilsson in Mercenaries.

Damn, I got the reference, but didn't know my man was a voice in the game that's awesome.

 

[Danny Ocean]

Someone drag Gingantor in here.

 

[darknight910]

Great review, was planing on doing one myself if it wasn't here. I hope you don't mind me elaborating a few things on to it as well.

One of the more frustrating things I've found with the game is the new way you have to do in order to drop in anything. The Merchant of Menace system back in the first Mercenaries was awesome in how quickly it can be used, just go on the selection menu, buy something then use a smoke grenade for it. Simple really and it made everything fast in the heat of battle. Now, Mercs 2 does one good thing out of this by letting you select three different things (air strike, supplies, vehicle) for you to select with the D-pad but you have to travel over to the different hideouts all over the island in order to buy then. Yes, you can buy multiple items of the same type but it's tedious. Also, the Fuel system. Oh god how I hate the fuel system. In order to do ANYTHING in the game, you need fuel. Your helicopter pilot will require a certain amount of fuel to drop in supples and vehicles and your jet pilot needs a certain amount of fuel for different air strikes. You can have 10 MOaBs at your disposal but if you don't have fuel, tough tits!

Oh, and WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING MAKING THE MOAB A "smoke" OPTION? They really expect me to outrun the fucking mother of all bombs' radius that quickly?

In fact, a LOT of the air strikes in this game are smoke/beacon to my frustration, a majority of which have huge blast radius with them. In fact, 10 out of the 15 air strikes are used with thrown placement. (That's what I'm reading from the game guide anyway)

Mui dosent act right in the game. None of the characters do.

One thing i loved about the first game was that lucasarts has a hand in it. With them, you can tell they're dedicated to giving you at least a decent narrative experience along with a stellar game (IE, they're numerous adventure titles).

Mui in the first game was this dry, cool, and calm woman. In Mercenaries 2 she just comes off as angry and overbearing as the men. Plus, EA (in their infinite Wisdom) seemed to have given Mui a little "Augmentation" this time around.

This I noticed quickly too when I started playing the game. In the first Mercenaries game, it was pretty obvious how different the three characters were, Mui the biggest one. In the first game, Jeniffer Mui is a kind of Chinese/British female James Bond; her clothing covered her entire body up (like a real soldier would do) and only modestly endowed. In Mercs 2, her definition in both the game and the manual has her being greedy and only interested in money. "If it seems like she focuses on money and nothing else, it's because she focuse on money and nothing else. She finds it amusing that there are people dumb enough to think anything else is important" Charming, coupled with the fact she's been "Lara"-fied with a huge rack and skin tight clothing, I plan on never playing as here.

In fact, every character has the same bland personality. Though Mattias can be exempt from this because in the series it has become pretty obvious all he wants is to blow everything up her can while getting paid for it, Chris and Jeniffer have decided to take on the same mindset as well, which is inexcusable.

For me, it was the little things that kept making the game bad. The lack of a grenade timing system to tell how long you have till the thing blows up in your hand, stupid AI soldiers that would get their asses handed to them by the soldier in the first game, the lack of an ability to keep said soldiers in a car so you can go on foot and keep them on the turret all were things that pissed me off.