Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (Xbox 360)

Being new to the mercenaries series I probably missed out on some story details that I would of known if I'd played the first one, but still EA should of accounted for the thousands of people who hadn't played the first and were going to by the game. So onto the review.

-----The story-----
You play one of 3 mercenaries and you chose at the start who you want to play as.
You get the choice between:
Jennifer Mui
.../> From playing the game there is no really impact on your game from this decision and is purely made on personal preference so don't expect to be playing the game through 3 times with each character.
The story begins with a brief training based mission which includes some very explosive moments, but I was never really sure what was going on. At the end of the mission I was stood in front of some political leader who ended up double crossing ... more

Being new to the mercenaries series I probably missed out on some story details that I would of known if I'd played the first one, but still EA should of accounted for the thousands of people who hadn't played the first and were going to by the game. So onto the review.

-----The story-----
You play one of 3 mercenaries and you chose at the start who you want to play as.
You get the choice between:
Jennifer Mui
Chris Jacobs
And Mattias Nilson (who I chose)
From playing the game there is no really impact on your game from this decision and is purely made on personal preference so don't expect to be playing the game through 3 times with each character.
The story begins with a brief training based mission which includes some very explosive moments, but I was never really sure what was going on. At the end of the mission I was stood in front of some political leader who ended up double crossing me and shooting me in the arse and the whole game is based purely on getting revenge on him, pretty lame storyline, however within the beautifully crafted world of Venezuela there is several factions, the main two are introduced half way through, the Americans and Chinese and the game features an all out war between these two over the island.
So in conclusion to the story, don't expect it to blow your mind or interest you remotely.

-----Gameplay-----
As soon as you start out the game you immediately notice some annoyances, for starters the guns are very inaccurate, which can be a pain in the neck, literally, as you try to kill enemies on limited ammo only to miss all the time even when your aiming directly at them, meaning the slightly less sophisticated shooting method of "spray and pray" fire has to come in to use.
You will also find yourself very rarely dieing in this game, sure there are a few cases later on where you are so overwhelmed by gun fire you can't help but die, but find a safe corner somewhere and your health will regenerate. The control of the character is also a bit clumsily done and nothing ever acts the way you think it should, for example vehicles. I don't know whether it's because us gamers expect to much from the amazement that was the car handling on Grand Theft Auto 4 but the cars just seem like solid blocks of concrete and the physics is really bad on them especially when you crash into other cars its basically driving into a wall and no visual damage being done to your car.

So dodgy enemies, naff weapons with limited carrying capacity and rubbish cars, is there anything good about this game? Why the hell are people buying it?!
The reason is the sheer fun of the world they have made and its destructibility, sure it's not as good and varied as liberty city from GTA or as visually stunning as Albion from Fable 2 but if you really get bored you can literally flatten every single building to a crumbling wreck, tanks are widely available around the warring streets of Venezuela but to cause some real destruction you need to get friendly with some alliances and buy some decent weaponry from them. Anything from cluster bombs, to bunker busters can be bought, and once you've recruited the necessary people into your team you'll be able to call in air strikes anywhere and watch as the sky burns, or even better get in on the action by calling in a heavily equipped Anaconda Chopper and rain down missiles on enemy encampments.
They've really allowed you to do anything with this game, I remember one to I stood outside one of the main factions buildings which was roughly 50 stories high, and called in an airstrike on their main base, sure it completely destroyed my relationship with them but it was a hell of a laugh.

-----Graphics------
Nothing special about the graphics, the game world is huge but rather empty and the visuals are a bit outdated and you can't help but feel EA could of put a bit more effort into them, it seems the same set of trees has been used everywhere and the same texture has been used on every building and vehicle.
There aren't that many vehicles but you wont find them in any different colours either which just makes everything look a bit stale.

-----A.I.-----
A.I. in games nowadays is just as important as the story, gone are the days of space invaders where it was a simple case of, drop down one row, reverse direction, increase speed, instead enemies now have to navigate worlds just the same as you, but like the story the enemies are stupid, I have yet to see an unresponsive enemy, but I have still yet to find a competent one that doesn't just stand in the open firing wildly in every direction.

-----Sound-----
The music is actually pretty good, it is quite repetitive but fits in nicely with the feel of the game, the sound effects and explosions are pretty good, but voice acting is not brilliant, sort of hard to believe this game came from the same company that made Crysis, as the voice acting, story and graphics are the best I have ever seen.

-----Pros-----
Lots of destructive missions and huge explosions at every corner

-----Cons------
Stale boring unmemorable story
Stupid enemies
Rubbish vehicles
And worst of all, game breaking bugs and glitches. Example:
One mission had me flying over a huge old castle, my helicopter set on fire so I pressed to jump out, I tried to jump out but the character seemed to get stuck mid air and nothing I could do, lost an hours progress.

3 Stars but only cause destruction is fun.

-----Game Specification-----

Players 2 (Online co-op)
72kb to save
Supports all HD formats
Supports dolby surround sound 

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