Mercenaries 2 Review >.>

Mercenaries 2, the highly anticipated sequel to the popular last generation title, Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction is finally out, and to some may or may not disapoint.

Story: In a drastic change from the first game, the setting has changed from somewhat drab North Korea to colorful and sunny Venezuala. Sadly though, unlike the first game that had pretty much no story other than "you're a mercenary looking to kill a group of Korean war criminals", Mercs 2 makes a very poor attempt at a story that is VERY badly written. This is very well a case of no story is better than a bad one if the gameplay is good enough.

Graphics: As with most games today, there are demanding groups of people who will not be satisfied unless the game is "shiny and bright" just like every other generic next gen game. And so Mercenaries 2 could be considered exactly this, yet another generic looking next gen game made by who other than EA. From a distance things look pretty good. Although if one actually plays a game of Mercs 2 they will notice the terrible looking character models, badly detailed enviroments, and will likely experience one of the game's many technical glitches. This is downright unnaceptable when Mercs 2 is only half the size of the first game yet experiences twice the glitches and while Mercenaries was impressive, this will impress few people in such a demanding industry of triple A games.

Gameplay: Many people who play Mercs 2 will expect it to live up to the fun and explosive gameplay of the first game. Those people will be sadly mistaken. Seriously, there is only one new element to the gameplay-things burn. Quite pathetic, no? Well that can't just be said when you could say "Don't fix whats not broken." I would entirely agree with this if the game was not broken. There are so many glitches that there is no way to plap even a short session of Mercs 2 without being interupted by the game's many bugs. That, along with terrible AI could just make the game unplayable. Now the big one, the explosions-the reason anyone would even play this game aren't even that good. The fact that the explosions look as controlled as the also terrible animations for the buildings going down ruin the game. Also, unlike the original game instead of just being able to buy airstrikes, like in the first Mercenaries, in Mercs 2 you must search high and low for fuel and the airstrikes themselves. This often brings the gameplay to an even further halt on top of the numerous glitches and bad AI.

Mercenaries 2, a game with generic gameplay, grahpics, and story fails to live up to it's hype and advertising campaign in the end feeling rushed like most EA games and will probably played most by people obsessed in explosions or small childeren whom it doesen't take much to entertain. It is could be called average at best, amongst many other things that are much worse.
-Shadowsun