Kombo's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.

What the Game's About
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is a simple video game to understand. You play a mercenary. You get paid to complete para-military type jobs. Someone doesn't pay and tries to kill you. You get even.

From there, you meet different factions, each with their own agenda. Taking missions from these people will lead you on your path to payback against a Venezuelan dictator and will reward you handsomely for a job well done. Play as one of three different characters each with their own motivation for making money through war.

Mercs 2 doesn't like to say the word "no." You can accomplish just about anything, as long as it isn't world peace.

What's Hot
Playing Mercs 2 is like stepping onto the set of a wild summer action blockbuster movie. The game doesn't pull any punches in terms of getting you in the action with large explosives. From the first mission, you are a one man (or woman) wrecking ball complete with all the firepower to make a mid-sized nation jealous. As enemies fall by the way side, thanks to the extensive arsenal, you acquire more weapons, eventually leading to you securing a nuclear bomb. Progression is really measured by how many items you can buy from vendors.


As you would expect, having access to the most deadly weapons in the world, the representation of Venezuela is yours for the molding. Like one faction better than the other? Only accept contracts from them. Don't care who you piss off? Drop cluster bombs and level skyscrapers and let the chips fall where they may. You have the sense of complete freedom to do any and all things necessary to make it back alive for payday. There will be times where if you fail and need to restart, you will find a new way to tackle the objective each pass through, thus making Mercs 2 infinitely replayable. The choice is yours on how you want to reach the ultimate goal of exacting your revenge and nothing is going to stop that from happening.

The second part of what makes Mercs 2 such a constantly evolving game is the way you can blow virtually any object in the game to smithereens. Walls, bridges, buildings, vehicles, local vegetation, statues, the list could go on. This provides you a blank slate in how to navigate your way through the story. You can snipe from a long distance, order artillery to pound a wide swath of land, walk through the enemies front gates or blast a hole in the perimeter wall with C4. All options are equally viable. This is the strongest element of the game. Buildings crumble and fire spreads to cause plenty of damage, allowing you to set up some insane scenarios. Here is just one of the many suggestions I have for you: attach C4 to a car, drive it towards the enemy, jump out and watch the car roll away. From there, hit the plunger, and you now have a cheap "cruise" missile.

And then there's co-op. Imagine everything I just mentioned times two, and that is what multiplayer is all about. The same restrictions apply: no restrictions. That is unless you count the 500 meter tether distance you need between you and your partner a drawback. Getting into an online game is extremely simple and user friendly. If you are familiar with Burnout: Paradise, it is almost identical to that system. For those still wondering how online works, you find your friend or a stranger and join their game and start hammering away at missions. From there, you can choose to load in your personal saved game or start fresh with each new online session. That's all there is to it. If the sandbox nature of the single player wasn't enough to keep you coming back, your friends will show you that two is always better than one.


What's Not
Pandemic Studios has made the leap to the current-gen systems but not without some hiccups. In terms of technical issues, a few crop up. Bugs, for instance, appear in some weird places. I got stuck on a ladder climbing into a turret on top of a large truck, animations when hijacking vehicles are off and some collision damage will do some strange things to the physics in game.


Graphically, the game misses the level of polish that many other games in the sandbox genre enjoy. The visuals give off attitude and character models look fantastic but lack a trailblazing original style like Crackdown and they aren't as gorgeous as Grand Theft Auto IV. Still, the game is no visual slouch.

As far as being completely unique from the first game in the Mercs series, that is up in the air. The new improvements and phenomenal features are outstanding but at the end of the day, you'll get a sense of "been there, done that." Quick time events are heavily used throughout the game. Hijacking highly valued vehicles (think helicopters and tanks) would have been too easy without them but because every subsequent hijacking requires the same inputs, it is the only thing that grows repetitive during gameplay.

Final Word
Mercs 2 scores high points because it's clear that the development team at Pandemic Studios was focused in their approach to creating this title. They had a core belief of giving players total freedom to execute their own style of play without having strict, linear rules. It comes from the destructible environments and no holds barred design of the open world. It is too bad that some technical glitches had to crop up but some leeway is given due to the fact that Mercs 2 was built from the ground up, meaning no recycled material from the original Mercenaries was used, and was executed very well for this ambitious project. Mercs 2 is a largely successful effort that will literally give you more "bang" for your buck than most games out there.