There’s just something really good about unrestrained destruction in video games; being able to blow a structure to pieces and watching bits of debris and flames (and people) fly through the surrounding area as you cackle with delight at your efforts that redefine the word “overkill”. This is a concept that Mercenaries nailed upon its release in 2005 with its focus on blowing up everything in sight in a most spectacular fashion. As one of the most successful new IPs of the last generation, it was only natural that a sequel would come out. After some heavy delays, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is finally here.

Mercenaries 2 takes place in Venezuela, a couple of years after the events of the first game. Mattias Nilson, Chris Jacobs and Jennifer Mui return as the starring characters who’ve gotten themselves embroiled in a power struggle in the South American country. In the game’s opening scene/mission, your character has agreed to take on a job for a fellow named Roman Solano. The job involves rescuing General Carmona; a friend of Solano’s who was imprisoned by the military after a failed coup. Upon successful completion of the mission, Solano thanks you by trying to kill you. Your character escapes, but not before being shot in the butt by Solano (which your support team finds hilarious).


Carmona and his cronies launch a second coup, which is successful in outing the current regime. He then appoints Solano as the leader of a new military government. Solano begins to wrestle control of Venezuela’s oil supply from Universal Petroleum, a multinational corporation who had tricked the previous government into giving them full control over the nation’s oil, and paying for them for the privilege. Fighting between the Venezuelan army and UP’s mercenaries results in the country’s collapse and a lot of collateral damage, leading to the formation of a rebel group called the People’s Liberation Army of Venezuela, which engages both forces. Your player decides to take over Solano’s villa as payment for freeing Carmona, and establishes his/her own private military company in order to profit from the ongoing crisis.

Mercenaries 2 retains the relationship system of its predecessor, but abandons the “Deck of 52” structure for a more standardised mission approach. In changing the structure of the game, Pandemic still failed to capture the feeling of playing each side off against each other. Players simply travel between the bases of each faction, doing the missions until they dry up. Missions for one side might piss another side off, but a simple cash incentive will instantly wipe out their hatred of you. Still, there’s a lot more to do than in the original game, thanks to the inclusion of a couple of side missions and other tasks to help further your career. These include verifying high value targets (like the Deck of 52 in the original), securing bases for the different factions, racing, and destroying specifically marked buildings.


Money makes the world of Mercenaries 2 turn; you need to do the missions to make the money to buy the cool weapons that make things go boom. At the start of the game, you’ll only have access to a few basic weapons, but as you do more tasks and gain the favour of the various factions, you’ll be able to buy better equipment. As you’d expect, the equipment which becomes available depends on which side you help out, and each has their respective advantages and disadvantages – for example, the AN equipment is the most advanced and packs a lot of firepower, but it’s expensive and very difficult to steal back from the enemy. Pandemic claims that there are over 170 vehicles in the game – a claim which is a little hard to believe, though some vehicles are very similar in appearance, but handle differently.

Getting a bit of moolah under your belt will also help you to recruit a few workers for your PMC, including a mechanic, helicopter pilot and jet pilot. They’ll assist you by upgrading vehicles, providing gadgets and transport, and dropping your payload on designated targets. Weapons, fuel and money caches are left lying around the world – marking these for pickup will add to your company stockpiles. Fuel is necessary for keeping your pilots in the air, while weapons caches give them something to drop on the ground to eliminate your enemies.


Big bombs and explosions are Mercenaries 2’s best asset. Even the smallest explosive devices let off a satisfying boom, though they don’t compare to weapons like the “mother of all bombs” or the nuclear bunker buster, which give a new meaning to death and destruction. Just about every structure in the game can be destroyed, and will stay that way until you end the game session. It’s a pity that the rest of the game’s combat does not provide the same satisfaction – most of the game’s guns feel absolutely worthless, yet most enemies can be taken out with a single melee strike.

Unfortunately, Mercenaries 2’s lacklustre combat isn’t its most deficient factor. The world often feels large, yet empty, and there’s still not enough to do in the game, despite the addition of more side missions. The game penalises you for causing rampant death and destruction, either in the form of collateral damage payoffs, or faction mood reduction. Enemy AI is absolutely hopeless – they never make an effort to try and hunt you down when you’re low on health, and have terrible aim. The AI of your allies is even worse – taking over an outpost quickly becomes an exercise in frustration as the pilot refuses to land or the capture squad decides to bolt off down the street for no apparent reason. There are rampant glitches, including vehicles and enemies randomly disappearing, players falling through the ground or being injured for no reason, and frequent game freezes. The game really feels like it could have used another couple of months of QA.


Despite all of Mercenaries 2’s major issues, the game is loads of fun when you play with a friend. You can play through the entire campaign with a second person – the only restriction is that you must always remain within about 500 metres of each other. Tearing around in tanks, blowing apart the VZ militia just seems more satisfying with a companion. The game hasn’t been properly adjusted to accomplish the second player; the overall difficulty becomes laughable, and some missions leave one player without a whole lot to do, usually confining them to a passenger seat – and don’t forget about the aforementioned glitchyness. The game’s netcode is actually surprisingly good, though players are restricted to playing only with others from their local region.

Given how well Mercenaries stacked up in the visual stakes on the last generation of machines, one would have thought the sequel would look even better on the new hardware. Unfortunately, Mercenaries 2 just doesn’t look all that great. There’s a custom engine at play which allows for wide open areas, a lot of impressive explosive effects and destructible environments, but everything else looks really rough and lacking in detail. Character animation is stilted, and the frame rate gets bogged down all too often. Main character voice acting is decent, but many of the enemy soldiers seem to only have 2-3 lines of cringe-worthy dialogue.


Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is a game with some serious issues, but there is a fun game underneath, especially if you’ve got a friend to play with. With a few extra months of bug testing, a bit more mission variety and better AI would have gone a long way towards making Mercenaries 2 a better game. It’s worth a quick look if you’ve got a friend to play with online, but be wary of the less-than-satisfactory level of polish.