The world is yours. Blow it up.
Hire Soldiers 2: World in Flames is about blowing s *** up. If you do not like blowing s *** up, here is a game Uno cards. Now, if you're like me, and you get a kick out of destroying tanks, demolition of buildings, and set the jungle ablaze, then Mercè 2 may deserve your attention. But be warned: there is a price to pay for the gift of tactical nuclear weapons and cruise missile strikes. For all the unadulterated joy of blowing s *** up, is there a mess of bugs and AI issues that can just beat you even more violent than usual.At the beginning, you can choose to play as one of three characters - Mattias Nilsson, Jennifer MUI, or Chris Jacobs. Each has its own unique characteristics. Jen, for example, is slightly faster than the boys. These small differences from one to the next does not have a major impact on the game. Nor can they offer new gameplay options, although there are a few minor dialogue changes for each. Whomever you choose, the end result is a mercenary willing to kill anyone and destroy anything for the right amount of money.
The story is about as deep as a Schwarzenegger flick with Mattias offer hilarious one-liners dominated by his ridiculous accent. I can not wait until they threw him as the next Mr. Freeze. You agree to do a job for Ramon Tarm - an up-and-coming Scumbag - showing his gratitude to shoot you in your ass. What is a MERC to do? Get revenge, of course. And so you embark on a rather short adventure to bring down Intestine. The big surprise twist is that there is no surprise twist. The story, and there are few story-driven cutscenes between starts and ends. You need to lay waste to Venezuela, there is no time to plot.
Venezuela is in the midst of insurgency, with oil core of the conflict. The Venezuelan army is doing its best to maintain control of the country, but there are a number of factions seeking to take control. You will work with five different factions - Universal Petroleum, the People's Liberation Army in Venezuela, the Chinese army, the Allied Nations (aka USA), and Rastafarian Pirates. Each group has its own set of tasks, and each, in one way or another, will get you closer to Talisay. Of course none of these guys get along and often a mission in support of a group does do harm to another.
There is a very simplified dynamic between your MERC and factions. Kill a group of enemies and complete missions for them, and they start to like you. You will be allowed to land at their outposts and buy air-support. Kill members of a group or generally do them harm, and they will begin to dislike you very quickly. They will begin to shoot you on sight and will close their shop doors for you. These factors can influence very easily, so it is never far from a burden. But at the same time it never feels as if you really play one side against another. You are just completing missions, until one side is all dried up, so we proceed to the next.
All these different factions means that you'll run into a lot of different NPCs. Pandemic squanders a great opportunity to immerse players with unique and well conceived dialogue. The dialogue for NPCs is quite appalling and is handled just as bad as I've seen in a video game. "It is MERC!" PLAV a soldier crying out as you approach. He says this as either a cheer, because you're on his side, or because you are an enemy he wants to shoot. It is the same line, delivered again and again, often out of context. And there are many lines shouted wrong. And all of them are repeated ad nauseam.
Want to explore? Get ready for your home base to call in and remind you to come visit them if you are hanging - three or four times. I've heard the same line about 200 times. No exaggeration. The three merce deliver their repeated one-liners well, but it can not make up for sloppy implementation of the NPC dialogue.
The good news is that you always have recourse when an enemy voice starts to get on your nerves. Stroke him back to God. They will kill a hell of a lot of people and destroying a whole heck of a lot in Venezuela, before all is said and done. Combat is straightforward. You shoot and kill people. There are tons of vehicles, from civil hoopdies to motorcycles for several tanks of both the Sea-Doos to attack chopper. And all of them can be hijacked.
Some of the more potent vehicles such as tanks and CHOP, has hijacking mini-games. In these you must hit the right buttons as they appear on the screen to play a swank movie of your jack. And yes, you can steal helicopters. As long as you are relatively close, aim towards it and press the correct key to grapple. There is an impressive number of tanks and Chopper and each has its own hijack button sequence.
While rolling through the city and create new potholes are funny (especially since most damage is continuing, until you exit your play session), the best part by Mercer 2 is called in air support. You can call weapons and vehicle drops, as is practical, but the most effective tool is required in a climate chamber strike. Air strikes are either purchased from a group or is found around Venezuela. All air support costs of fuel, but do not worry, there is plenty of fuel to steal the whole country, and it seldom becomes a problem after the first two hours of gameplay.
Air strikes can be a pain at times to execute when you stop moving to open side menu choose the strike and then direct the call-in. All the while, you'll probably be getting shot up. It is a good thing that health auto-regenerate. You call in bombing runs, artillery strikes, and, yes, even nuclear bombs. There are many different strikes to play around with, but just about all of them to deliver a powerful (and some would say beautiful) explosion and impressive destruction. Anything except rock can be destroyed. Every building, vehicle and structure. And although there are some moments where the frame rate is suffering, these are not ordinary. Surprisingly, all the destruction is handled very well by the developer Pandemic's engine.
I can not emphasize enough how much fun it is to play in this destructive sandbox. And the fun is really mercenaries' saving grace, because there are so many other things that are handled poorly. If it were not for the great joy of blowing s *** up, Mercer 2 would sour quickly.
There are bugs aplenty in Mercè 2nd I myself was hit by a critical error in the last mission that crapped on the final showdown with Tarm. But more than bugs, there are some really questionable design choices. You can take a tank and run over 10 vehicles that have them explode every time and takes no damage. But running over a fire hydrant and your tank damage. Huh? Fall injury to your heroes is also out of whack. The Chinese HQ is set in a temple on top of a steep set of stairs. Run down the stairs, and you will actually fall a few feet and take nine points of damage. The same happens on the mountain slopes. If you are running, you actually lose your footing at times, drop a few feet and get hurt. And yes, this can kill if you are in the midst of a four fight.
The strangest choice of all was that your MERC in Superman. Single melee kill is an easy thing to abuse in a game like this. Indeed, I shoot enemies to be a bit pointless after a while because I could run straight at them and bash their face in. There are dozens of high-value targets, you have the opportunity to hunt down. The idea seems to be that you will bust in an enemy camp, comes in a four fight, make your way to HVT and try to defeat him. In truth, you can drive a car up to HVT, jump out, punch a few people to death and take aim. Many missions are just too easy if you use your Fists.
This is partly because of some generally poor AI. I found a fair share of soldiers standing in the corner straight at the wall as they were in Blair Witch Project. AI typical points and shot. And if you approach a vehicle, they often come out so you can take it. Uh, thanks? At its best, the enemy AI will try and hop into a car, you've given up, making it dangerous to land an attack helicopter and leave it unattended.
The enemy AI is bad, but your allies' AI is worse. It is often impossible to get allies to come into your vehicle, although it is obvious that they are expected to join, if you toot your horn. And when they try to get allies to enter an outpost to claim it, they will sometimes stand around doing nothing or will come in vehicles without reason.
Okay, so lots of questions and yet I still think this is a game worth playing. This is partly because of the addition of online two-player co-op. The game is set in the host player's world and all missions benefit him. The other player earns money, and beautiful prizes to bring back to his own game, but will not get to progress their game further. But they have to have a witness when they blow s *** up.
Merce 2 do not scale, making some of the harder missions much easier to deal with a friend. In fact, mercenaries 2 seems balanced for two players more than one. Especially since, in co-op, your team members can revive you if you die. They just have to come near you, hit the right button, and you are back on their feet. In single-player, death kills you, so to speak. It helps to communicate, as a man's explosion can often be his friend's untimely death. With two people calling in air strikes, they can get pretty crazy on the screen. There is no ghost-like poetic about whether a hail of bullets at an enemy as your face is awash in the glow of a nuclear detonation. Co-op is a powder keg of goodness. There is some occasional slowdown when there are big explosions and I hit a couple of moments of Lag in each of my sessions. Overall, it's a good, if not perfect, experience.
Closing remarks
Hire Soldiers 2 is like a newsstand, it has a lot of questions. Still, I can not deny that there was some hootin 'and hollerin' moments. For every time I cursed the stupid AI, I Hurray by the demolition of another building. For every bug that caused me stuck in some bushes, there was an attack helicopter waiting to be jacked. If mercenaries had 2 more Polish, it would have been a great game. As it is, it's still worth playing - and fun - but far from his promise.
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