E3 Disclaimer: AMN’s E3 previews are designed to inform you of what each game at E3 plays like, and what we think of what’s shown. These previews are not reviews, and we reserve final judgment of each game until it is finished and released. These previews offer an honest opinion of what a publisher chose to demo at E3. So, without further ado, read on.
What the Game’s About
The original Mercenaries was a wonderfully destructive application of the open-sandbox design that Grand Theft Auto popularized. Players could accept contracts from different factions in whatever order they wanted, jack any vehicle on or above the battlefield, and level strongholds to the ground by calling in air support. The same appeal holds true for the sequel. The core gameplay may not have changed much but the jump to next-generation hardware has allowed the developers to up the ante with bigger, more varied environments, even greater levels of destruction, and much improved visuals. With online co-op to round out the package, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is a playground of destruction we can’t wait to screw around in.
What’s Hot
Destruction. The most striking element of Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is the almost limitless degree to which the environment can be demolished. We were pretty satisfied when the original game let us use various explosive tools to take out vehicles and well-defined enemy encampments, but now players can apply their destructive tendencies to just about anything they can see. The destruction isn’t rendered with a cheap resource swap either. Every piece of geometry can be deformed in real time, in a variety of ways, so an air-raid on an enemy encampment might leave a completely different result than some well-placed C4. Likewise, cities can be picked apart building by building, fortresses can be leveled one section at a time, and even natural formations like jungles can be taken out tree-by-tree. In the demo level we played, we spent a decent amount of time aboard a military helicopter blowing random chunks out of sky-scrapers and inspecting the wreckage.
The destruction in of itself is satisfying, but the malleable nature of the environment also has a direct impact on the gameplay. If the player finds themselves becoming overwhelmed by enemy forces after taking out a particularly sensitive target, then they can take out a bridge to keep reinforcements from joining the fray. Not a fan of that sniper taking pot shots from his lofty tower? Shoot a rocket at the base and laugh with glee at his screams as the entire structure tumbles to the ground. Don’t particularly feel like driving a jeep around a particularly dense patch of Venezuelan jungle on the way to the next mission? Place some C4 charges on a few of the trees, stand back, push a button and watch the foliage fly through the air and burn to the ground in realistic fashion, then hop back on your ride and drive on through. Better yet, use the same tactic on the way back as a means of losing any pursuing enemies, and watch their lifeless burning bodies fly through the air along with the mulch.
Similarly impressive are the sheer size and variety of the environments. The barren, boring terrain of war-torn North Korea has been replaced with the huge cities, lush jungles, and gorgeous costal areas of Venezuela. There aren’t any breaks between the different pieces of the environment either – players can hop in a jeep and drive straight from the ocean, through metropolitan areas, and eventually hit the jungle terrain, all in one seamless ride. Of course, games like GTA: San Andreas and Oblivion have proven that having huge environments isn’t too fun when you’re spending hours bussing yourself from across them, so Pandemic is working on a transport system that will let players jump between the primary mission-selection centers on the map.
We’re also keen on the promise of more complex, multifaceted missions. One of the few problems with the original Mercenaries was that every mission was a simple matter of ‘go here, kill this person, and get out alive’. Pandemic assured us that there would be more variety this time around, and the demo certainly backed up that claim since the primary objective was actually a rescue mission. Expect missions in the final game to feature several objectives each, some of which will depend on the player’s previous actions toward each of the various factions they can accept contracts from. Some of the missions will even take players more than a half hour to complete. If that sounds like too much of an endeavor for one player to tackle, have no fear, Mercenaries 2 allows players can hop into and out of each other’s games for some co-op action (a la Crackdown).
What’s Not
The most glaring problem with the demo we played was the enemy AI, which seemed to have no idea they were operating within a destructible environment. Hiding behind soft cover in response to assault-rifle fire is one thing, but watching them do the same in the face of a rocket-launcher just looks broken. We never saw enemies destroy pieces of the environment in order to try and kill us either. Furthermore, the standard troops in the game seemed completely unable to aim standard weaponry, as they were completely unable to hit us with anything other than explosives. The enemy AI in the first Mercenaries was passable, but it was easy to overlook because the game was an unproven franchise from a relatively new developer. Now that Pandemic has the resources of EA at their disposal, the poor enemy AI sticks out amid all the other high-quality facets of the game.
We weren’t particularly happy with how the standard armaments felt either. While the more powerful, explosive weaponry were all immensely satisfying to use, the more tradition anti-infantry weapons like assault rifles felt pretty weak. In terms of the damage dealt they were more than adequate, but they just didn’t give the kind of visual or audio feedback needed to make us feel like we were handling heavy weaponry. We can’t pin-point what’s missing, perhaps a combination of visual cues like screen-shake, increased recoil, and more obvious enemy reactions, but as of right now, the assault rifles felt like pea-shooters.
Finally, and this is hardly a weakness exclusive to Mercenaries 2, we’re getting pretty damn sick of quick-time events. In the first game, jacking vehicles was a straight-forward affair. In Mercenaries 2, any time the player wants to takeover a tank or a helicopter, they have to complete a watch a short cinematic sequence and respond to on-screen button prompts. It looks pretty cool and is moderately entertaining…the first few times. By the fifth time we jacked a vehicle (it’s a fairly common practice in the game), we were already tired of these quick-time sequences. The fact that each of the sequences rips the player out of the standard third-person view in the middle of the action only makes them feel all the more disjointed from the rest of the action. Pandemic explained that they were included to make taking over the more powerful vehicles more difficult so as not to imbalance the game, but there has to a better, less intrusive way to accomplish that feat.
Outlook
Pandemic has wisely left the core gameplay from the first Mercenaries alone, and instead focused on enhancing the experience my offering players a bigger, more varied, and more destructible playground of destruction to explore and ravage. There are still a few elements that could use some tweaking, but Pandemic looks to be well on track to producing the most straight-up fun free-form action game since Crackdown.
