Mercenaries 2

[Spent]

Not much polish to this one, I'm afraid. There is almost no penalization whatsoever for remaining in a vehicle while it blows up, you only lose about 8 health. Playing this turd makes me wonder what made me think Pandemic was anything special.

[MrWhitefolks]

It's been like that since Mercs1, and I would assume it's a failsafe for situations where you would instantly get murdered if blown up in any vehicle (which would be OFTEN in this game) to lessen the possible frustration.

[bVork]

I think the most hilarious bug so far was when I called in some UP thugs to take over a building and the chopper decided to land ON THE ROOF. All the thugs stood around on the roof for a while, and then yelled "Cover me, I'm going in!" one after another, and jumped to their deaths.

[MrWhitefolks]

BVork: That's happened to me as well(free ammo is the shit). Craziest random bug we've run into so far was an enemy tank flying upside down during one of the takeover missions for the AN. Sum bitch just took off, flipped up side down and floated horizontally out into the horizon.

We stood there with our mouths agape, staring at it as we laughed our asses off. God, I love this game.

EDIT
I have to say, going extreme minimalist on this game is the coolest thing I've done in awhile. Taking what you have earned (not purchased) either through missions (airstrikes, vehicles) or from combat (weapons, munitions) and just tackling the missions through pure improvisation adds a massive sense of accomplishment as it's forcing me to think outside the box about how I handle each contract (when to engage the enemy, what routes to take, scouting before going in, etc).

[Error]

So apparently this game just isn't very stable for long periods of time. 3 times now the game has frozen on me forcing me to hard boot the ps3, and each time i'd been playing the game for 4 or more hours.

[Detour]

I played this for a good 2 hours last night and had a ball.

Not sure where all the 'THIS GAME LOOKS UGLY' comments are coming from. It's certainly not top tier, but it's pretty enough in it's own right.

[MrWhitefolks]

After wiping this one clean I think I can finally chime in with some real meaty opinions on it:

What the shit happened Pandemic? Did you purposefully decide to completely dumb down the experience for the Madden playing thickies?

This shit is extremely linear, all the enemies are idiots, the missions themselves (other than official contracts through story driven characters) are the same "go here, liberate area, call in faction soldiers" bullshit over and over, and it's almost impossible to die. Don't even get me started on the retarded way they handled airstrikes and supply drops (this isn't GTA, we shouldn't have to go buy anything in person - you call it in, the money is taken from your account, and the item/strike is delivered) or how horrible the pacing is.

Look, if I needed my god damn hand held when playing a game I would've booted up a Lego Series title.

Thank god for all the bugs, or I wouldn't have had a challenge at all. Nothing breaks up the monotony of doing the same mission over and over by having enemies spawn in mid air, both solo and in vehicles. Oh wait, then there's falling through the game world itself ... and the aforementioned scene I talked about earlier with the tank that flipped upside-down and flew off into the stratosphere on it's own. Toss in a little "you can't verify/extract this HVT because the character got bugged and is now no longer an active object able to be interacted with" and we got ourselves a neat way to "enhance the experience".

Maybe it's me, but I expected ALOT more considering how badass the first title was (sans the "omg quake" color palette), especially given the numerous delays. It's also sad that I had to enforce a rule on myself to use ONLY what I found in the field, instead of taking the super easy route and blowing my money on munitions at every stupid fucking outpost (and even then, you can sprint circles around the enemy in this game - so it wasn't even an issue to begin with).

Co-op was fun, but it's not enough. I would've been far happier with a repackage of the original with co-op, as the overall flow and feel of the game (not to mention combat, enemy ai, controls, nation relationships, plot, etc) were far and away above what we ended up with in this sequel.

I guess this is what you get when you stretch your development crew among like 5 different titles instead of focusing on one. Learn your lesson and don't fuck up the next one - nobody should have to pay $60+ for a buggy, horribly paced and overtly easy shovelware sequel.

[Melf]

Damn, I was so looking forward to this game, but the impressions have put me off. I'll probably buy it later on, but it's been replaced by Force Unleashed, whose demo impressed me greatly. Now I know why Mercenaries 2 didn't have a demo.

[MrWhitefolks]

Don't get me wrong, it's not as if the game isn't FUN when you're playing it(it is very fun if you're playing with a friend). It's just that when you look back on the last gen PREQUEL you realize how badly they fucked this up.

Also - I wouldn't go throwing $60 at an 8 hour at maximum, single player only SW game. Give it a week or two and there will be a fuckton of them traded in at various local retailers (no online, and limited replay-ability by the thickies means this is going to have a faster turnaround than Assassin's Creed).

[Jetman]

What the shit happened Pandemic?

You pretty much said it all,man. I dont know what Detour is talking about but this game is nowhere even near pretty.The major explosions look pretty cool, but everything else pretty much doesnt. The cut scenes are maybe first gen PS2 if not PS1 quality. The A.I. is lol-tastic.
I rented it because a friend did, and had some fun playing this with him, but if you dont plan on co-oping it, prepare to be severely underwhelmed. Figured I might as well milk a few more achievements out of it over the next few days while I have it, but I never want to see this peice of crap again when Im done.

Seriously though, I wonder what the fuck happened to this? Is it fair to just blame EA?