Title: Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
Platform: Xbox 360 (review platform), PlayStation 3, Playstation 2, PC
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Pandemic Studios
ESRB Rating: T for Teen

The original Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction was truly one of the most unique and fun open-ended games that hit the Xbox and PlayStation 2 consoles. It featured a "what-you-see-is-what-you-can blow-up" kind of gameplay style. For the first time in action game history, players could pull together some of man's most devastating weapons for a virtual orchestra of pure destruction, all the while seeking out a variety of targets in a mini-mission format. Mercenaries certainly left an impact in the minds of almost all who played it, and it received strong reviews by many critics. Of course, with such unique characteristics and relatively good sales, Mercenaries was due to receive a sequel at some point.

Without a doubt, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames offers fans and newcomers an evolution in terms of virtually unlimited large-scale raw destruction in high frequency. While growing up, when I'd see huge buildings explode in an eruption of fire and smoke in movies, it'd usually be part of a finale, or perhaps the opening of a movie. These kinds of pyrotechnics and special effects were usually the budget killers, and thus they were limited due to the high financial cost. In Mercenaries 2, these kinds of epic, movie-like explosions occur constantly. If you're not the one setting them off, your enemy is. Not only are the explosions everywhere in Mercenaries 2, but they're also exciting right up to the very end of the game.

While the wide-scale destruction is certainly exciting, things begin to taper off a little bit from there. For some reason, Pandemic ditched the original game's unique "Deck of 52" cards that feature the game's various bad guys; instead, Mercenaries 2 uses a simpler system of hunting down generic "High Value Targets."

Most of the HVTs lack personality, unlike those colorful villains from the original game. Instead, HVTs are mainly a way to make money and get new gear. While I can understand that Venezuela is a new location with different circumstances, I would have much rather seen more development of the targets being pursued than the way they were left.

Mercenaries 2 brings back the trio of playable characters from the first Mercenaries, but the sequel lacks some of the original game's unique traits.

The first game's playable characters are back, but many of their unique traits have been flip-flopped, changed or completely omitted. Chinese/British mercenary Jennifer Mui is no longer able to infiltrate enemy areas more effectively without raising alarms, for example. Instead, she simply runs faster, which was a trait previously reserved for the Swedish bad boy Mattias Nelson. Now Mattias has a bonus to health, which previously was the key trait of American ex-Delta Force soldier Chris Jacobs. Additionally, each of the three characters no longer benefits from the ability to understand their native languages. Instead, all factions in the game speak English exclusively, and the characters have no bonus towards understanding or working with native factions any better. It's as if the original design document of the first Mercenaries were hardly referenced, while most of what was there seems to have been changed or removed.

The plot is fairly simple: Ramon Solano contracts you and your colleagues for a job and then betrays you. Solano takes over Venezuela, and players must work various factions competing for the country's oil in order to topple Solano. When it comes to the variety of factions featured in Mercenaries 2, each seems to have little influence in the overall main story aside from a "if you help us, we'll help you get closer to the bad guy" motivation. I was expecting something slightly more advanced, such as perhaps the option to use some of the relationships I built to support me in my later game efforts. Instead, the only real benefit of relationship building is to gain access to new shop equipment and air strikes, which you'll later upgrade in no time at all. You ultimately meet with the two major world powers featured in the game, but even the world powers suffer from the same issues as the other, smaller factions.

Besides money, revenge serves as a principle motivational factor that drives the main characters. Each gets shot in the butt, and each now has a vendetta that has them meddling with the affairs of an entire nation in chaos. The so-called "bad guy" in Solano isn't even portrayed as being all that evil, and he spends almost all of his time in the game hiding away. Pandemic had so many opportunities to make him and his associates dark characters, but instead they're presented as being mostly pathetic and weak. Perhaps it came down to a ratings game with the ESRB in the end, but I wanted more when it came to the story.

The ESRB rating system may have influenced other aspects of the game, which could have evolved. In a world of raw destruction resulting in the deaths of thousands and the loss of millions or even billions of dollars worth of property and resources, blood and gore are nowhere to be found. In fact, the majority of the characters in the game don't even make an attempt to utter a word of profanity. In the very few occasions where profanity was scripted, it's simply bleeped out. With co-op being one of the big selling points of Mercenaries 2, it's absolutely hilarious that that I can go on Xbox Live and can hear language 10 times worse than anything the game ever utters. Yet, the actual characters that kill for profit have a hard time saying anything negative at all.

In terms of blood and gore, Mercenaries 2's cartoonish, meta-violence is spot on, but the effects that violence has on a body are ignored. It may seem strange that an action game called Mercenaries dealing with greedy soldiers of fortune is rated T for Teen, but that's the reality.

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