Mercs 2: Better looking on PS3?

Heli pads are a real time-saver. Instead of wearily pounding from A to B on foot, by car or in any other vehicle, you'll be able to call up a helicopter to dive in, pick you up and then drop you off at any of the heli pad landing points currently unlocked around the gigantic world map.

Zamkoff was also keen to fill us in on what he called Pandemic's "punk moment". Thanks to EA's ties with Massive - the in-game advertising company - Mercs 2 is filled with advertising billboards populated with real-world ads (or government propaganda). But don't sneer in disgust too quickly.One appealing mission involves the mass destruction of such captalist iconography, providing a welcome opportunity to decimate swathes of real-world in-game ads. Très punk, non?

Destruction is Pandemic's watchword. Zamkoff tells us that he wants every gamer to be able to stand on a mountainside, see a 80-storey building or towering power plant or enormous statue and think "Can I blow that up? Yes I can!". Disappointingly, our Bob the Builder reference was lost on the American producer, leaving the room in awkward silence. Sigh.

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.