Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

Ah, multiplayer, a beautiful synergy of technology and human interaction. A healthy, jovial, life-affirming way of enjoying the company of your fellow man. Sometimes, anyway. At other times, not so much. Not so much at all. We were recently reminded of this by the Kane & Lynch 2 demo, whose Undercover Cop and Fragile Alliance modes proved with no margin for error what solid gold, conniving swine multiplayer games can so easily turn us into.

You see some games just seem to want you to be a bastard to your friends. Whether competetive or co-op, whether by mean-spirited mechanics or by simply offering just enough tools and temptation to ruin someone's day, certain multiplayer modes positively live to cause griefing and fights. And frankly, they're hilarious and we love them for it. So here are some of the most bastardly.

A few days before the Aug. 31 release of Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, we received the following question from one of our forum posters:

Seems like an obvious answer, right? Of course the PS2 version, made for a console that’s been obsolete for three years, isn’t going to be as good as its current-gen cousins. That doesn’t mean it can’t be a good game on its own, though; after all, it’s

In the weeks that followed the release of Grand Theft Auto IV, most of its high-profile competitors - including Prototype and Saints Row 2 - had their release dates hastily and conspicuously pushed back to fall or later. Most of them, that is, except for Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. After a number of pre-GTA IV delays, the free-roaming soldier-of-fortune simulator is sticking to its August release date, with no sissy retreat in

At first glance Mercenaries 2 reminded us of a lot of other games; Just Cause, Crackdown or even (surprise, surprise) Mercs 1. But once we jumped into the carnage on Xbox Live, we discovered it's taken the best elements of the above to create possibly the next great free-roaming co-op game. The Venezuelan environment is a proper (cough, cough) playground of destruction, with choppers, tanks, petrol tankers and more at hand to send entire skyscrapers shaking to the ground, and you can do it all