Jan 7, 2008

Venezuela has a problem with Mercenaries 2: their government is convinced this balls-out-action shooter is pure propaganda for an eventual US invasion. You can see their point: by the end of the game you can expect the virtual version of their country to be charred, broken and burning.

So many games promise truly destructible environments, and so few deliver. This third-person action game's mantra is "If you see it, you can buy it, steal it, or blow the living crap out of it." It's a game that hinges entirely on the joy of making things explode. On fire.

It also draws upon the joy of hijacking helicopters in mid-air - grapple up to it from the ground, boot the pilot out of the cockpit, and then unleash hell in your new chopper. In what's promised to be an open world in which you can sell your carnage-based services to the highest bidder, that's just one of your options.

A particularly exciting prospect is the co-op multiplayer: teaming up with a friend to lay utter waste to urban, jungle, tropical and mountainous environments. Expect to offend an entire South American country sometime in the second quarter of 2008.