HANDS-ON: Why Mercs 2 has the most satisfying co-op mode we've played in years
The world is going GTA IV crazy - and quite rightly so - but we've also been catching up with another anticipated open-world action game, Mercenaries 2. Developer Pandemic were on hand at a recent EA event, with senior producer Jonathan Zamkoff ready to update us on the Venezuelan bang-fest and bundle us a handful of new shots
It rules being your own boss. Taking as much darn time off as you please, scoring a sweet BMW on lease, hiring a busty peroxide blonde as your PA, putting your hand in the till... and ordering full scale air strikes to reduce your enemies to so ashes. Ker-blammo! Yep, welcome to the dazzling world of Mercenaries, the game where Everybody Pays. (Even you lot, should you choose to part with your hard-earned to buy it later this
When it was first released, the orignal Mercenaries was banned in South Korea because of the tensions between the southern and the northern territories, meaning that any media showing conflict between the two was deemed illegal. Now with Mercenaries 2, the game faces another country with its panties in a twist. We caught up with senior producer Jonathan Zamkoff to get his thoughts.
So Jonathan, with the game being set in Venezuela, didnt you cause a bit of GTA-style storm with the authorities
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
Aug 21, 2007
Here in the heat of the South American jungle, the air is thick and oppressive. Exotic birds flit between the trees. Wildlife rustles on the floor. Its a beautiful scene, marred only slightly by the two whacking great tanks blowing the treads off each other.
Not for long, though. A signal beacon flies away from a shadowy figure in the trees and a stealth bomber shoots overhead and drops a biblical payload on the scene, wiping out a huge area of jungle. As the air fills with ash,
Mercenaries was a superb achievement on Xbox and PS2 when it was released in 2005. The destructible environments, go-anywhere and drive-anything gameplay was like GTA in a warzone. But the sandbox style of game has been done so many times now, its sequel is going to have to do a lot more than that if it's going to remain relevant. And after playing it at EA's Chertsey offices... we're not sure it's doing enough.
It's got the right attitude, that's for sure. Designed as a fun videogame rather
Whenever you're done slavering over the latest meager scraps of information on Grand Theft Auto IV, the developers of Mercenaries 2: World in Flames would like to remind you that the sequel to one of the best GTA clones ever is also coming out later this year. And with the free-roaming fireworks show they've planned, fans of military hardware and mass destruction might want to divert their attention from urban crime long enough to give it a serious look.
The setup is simple: Venezuela is in
The original Mercenaries on the Xbox and PS2 offered hours of enjoyment outside of the games official missions thanks to its flexible physics engine. With the help of some handy cheats and a hankering for destruction, fans were quick to discover the joys of stacking tons of vehicles before blowing them to smithereens.
Take a quick look through YouTube, and youll find all sorts of home-brewed explosions that gamers have captured like this one - which features a meticulously crafted pyramid of
By
Edge
posted 5 years, 8 months ago
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"Mercenaries always wanted to be a next-gen game," admits Josh Resnick, chairman of Pandemic. "It's pretty simple: The more stuff we can support, the more fun it gets. I've just been tearing up this amazing looking, super-detailed, high-definition city in a test build of the game [its newly announced sequel] and my heart is seriously still racing. The sheer amount of destruction we can accomplish on the new system is close to overwhelming."
Having last year ramped up the action genre's
