Like getting shot in the face
As usual, you can play as one of three different Mercenaries, a Swede, Chinese / British agent, or an African / American soldier and they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. Your merc is headed for Venezuela a rich oil nation to do a quick contract for a wealthy oil operative, Solano. So you do your mission and, the guy betrays you in his march to conquer all of Venezuela's resources and people. As a merc, you are enraged and go out to put some led in his head, hence beginning the series of events that steadily lead you to the games conclusion. For a reason to go out and destroy everything this plotline is a perfect reason to call in all sorts of bombs and violence so there's nothing bad about the story, it works.
As you are in Venezuela, a few new things beyond the do it your way gameplay contracts for money and respect have arrived, bounties are rare and just for the cash, you need to buy launch strikes in advance, you need fuel and cash, you can toss C4 charges, big vehicles are guarded by button pressing minigames, and you can swim or use vehicle suited for water. The order system has been messed up a bit, besides the main campaign, there are a number of side missions to partake in which allow for cash, new contacts, new contracts, supply drops, weapon drops, or airstrikes. The only problem is that you can only immediately call for these goodies if you have already made the pre-purchase from them, if you haven't already bought from them, you can't just call one in on the fly. So you have to go back to each person you got your missions from to get your stuff (and they don't sell the same stuff, you have to be at the right person too) what a hassle, and they had already though it out right in the first one! The AI is about as smart as cardboard too, enemies may have stood still before but say you do a faction a favor, hope that they respond appropriately and stop shooting, and for some damn wrong reason, a explosive shell could hit right beside an enemy (say about two feet away and hit a piece of metal), even though the enemy is right beside, they don't even break a sweat. The games design is huge, landscapes are a mighty size and allows for quite a bit of area to cover and lots of little extras that do nothing but give you money or fuel. There is a flaw about how traversable the areas can be, I remembered sliding down a rather steep slope in to a river while I was playing, and I couldn't finish the mission because the darn slope of the hill up from the river was so steep that I couldn't get up it made me remember this line "What the hell!? You can't climb up a mound of dirt but you can take 20 bullets and a tank shot, you're a merc get the damn job done!"
Now for the explosions, this is thankfully pretty good, the amplified physics do make vehicle controls finicky, but it is excusable. Watching some crates fly into the trees, cars, people, and buildings still is an awesome sight, detonating a C4 charge just as a vehicle drives under it makes for a marvelous explosion, and a couple others of fairly warming sights also await. There can be some funny incidents and deaths from the glitches though the retry option helps. As for the airstrikes, odds are you won't want to take the time to get them, you can have a pretty decent time with a rocket launcher, grenades, and C4; why just this, because almost all the airstrikes are a load of garbage!
Graphically the game is strictly alright, this is one of the only games for 2008 that made the PS2 engine work, it does have a nice framerate considering the amount of action it sometimes deals with, and the explosions CAN look awesome. However, whenever the game is paused, it takes a whole second and really does remind you that this is just a game. The buildings don't crumble well, they just descend into the ground with a little smoke and noise (take a bridge in the game, you blow it up but all that happens is the bridge now looks a little misshaped and has some holes and cracks in the road, why didn't the bridge collapse and fall into the water so that it would look awesome when you blew it up?!), speaking of which not every building can actually be destroyed, that is to say that they are not destroyable which directly disobeys doing what Mercenaries 2 is all about, complete destruction, there are also certain NPCs (citizens, certain military officials) that are… technically immortal. The sound is OK as well, with good sound effects, average acting, but not a very enthralling soundtrack of guitar riffs and nothing particularly memorable. As mentioned way above, there are minigames that are triggered if you try to get one of those especially well armed vehicles but you can miss half of the buttons you need to press and still get it.
So that pretty much rounds out Mercs 2 buy the first if anything because all I was really looking for were some new explosions, a couple of good changes, a new campaign, you know a sequel with all the strengths of the original and some good additions, but no EA had to let it get quickly ported over. I was expecting the removal of co-op, OK graphics from this version compared to others, then I played the game and just more and more was missing, there are no forest fires to start, no motorcycles, no tractor trailer diesel tankers to drop on a city, no returning airstrikes from the first, and at least SOME of the airstrikes are missing, add to the games still prevalent flaws, and the fact that the games not quite as destructive as before and you got a game where the publisher thought they could cut too many corners in this 10 – 12 hour game that just isn't worth your time.