Mercenaries 2 takes place in Venezuela, a real world location that is full of forests, hills, cities and more. In fact, some might argue that the country is a little too big, but we'll leave that argument for later in the review. As it is, Venezuela is a promising location with more than enough diverse environments. It's what you do in that world that is so disappointing.


In the first hour or so you'll play through a lot of really exciting missions, killing all sorts of nasty bad guys, ordering air strikes and blowing up enormous buildings. It's all enough to get your blood pumping, which is why it's easy to fall in love with this game early on. However, like a whirlwind romance, it's just as easy to fall out of love with Mercenaries 2. I found myself spending the rest of the time playing Mercenaries 2 trying to get the feeling of the first hour back. Sadly it never comes back, and you are ultimately left with an action game that doesn't even come close to hitting the mark.

It all starts the moment you have to fire your guns. It doesn't seem to matter which gun you use, each and every one of them is practically useless. For whatever reasons, all of the guns feel underpowered. When it comes right down to it, there's really no reason for you to use your gun outside of killing the mindless soldiers that are roaming the countryside. When it comes to destroying anything big you might as well find something other than your gun to get the job done. Worse yet, for whatever reason the game actually makes you push a button to pick up ammo and items dropped by fallen enemies. They couldn't just allow you to run over the item and pick it up? It's this sort of problem that permeates throughout the entire game. They may sound like small things at first, but after awhile you'll notice each and every one of them and they will drive you right up the wall.


As you play through the game you'll eventually unlock some friends, including a mechanic, a helicopter pilot, and a jet pilot. It's these three unlockables that are among the most useful. For example, the helicopter pilot can drop of supplies and vehicles no matter where you are. The jet pilot can be summoned to drop and air strike, but you rarely get to do this in the course of the single-player campaign. On the other hand is the mechanic, which is completely pointless. In theory you're supposed to find trash and hidden items that she can use to piece together interesting devices and vehicles. But it's not worth looking around for the trash and she rarely gives you anything worthwhile.

When you first get to Venezuela it looks like you have a lot of freedom to move around, but that just is not the case in Mercenaries 2. Sure you can go where ever you want, but there's nothing for you to do or see. The country is covered with a number of different factions, each with their own set of missions. The problem is that most of these missions are nothing more than you going to a spot on the map, killing as many people as you can and then bringing your team in to secure it for that faction. And when you're not doing that you're wasting to on lame escort missions, assassination missions and racing mini-games. Even worse is that you'll do these missions over and over again.