Perhaps the biggest insult is when the game suggests that you can beat these missions in a number of different ways. The truth is that there aren't that many ways to complete a level, you're often limited to just going in guns blazing. You can bring a vehicle or take to the air in some instances, but it's not as wildly varied as Pandemic would have you believe. I suspect that this accounts for a lot of my frustration with the game; I found that as I played through the game I felt like I was just doing the same things time and time again.


When it came right down to it I found that the only fun I was having with this game was blowing up buildings. I didn't care that most of the buildings are repeated dozens of times throughout the game, there's something cool about blowing stuff up. The problem here is that when you blow stuff up it annoys the factions that surround it. So if you want to get to the end of the game you basically have to be a nice guy. Even if you choose to be bad (forsaking the campaign altogether) you're still going to get bored of blowing up the same building over and over. With such a promising premise it's a shame that Pandemic couldn't come up with a more compelling story.

Unfortunately I haven't even gotten to the biggest problem yet. Believe it or not, the bugs in this game are even worse than the repetitive missions and ugly graphics. How bad are they? Have you ever been flying a helicopter and had it disappear on you? Have you ever run your car right through a building? Have you ever had the people you're trying to save drown themselves? The game is riddled with some of the worst gameplay bugs I have seen all year. And that's when the game is running smoothly. My brand new Xbox 360 froze several times while playing the game, a problem that a number of other people are having with this title.


If you're looking for something positive about Mercenaries 2 it's that it does offer online support for co-op play. I'll confess, this is probably the best way to play through the game. However, even with another player I couldn't get over the repetition. Eventually you just want to run around and have some fun, but when you do that it just annoys everybody else and then all hell breaks loose. In short, this is one game that doesn't want you to have a good time.

The truth is I could keep going about all of the things that are broken and annoying about Mercenaries 2. At this point I have barely mentioned the awful graphics, the groan inducing story and the terrible, terrible music. But this isn't about piling on, because deep down I really wanted this game to be good. I can't believe that after all these years this is the Mercenaries 2 that Pandemic delivered. This isn't the worst game of the year by any stretch of the imagination, but it is the most disappointing.