Review: Mercenaries 2: World in Flames action game

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is the sequel to a console-only action game from a couple of years ago.

This time around, proceedings have shifted from North Korea to South America, but otherwise things remain the same.

Essentially, Mercenaries is a riff on the type of open-ended gameplay used by Grand Theft Auto, transposing the same sort of missions to a military environment – in this case a fictitious Venezuelan coup d’état.

Like GTA, Mercenaries 2 provides a huge expanse of game universe to explore and offers a wide range of different mission types.

Whether you’re on foot or in a vehicle, however, the main objective in most cases is to shoot as many bad guys as possible. Luckily, combat is probably the most enjoyable aspect of the game and the control system is easy to pick up.

As well as the single-player campaign, Mercenaries 2 includes options for playing online, either against other opponents or alongside a friend in cooperative mode. In all three cases, the game provides plenty of chaotic fun.

Thematically, Mercenaries 2 is on fairly dodgy ground. If anything, the slightly dubious semi-political message of the storyline only makes the game’s obvious relish in blowing things up with big guns (including nuclear weapons) and its general encouragement to profit from the tragedy of war seem all the more gratuitous. The slightly disappointing cartoony graphics, however, serve as a good reminder that this is a game that probably shouldn’t be taken too seriously.