When Mercenaries was first released on the original Xbox and PlayStation 2 back in 2005, it introduced gamers to an open world that rivaled that of Grand Theft Auto, but also gave gamers a little something more than just carjacking and vehicular homicide. It gave mass amounts of destruction. Mercenaries has always been about grand carnage and extraordinary explosions and with its latest incarnation hitting the next-gen systems, the chaos it brings is something that demolition experts dream about.

Mercenaries 2 follows the tried and true template of the original game and reintroduces the same characters along with some fresh faces. The cigar chomping Chris Jacobs, the mohawk sporting Mattias Nilsson and the always impeccable Jennifer Mui, each have their own traits such as carrying more ammo or running faster, but each character, whichever you decide to play through the game with, will have the same storyline.

In short, you were hired to rescue the leader of the Venezuelan army, General Carmona, from captivity by a man named Romano Salano. However once you performed your part of the deal and rescued the General, Salano unwisely decided against his better judgment and tried to have you killed instead of ponying up the cash he owed you. From here on out, you are on a vendetta to get what is yours and make sure Salano pays for his double cross.

Through the course of the game, you will need to carry out missions and help the different fighting factions found across Venezuela to get what you need. There are oil company security forces, the freedom fighters of Venezuelan jungles, Jamaican pirates and eventually the Ameri…sorry - Allied Nations - and the Chinese show up in need of your services. For the first half of the game, the story doesn’t really go anywhere and is mainly a set up for the second half of the game.

You will do repetitive missions for the factions that consist of helping them take over outposts from the Venezuelan Army, escorting and protecting people and testing out new equipment, which eventually gets you information on where you will be able to find Salano and his men. There are also missions early on that will add members to your team, like a helicopter pilot named Ewan, a jet pilot named Misha – which are extremely important to the game - and a mechanic named Eva – who is useless for the most part - to help you in your personal war.