One group of people that are far less likely to pull a weapon on you is your ragged team of misfits that work for your PMC. The charming Fiona once again serves as your overseer and coordinator from your base of operations and at the start is your only team member, but through the course of the game other supporting characters such as pilots and a mechanic join your merry band. Far from being mere warm bodies for the plot, these characters unlock abilities for you in the field such as the ability to drop vehicles and supplies onto your position in the field or simply drop a massive amount of ordinance on the enemy.

Vehicles play a big part in the game, whether they are used to get from point A to point B safely, quickly, or with the highest body count in between. To reliably get specific vehicles you must purchase them at a factions shop and have them delivered to you, but you can just as well liberate an enemy’s vehicle from them via some visceral quick time events. To hijack a tank is as simple as shooting the topside gunner then grabbing into its barrel, ripping a grenade from the tank commander’s vest and making it live, and shoving the both of them back down to let them get acquainted. While vehicles all have unique hijacking animations their button presses always remain the same for each one. If the wrong button is pressed the player gets thrown off, shot, or both which is not fatal but leaves them open for all manners of punishment from nearby enemies.

To play the game at its best is to play it alongside a friend cooperatively through the campaign. Though the second player must stay within set distance of the first and only the host can go inside of shops or trigger missions neither are really an issue gameplay wise if the two of you communicate with each other.

Unfortunately playing Mercenaries 2 alone is incredibly unrewarding, as given that the AI isn’t incredibly engaging instead of working with a friend to cause the greatest carnage using awesome feats of teamwork you are going it alone fighting an enemy that more often than not is content to just stand there and let you run them over. Additionally though the environment is a free for all the mission structure that takes place in it is incredibly linear, and many of the missions are simply repeats of the last one only with a different location.

On its console home the game has more than its share of flaws, and even more are to be found in the PC version. Crashes, graphical corruption, and other engine flaws are commonplace, and when motorcycles suddenly turn into groups of neon sparks it breaks the fourth wall right down. Evidence of its status as a port is prevalent as well with mouse aiming that sometimes uses auto-aim to the point that it ignores the player’s mouse movement or interface options that simply cannot be clicked for reasons unknown and can only be accessed via the keyboard. Only 4:3 and 16:9 resolutions are accepted, and even then only a couple of each. This doesn’t even scratch the surface of issues ranging from the mundane such as escorts that refuse to follow you up to the incredibly frustrating as to how the second player in a cooperative game can suddenly lose connection and all of their progress since there is only an auto save for the host.

Mercenaries 2 has a lot going for it in that it delivers a cooperative experience set in a sandbox environment where explosions are pretty and plentiful. However, playing it alone showcases how repetitive the missions are and without that second player it is just you versus an AI that is far from intense or tactical. The numerous bugs and crashes that plague the PC version are troublesome, as is the game’s refusal to really adopt any of the advantages of the platform.

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