Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

If I had to use one word to describe why Mercenaries 2 isn't great, it would be "rough". The game is most definitely rough. You'd think it shouldn't be after the delays it experienced, but the game still feels like a PS2 port with prettier explosions and a bunch of glitches. None of the technical problems really hurt the game though, and the game itself is so cool that it's hard to dislike it. It certainly has issues, but they can all be overcome if you're looking for an enjoyable, less than fully serious experience.

I'm not sure how much of the basic structure is taken from the first game (which I now intend to check out some time) and how much is new ideas, but what's there is fundamentally pretty interesting. It's an open world like in Grand Theft Auto, but unlike most of games that rip off that series, Mercs has its own feel to it. It takes place in Venezuela, and is about whichever gun-for-hire you pick (I went with Swedish Mattias Nilsson from the cover) taking jobs from the various factions that have stakes there in order to get the supplies and info you need to take down the new president, Ramon Solano, who tried to kill you instead of paying you after a mission. You know the idea if you've seen the terrific commercial. You can get contracts, which are specific, often fairly involved jobs that usually involve blowing something up and advance the plot, or just go after smaller bounties to get rewards and unlock more types of vehicles or airstrikes in the store. The nonessential bounties sometimes have you working against a faction that's employed you before, and you have to make sure you don't get reported screwing them over or pay for it somehow later. Later on, even the contracts have you attacking people who consider you an ally, and you have to make a choice about whose side you're on. Balancing the ire of all these different interests sounds kind of interesting on paper, but in practice it's a little annoying to deal with. It's not hard to win a faction back over, but it still feels unnecessary.

Not every mission is cool either. Every group has at least one race and possibly more jobs that have multiple levels, and only by completing them a few times can you gain access to everything they offer. Besides the silliness of getting paid thousands of dollars to run an arbitrary lap somewhere, these missions are often annoying and show the overall lack of polish in the game. It's hard to fault the game for it too much when it's all optional, but I sometimes wondered what exactly all the development time went in to. Every building can be brought down, and the destructability of the environments is extremely impressive, and the explosions look quite nice, but they're probably the only visually impressive aspect of the game. It doesn't look bad, and the frame rate is almost always good, but it's nowhere near the cutting age of current generation graphics. The voices are a bit silly, but I like them. All of the enemies sound right out of a typical campy action flick, with hokey Latin, Jamaican or Chinese accents. Apparently the Korean enemies in the first game actually spoke Korean, so I could see how a fan might be disappointed by the dumbing down of the series, but I enjoyed it. Peter Stormare is always fun to watch, and he acts Mattias just fine too. I haven't really played with the other characters, but Phil LaMarr and Jennifer Hale are voice acting veterans who know what they're doing.

The game has a lot of niggling issues like repetitive voices, weird graphical glitches, and sometimes strange vehicle physics, but it's hard to be too annoyed by any of them when it's so satisfying to demolish a building with C4, or call in a carpet bomb, or hijack a tank and lay waste to infantry with their former support, or winch up a fuel tank with a helicopter and throw it into some Anti-Air equipment. I wish it was better than it is, but what it is is still a whole lot of fun if you're in the right mood. And with online co-op, you can blow everything up with a friend. Who doesn't enjoy that?

Prison Break - Season 1

Prison Break is a solid, entertaining thriller with a fairly good, complex story running through the whole way. I don't think it's saying too much that they break out at the end of the first season, considering they say as much with just a glance at the cover art of the second. After all, how long can you really stay in jail before the show gets boring? Michael is a genius engineer who gives up his normal life to save his falsely accused brother Lincoln from the electric chair, a job that is made easier by the fact that he happened to help design the place. He schemes and prepares before he purposefully gets caught attempting robbery to make his way in, and starts to working. That's not all it is though, as a big part of the show is the huge conspiracy that landed Lincoln on death row in the first place. While their friends on the outside try to prove his innocence, they get chased by government agents and men who work for the "Company" (real original there, guys), who will do anything to keep things quiet. Despite all the planning, pretty much everything that can go wrong does, and the brothers have to recruit several hardened criminals to their cause.

The show does a good job of ratcheting up the tension, carefully laying piece after piece of the puzzle into place as things go wrong and time starts running out. Despite the unsympathetic nature of many of the characters, they're all at least interesting in some way, even if it's just how really messed up they are. I honestly much prefer the prison break aspect to the conspiracy aspect, because they treat everything in the jail so deliberately and realistically while all the lies and backstabbing on the outside seem a little unbelievable in contrast. Also, Lincoln's son is a gigantic idiot. I don't understand half the things he does. I also don't like how they don't give the audience much credit for remembering plot details. I get the need to keep people who can't watch every week in the loop, but most of it can be followed without that much help, and when every somewhat-obscure scene is accompanied by a glaringly obvious flashback, it seems cheap and unrewarding for people who watch closely. Despite some minor issues, it's a very promising first run of an enjoyable show.