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August 31st, 2008 @ 10:31
IGN’s given Mercenaries 2 7.9/10, citing “numerous bugs, the terrible AI, and the lackluster missions.” Snip:
Mercenaries 2 is like a newsstand; it has a lot of issues. Still, I can’t deny that there were some hootin’ and hollerin’ moments. For every time I cursed the stupid AI, I cheered at the demolition of another building. For every bug that got me stuck in some bushes, there was an attack chopper waiting to be jacked. If Mercenaries 2 had more polish, it would have been a great game. As is, it’s still worth playing – and enjoyable – but falls far short of its promise.
And that’s that. Video review after the break.
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August 31st, 2008 at 12:55 pm
8 out of 10! That’s more than I expected, to be honest.
I played the first Mercenaries game on PS2. It wasn’t bad but I got bored after about 6 hours into gameplay and never picked it up again.
Let’s wait what Eurogamer.net has to say in it’s review …
August 31st, 2008 at 1:05 pm
IGN though, innit. The review’s pretty scathing. The “.1 under 8″ thing’s deliberate, probably.
August 31st, 2008 at 1:26 pm
The AI really seems to be “dumber than dirt” …
And just being able to “blow things up” is not incentive enough to buy this game IMHO.
August 31st, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Seems a shame.
These guys worked pretty hard, but that long in development I guess can make you pretty ignorant of problems like that.
I think Red Faction looks great though.
Even if I am not one for mindless pointless destrcution, the afct that they got actual architecturally sound structures is pretty amazing.
August 31st, 2008 at 7:04 pm
looks like it deserves less than an 8.
September 1st, 2008 at 11:13 am
I wasn’t really interested in this at all, then I watched the review on Playr at the weekend and thought it looked alright!
/goes against the grain
September 1st, 2008 at 11:45 am
Yeah, it “looks alright”! But unfortunately that’s about it. For a game that had such a long development-cycle “alright” is not enough.
EA was clever in launching Mercenaries 2 already in early september. This game wouldn’t stand a chance if released in october or november. So many other games which are way better will hit the market in this upcoming holiday season.
September 1st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
OMG !!! OMG !!!
Eurogamer’s Review of Mercenaries 2 is out and they gave it a 5 out of 10 !!!
Ouchh!
September 1st, 2008 at 3:30 pm
shit
Eurogamer are such idiots when it comes to reviewing.
I don’t even care, about bugs. I am sorry but it’s free roaming, destrctible environments …
I just don’t undertand such a low mark.
September 1st, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Blimey. Well, there we are.
September 1st, 2008 at 3:53 pm
You don’t care about bugs No_PUD?
September 1st, 2008 at 4:03 pm
“I don’t even care, about bugs.”
Awesome.
/closes all open bugs
/informs producer no more bugs will be fixed
/goes on holiday
September 1st, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Well, I do, but I have seen videos and it’s not unplayable, so 5/10 just seems harsh.
Ironically as I was writing that as I was listening to 1up yours, and the English bloke said 5/10 as I typed it. That confused me.
But yes, it just seems a bit of an injustice with so much work, for a game that ultimately was never going to be enjoyed for anything other than the free roaming destruction which seems very much intact.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Remember kids, 5/10 is ‘average’, not ‘broken’.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:22 pm
That’s the reason I am cross, by todays standards that’s not true.
5/10 is a nasty game to play. It’s playable but it’s not fun. Haze was 6/10 for gods sake!
This game deserved a 6-point-something.
Average is 7 nowadays.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:24 pm
And therein lies the problem with modern videogame reviewing standards.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Yep, maybe I am cross with Eurogamer unjustly.
Just becuase they are breakign the incorrect paradigm.
Eitehr way though, you should follow the crowd, otherwise you do soem damage. It’s like the government chnaging the amount of cash a mint is prodcuing outside of growth.
It creates an inbalance.
Perhaps a rubbish analogy, but I am sure you catch my drift.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Over-score stuff because everyone else does? That doesn’t sound like a very good idea to me. Shouldn’t everyone else be reviewing stuff properly?
Scores out of ten are mostly meaningless anyway. A score out of 5 should be the absolute maximum, then you know precisely where you are.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:57 pm
From the Eurogamer scoring system:
“Five - good enough to survive?
Five is where you really start to fear for a game’s quality. It’s the score that says “don’t buy it unless you’re the sort of person who has to have all the games in a particular genre”. It’s a game that had the potential to be good, but simply ended up saddled with a catalogue of issues that the majority of gamers will not put up with. It’s still playable, but the chances are it’s so generic and uninspired that you begin to question how it was released in the first place.
A five won’t be a disaster. In fact those who won’t have played the better games in the genre might even get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. In a lot of cases scores come down to user expectations, but the standards games are built on are constantly shifting sands; what is ground breaking in one generation is the bare minimum standard a few years down the line, and things we once tolerated routinely can suddenly become very irritating. We hear regularly of games built to brutally tight deadlines, and compromises are inevitably made. Sometimes a key member of the team leaves midway through; sometimes it’s just down to a lack of talent. But it’s not bad as such, it just inspires little but the feeling you could do far better than consider picking up a five out of ten.
One thing to clear up is whether five is the “average”. The law of averages suggests that a five should equate to the woolly notion of what an “average” game is worth. We all know this is rarely the case because it’d be very tough to play every single title in a particular genre to really have a true handle on what the average game actually is; and even then it’s a subjective reasoning that’s inherently flawed. With about 1,000 games being released every year it’s a task of unreasonable magnitude to cover even half of them given the size of our team, but we do play a phenomenal number of games between us at EG (over 250 a year), and will attempt to play all the important games in any give field. The chances are, if it’s not on Eurogamer there’s a good reason why not. Either we’re not sent the game, we don’t have a person qualified to review it, or we’ve too many games to review at any one time, and thus have to deal with them in order of priority. But should five be the average? Yes, but it’s not an exact science. We’ll always try to position a five as our opinion of what an average game represents, but the more significant notion is that it’s the score that tells you to approach with extreme caution.”
September 1st, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Heh. That was written a while back. Sounds about right though.