Epic Default Productions

I heard a quote on NPR the other morning that got my brain working overtime.  Guillermo del Toro, director of many great movies, said “In the next 10 years, there will be an earthshaking Citizen Kane of games.”  Although I have not made a determination on whether his statement is correct, in either the sheer elegance or time-frame of said game, I did wonder, “What video game(s) out today would come close (or maybe even meet) the criteria of Citizen Kane?”

Something catchy about Rosebud to make you giggle

Don’t get me wrong; I like Mercenaries 2. It certainly has its moments of brilliance, like when you realize that all helicopters have winches, which means all those fuel tanks you’ve been ignoring are actually gigantic bombs scattered about for your amusement. Or how about the first time you pile C4 onto a jeep, drive full speed toward an occupied building and bail out at the last second, pounding the detonator like you caught it breaking into your home. Maybe “hate” is too strong a word, but “5 Things That Mildly Annoy Me About You” just didn’t have that zing. Regardless, here’s my top 5 gripes about Mercs 2:

5) Repetitive sound bites. I get it, Matthias, you don’t deserve to be out of ammo. Do I have to hear it every 5 minutes when my latest chopper runs dry? And you, faction NPC #27: it’s cool that you just let me drive by, since I’m in one of your own tanks and all, but why do you yell “It’s the mercenary!” or “Enemies approaching!” every time I come near, only to follow with “It’s one of ours!” I bet your buddies are real sick of you crying wolf all the time. No wonder they didn’t react when I ran you over.

4) I’m the Juggernaut! Okay, maybe “a” juggernaut. Either way, you just can’t kill me. Tank shells, mountains of C4, my car exploding… no single attack will take me out. Hell, if my vehicle gets blown out from under me, I fly free of the wreckage completely unscathed. The only way to die is to play the bullet sponge, refusing to take cover in any way, thus preventing my Wolverinesque regeneration from kicking in. I appreciate not wanting the player to get instagibbed, and how I’m supposed to be this ultimate badass, but come on. I’m not playing Crackdown here.

3) Driving missions. Ohhhh, the driving missions. It seems like every outpost has some courier run or experimental vehicle to test, and you’re just the merc for the job. It’s not really offensive, just boring, especially when you have to do each one three times to unlock all the goodies in their respective shops. Then again, boring is so antithetic to a game like Mercenaries 2 that it almost becomes offensive. This is not the game I’m supposed to be playing!

2) Everything can be destroyed, until you turn your back. If you followed the hype, you’ve heard the boast that every structure in the game can be levelled. As far as I know, that’s true. If you throw enough firepower at whatever building has earned your wrath (Classical arches? On those windows? Puh-leeze), it will come down. The problem is, it won’t stay down. For technical and story-related reasons, the game only remembers the state of things within visual range, which isn’t that far, since it’s apparently fog season in Venezuela. Go far enough away, or load a saved game, and everything is restored to its original state. Suddenly you’re no longer shaping the world, just drawing on it with a washable marker. It takes all the fun out of fire bombing the slums, you know? Well, heh, not all the fun.

1) The PC port is the spawn of Satan, Lord of Lies. Really, I caught a whiff of brimstone when I broke the seals, which were not adhesive-backed plastic but arcane diagrams drawn in lamb’s blood. Installation was painless, but the game makes no concessions to the PC as a platform. I cranked the graphics, as is my wont, and immediately noticed a jarring dichotomy: characters and vehicles benefited from anti-aliasing, although the textures left a lot to be desired, but terrain and buildings were all a muddy, jaggy mess. The mouse would stop responding when the crouch key was pressed, only to spring to life a second later as I frantically waved it about like Michael J. Fox trying to draw a circle. Whoever was in charge of handling mouse control must really love consoles. Through some sorcery I can only imagine, they replicated the feel of joystick-style movement with mouse input. I swear the pointer had acceleration; it started and stopped like a garbage truck. After playing the PC port for about an hour, I drove back to GameStop and paid the $10 difference to swap it for a 360 disc. All those problems disappeared on the console. The graphics are much more unified and pleasing from across the room, and the controller fits the arcade action like a glove. These guys should have taken some notes from Bethesda. Oblivion may have shown its roots as a console original, but the PC port was eminently playable.

Don’t let my whining get you down on Mercs 2; it’s basically a big explosive sandbox (note to self: pitch explosive sandbox idea to Mattel). The core gameplay of tearing around in your vehicle of choice, gunning down hordes of mooks, and bombing everything in sight back to the stone age is a simple recipe for fun. It’s the greatness of the parts that work that makes me harp on the parts that don’t. Flaws and all, I highly recommend Mercenaries 2 to anyone that likes to blow shit up. And really, inside, don’t we all have a little wrecking crew waiting to be unleashed?