Nakor’s Rucksack

A boat. Why did this game have to start with a boat? It brought back better forgotten memories of all the terrible missions in the GTA series that involved boats. The water here sure is a lot more shiny, though.

The next thing that springs into my mind is that this is very obviously a shoddy port of a game developed for a low-end console platform (in this case, the PS2). The tutorial instructions use arcane icons to represent the keys you need to press in order to do things. I could understand this if I were using a controller, but I wasn’t. Apparently it was too hard to replace said icons with the currently bound key(s) on the keyboard. I suppose I should be grateful it didn’t say “Press X to continue” (amusingly though, the title screen asks you press Start, I mean Space to continue). So, the beginning of the game consists of escaping back to the controls menu many, many times just to figure out what the heck that boot icon is supposed to mean to a human.

There are many, many flaws in this game, and it’s somewhat unsettling to see so many within the first few minutes of play. The graphics are merely passable. Since the patch, the game “supports” widescreen resolutions. However, the viewing angle is so horribly distorted it’s almost enough to consider using a 4:3 resolution with side bars instead. The AI seems amusingly medocre at best. Enemies seem almost resigned to their fate, and often stand in plain sight waiting for death. I have not played a mission with AI allies, but I shudder to think how that will work out. I am already tired of the canned NPC voices. Solders yell out “it’s the merc!” or “cover me!” over and over again. At the beginning, you think that maybe they are saying something that reflects the reality of the situation, but this didn’t seem to be the case in my experience. You start to feel an urge to kill them just to shut them up. The sounds of guns and explosions are underwhelming. Realism, especially with regards to vehicles, doesn’t seem to be much of a factor in this game (though, this is probably an overall win, as you’d likely be killed in seconds in this environment). You can drive through/over buildings and over other vehicles without a scratch, yet hitting a fire hydrant or fence might cause some damage. On foot, you can take damage if you go down steep stairs too fast; amazingly this is almost the same amount of damage you take from a bullet. The controls aren’t great, especially in a vehicle. They are functional, but they don’t feel precise at all. This is not a tactical game. Don’t get me started on the Quick Time Events (QTEs). Combined again with the obtuse icons, they seem cunningly designed to suck all the fun out of hijacking vehicles.

However, once you get past these thoughts, you start having fun. The first mission/tutorial is designed very well to show off the core game play. The gameplay is summed up as follows: blow shit up. If you have an Internet connection, blow shit up with a friend or complete stranger. If you find a vehicle, get in the vehicle and blow shit up or run it over. There is no such thing as overkill in this game; if you can afford it, drop in a nuke just to be sure. Sure, you can get a monetary penalty for “collateral damage”, but it’s almost insultingly insignificant.

The drop in/out multiplayer is the crowning feature for this game. When you start a game, you can elect to be online or offline. If you are online, then anyone can join your game at any time. Joining a game online is easy; no need to pour over server lists or anything like that (although you can apparently filter by mission). You select the option, it finds a game, and you’re in. You can elect to use a saved character, or start a new one. If you use a save game, then the money, fuel and weapons you acquire will be saved when you quit, but your mission status will remain unchanged. Essentially, only the host’s mission state matters – the joining player is only there as a support element. This feature means that anyone can play with anyone else at any time, regardless of game progress. I find this to be a novel concept in a mission-oriented game, and a very good design decision. You are limited to the same general area as the other player, but that area seems fairly generous in size. You can both pound the ground, or ride in the same vehicle, or even split up a bit with one player providing (close) air support with the other on the ground.

I had two online experiences in the few hours that I played. In the first one, I joined a game in progress. I then proceeded to mistakenly shoot a friendly (“Oh, so THAT’s what the blue reticule means!”) and got promptly kicked from the game. Oops. I felt bad, but I had no way to apologize, and life goes on. In my second experience, someone joined me in the 2nd mission midway through. My partner commandeered a sports car from somewhere and drove up to me expectantly. Of course I got in; what could go wrong? He proceeds to drive like a bat out of hell through the war zone. We’re taking lots of fire but we’re going fast enough that no one can really hit us. He then hits some obstacle or another and the car goes spinning and twisting through the air, eventually exploding. Somehow we survive this, and proceeded to kill everybody, just like old times. This one experience convinced me that this is the way the game was designed to be played: fast, loose and with someone else.

The only real flaw I see in the system is that it’s hard (at least on the PC) to find “friends” to play with. You can search for a game by friend ID, but you have to type it in. There is no friends list or anything like that. If you meet someone you’d like to play with a game, it’s purely a manual process for finding them again. Also, there doesn’t seem to be a way on the PC to restrict who can join your game. Again this could make it difficult to play only with friends. Finally, there is no LAN play. You must log into EA’s servers in order to play online. Once in game, there may or may not be voice communication; there are sound options for “voice in” and “voice out” but I saw no other mention of how this might work. I only hope it doesn’t conflict with Teamspeak.

In summary, despite the many, many flaws, this is best $7 game I have ever bought. I’m glad I didn’t pay more, but I think this is the kind of game you can keep coming back to if you just want some mindless destruction. The casual online nature of the game means you can either help others blow stuff up without worrying about your mission status, or maybe get some help with a difficult mission. Of course the quality of that help is going to vary, but if you can hook up with “good” people, you’re in for violent, explosive treat.

Tags: games, mercs2