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  Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (PS2)

Rated: 16+.

Story: You're a mercenary who has been double-crossed by Venezuela's new and devious president. Various factions are fighting for control of the country's oil reserves and you must sell your skills to whoever is paying in order to gain the information and resources you need to exact some payback.

These skills are shooting things, blowing things up, stealing things and being able to take three tank shells to the head before dying.

Gameplay: Imagine Grand Theft Auto in the jungle with tanks (well, more tanks than normal) and you're pretty much there.

You get to guide your mercenary round a large area of Venezuela using whatever cars, trucks, jeeps, tanks or helicopters you can lay your hands on. Contacts are dotted about the place, offering missions. Some of these missions are optional, rewarding you with cash and different kinds of supply drop, from health packs, guns and vehicles to air strikes and gunship support. Other missions advance the story.

Jobs mostly involve reaching a target of some kind through a mass of enemies, destroying/rescuing/stealing it and making a quick get away. On a good day, this involves blowing up something really big.

There are also plenty of bonus items hidden around the map, along with thirty rogue military officers to capture.

The one major difference between this and most open-world games is that your actions affect your reputation with the different factions competing for control of Venezuela's oil. Send some capitalists a message from the rebel guerrillas and the freedom fighters will offer you support but the oil company won't be happy; help the American 'peace-keepers' and they'll be grateful but the Chinese 'observers' will be upset. Annoy anyone too much and they won't work with you without a hefty bribe. On the plus side, it's possible to disguise yourself as a member of a particular faction by stealing an appropriate vehicle and keeping a low profile. Then you can travel through their territory without getting into trouble.

Save System: You can choose to save at any time while not on a mission but loading the save transports you back to home base. Since it can take a while to get to places and some missions are half an hour long, there's no point switching the game on if you don't have a decent chunk of time available.

Comments: The opening mission of Mercenaries 2 really doesn't paint the game in a good light. The linear trek through a horde of daft soldiers seems to highlight almost all the game's faults in one go: poor enemy AI, short draw-distance, repetitive dialogue snippets, your character's miraculous inability to be killed by normal gunfire and some occasionally drab graphics.

Then, just at the end of it, there's the option to blow up a huge building with a tank. Things pick up after that.

Generally, the missions provide plenty of opportunity for experimentation and there's lots of fun to be had working out a sneaky way of pulling off a precision strike without upsetting any potential allies. Sometimes flying in low below the radar pays off, other times taking a jet ski to the back entrance is the way and then, of course, if nothing else works, there's always blasting through the front door with a rocket launcher and air support.

Unfortunately, mixed with the fun, there's plenty of frustration thanks to some horrible difficulty spikes and a complete lack of checkpointing in the missions. For instance, one contact requires you to steal three different vehicles and buy some tires. This is easy but time-consuming. Bring them all to her, however, and she requires you to transport a monster truck to a distant destination past lots of angry people with guns. If anything happens to the truck, it means ten minutes of rounding up vehicles again before getting another crack at finding a way through the roadblocks.

There's no reason for this, other than to pad the game out to make it a bit longer. (There are only around fifteen story missions.) As with so many parts of Mercenaries 2, it feels like someone eventually went, 'Oh, this'll do...' It's the same with the almost superfluous story which is merely an excuse to cause explosions and with the artificial intelligence which makes enemy soldiers run out from behind cover. Even the final mission gives the impression of ending halfway through.

Mercenaries 2 just doesn't have the same level of polish as the Grand Theft Auto games. That said, it does have lots of blowing stuff up and an easy to traverse world. The open, uncomplicated towns make a welcome change from the confusing bridges and overpasses of Los Santos and Liberty City. Mercenaries 2 is more accessible than either San Andreas or GTA IV. The simple map and varied vehicles make travelling around more fun. Since each hidden item is instantly useful and there's no need to find dozens of them to gain any benefit, there's also greater incentive to explore.

The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game have more features and better graphics but they also have more competition. There are any number of good games coming out in the next few weeks for those consoles. Choice is more limited on the PS2. As such, Mercenaries 2 is worth a look. It's flawed but has greater substance than Just Cause and is no more frustrating than GTA.

Besides, any game which asks you to steal a bus and go pick up some pirates, deserves to be given a chance...

Conclusion: Wanting an accessible open-world PS2 action game with plenty of explosions?

This'll do.

Graphics: The towns feel a little empty but the graphics are generally competent and atmospheric. The short draw-distance is an issue, though, since it can be hard seeing targets and going up to any height at all in a helicopter makes the entire world disappear. Using binoculars doesn't help - they merely bring the fog closer.

Length: Medium.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: computer game review (vol.3), PS2

 
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  God of War 2 (PS2)

Rated: 18

Story: You are Kratos, an irritable and savage warrior of Sparta. After traveling ancient Greece in the first game, smashing lots of heads, re-writing mythology and battering Aries with a bridge, you've been newly promoted to God of War. Being a few hundred feet tall, you decide to wreak havoc on the world by stomping on cities and leading the Spartan army to domination.

That plan lasts until about the end of the first cutscene. Then you're back to normal size and must travel ancient Greece re-writing mythology again. Unsurprisingly, this involves smashing lots of heads.

Gameplay: God of War 2 is a third-person action game with block-and-lever puzzles, platforming and a heavy emphasis on fighting. It's just like the first game, in fact, with some extra weapons, even bigger bosses and almost as much frustrating, instant death. There are also a couple of into-the-screen flying sections but they're not that great.

On the plus side, you get to smack Perseus in the face a lot.

Save System: There are regular checkpoints that you return to when you die but progress can only be saved in certain locations that are often half an hour apart. Several times, I spent ten minutes hacking my way through a horde of enemies only to get stuck because I didn't see a lever or know where to go. I would have liked to come back another time (you know, when I wasn't already supposed to be in bed) but I had to keep going because I couldn't save. Grrr.

Comments: Yep, more of the same. I enjoyed the first game well enough but the endless minion mashing combat was wearing thin by the end. I was dubious about whether I could be bothered with the sequel but, with my 360 broken and PS2 releases fading away, I wasn't left with many other options. Fortunately, teeth-grindingly lethal platform sections and repetitive hack-a-thons aren't as frequent this time around. Less fortunately, the game is longer, so the actual numbers of these sections feels similar to before.

The puzzles vary wildly in quality. Some offer Tomb Raider levels of exploration and thought. Most, though, are more a question of laborious trial-and-error. Others have obvious solutions but incredibly tight time limits. They all feel a little old fashioned.

In a similar fashion, the bosses are very traditional - find the pattern, open up the weak-spot, hit it, repeat until dead. Some bosses also require a button matching sequence to finish them off. These are occasionally infuriating and the one at the end of the final battle drove me barmy.

The cutscenes are entertaining and keep interest going but the story suffers from second-part-of-a-trilogy syndrome. There are constant back references to the first game which I didn't entirely follow and then the thing ended without a conclusion.

Visually, the game is spectacular, with epic settings, huge draw distances, enormous enemies and plenty happening on screen at once. Much of the incentive to continue comes from wanting to see what's coming next. Some sections do drag, though. This was exacerbated for me because I'm no good at this kind of game - I can't remember button combos or time them right. (Devil May Cry told me I was rubbish pretty quickly and offered me a secret easy mode. Even then, I couldn't manage my way past the first boss). This meant I was doing a lot of manic button bashing for a large part of the game. Personally, I could have done with a little less head smashing and a few more decent puzzles.

Conclusion: It's a tough call. God of War 2 has plenty of great moments but they're padded out with tedium. If you've played the first one, you know exactly what to expect.

Graphics: Given the impressive level of detail and sense of scale, you could probably convince people this is a PS3 game (on a normal telly, at least). The graphics engine does struggle to keep up sometimes, however, resulting in occasional slow-down and quite a lot of tearing.

Length: Medium.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: computer game review (vol.2), PS2

 
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  Okami (PS2)

Rated: 12+

Story: The land has been turned to darkness by the ancient monster Orochi. You are the embodiment of the sun god Amaterasu and must restore the natural world. You achieve this by recovering the powers of your celestial brush and using them to do everything from create bombs to make trees bloom. Oh, and I should probably mention you're a wolf... infested by an annoying talking bug... and you get sent on your mission by a tree.

At least it makes a change from being a baldy space marine, I suppose.

Gameplay: Run and jump around from a third-person perspective. Talk to villagers, solve their problems, fight demons, uncover secrets and explore your way through the occasional dungeon. It's just like Zelda except you're a wolf. (Correction for those who've played Twilight Princess: It's just like Zelda except you're a wolf ALL THE TIME). You also have to pause the action frequently to paint with the magic brush in order to create and fix things. The fighting is in real-time (apart from pauses to paint) but takes place in enclosed arenas that spring up when you encounter monsters.

Save System: Save points scattered around the world. This can mean lots of back-tracking to save. Occasionally a mix of boss battles and cut-scenes will mean you're unable to save for more than twenty minutes. Do game designers not have children?

Comments: The first thing that has to be mentioned about Okami is the graphics - it looks like a Japanese water-colour. Initially this is a very impressive departure from the norm. Panoramas are particularly stunning. Up close, however, backdrops are very bland and many areas are pretty featureless. The character models aren't that great either. After awhile the faded hues and murky textures just made me want to clean my TV screen in the hope I could make out a bit more detail.

The painting aspect is another idea that seems great to start with but again doesn't quite work out. The Wii is lumbered with a stack of ported PS2 games with poorly implemented wiimote functionality. Here we have a game that seems designed for the Wii but which is lumbered with the PS2 analogue sticks. What is going on? Making a bomb by drawing a circle with a line coming out of it would be fantastic using the wiimote to just point and paint. It would be like waving a wand. Using an analogue stick is like wrestling with a demented Etch-A-Sketch. Drawing circles of the right size and in the right place is particularly vexing. Trying to do it in one of the against-the-clock sections is infuriating. The painting quickly becomes a real chore.

One of the standard elements of games like this is having to return to areas you've previously explored once you've gained new abilities. These abilities let you unlock new areas and secrets. It's important to try and remember unusual scenery, such as a cracked wall, for a point in time when you have a way of dealing with it. In Okami, however, these 'secrets' are everywhere. You can't move for piles of leaves, flaming chests and glowing cracks. There's no way to remember them all - it's a case of back-tracking everywhere. Again, it becomes a chore. Also, since there are so many of these hiding places, the rewards within are slim. It doesn't seem worth it after not very long.

There are plenty of other niggles as well. Conversations are text only and... the... words... appear... on... the... screen... at... a... very... lei...sure...ly... pace... Sometimes they can be speeded up slightly, other... times... they... can't... And it's not like the dialogue is generally that interesting anyway. Many of the quests are tedious, such as making all the trees in a village bloom. (Back-tracking and drawing circles - excellent!) The fights are quickly repetitive. Any time a puzzle seems in danger of becoming interesting, the annoying bug tells you what to do.

Despite all these problems, Okami isn't awful. It's charming and addictive. The main quest trundles along in nice little chunks, tempting you to see what happens next. If you want something to relax with for an hour or so last thing at night then you could do much worse. Which I suppose is pretty faint praise but sometimes there's a call for the gaming equivalent of Horlicks. Maybe it gets more exciting later on. I don't know. I played Okami for about twelve hours and I doubt I was a third of the way through. I just couldn't be bothered to keep plugging away at it, though. I began to feel that I'd have just as much fun reading a walkthrough and save myself a great deal of time.

I'm going to give it a three because there's not much else like it on PS2 and I know there are a lot of people who think it's great. Personally I would suggest hunting for Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy in the second-hand shelves instead. Psychonauts is another possibility or Kameo on 360 or Twilight Princess on Wii. Or you could just do the sensible thing and go into Cash Converter and buy a second-hand GameCube and The Wind Waker for next to nothing. (If you're really lucky you'll get the bonus disc with Ocarina of Time as well. Result!)

Length: Very long... Very, very long.

Graphics: Sometimes astonishing, sometimes featureless, always unique.

Rating: 3/5

Labels: computer game review (vol.1), PS2

 
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