One of the few sequels, and games in general, to live up to most of its expectations. Still needs work, though.
First off, the gameplay hasn't really changed at its core. You have a third person camera, jump, reload, melee bash, crouch, and of coarse the fire your weapon button (in which you'll be doing a bunch of). However, Pandemic did, and in a nice fashion, have you zoom in to an over-the-shoulder perspective while crouching. At first, I was like huh, but it works well for placing headshots with assault rifles and pistols. Also, many of the vehicles controlled by the enemies have what is called and Action Takedown. Think of it as a small, short minigame similar to that of God of War and Resident Evil 4, in which to press and tap certain buttions. While cheesy sounding, it keeps you engaged with what you're doing and makes you feel like your actions mean something. Also, you have a grappling hook that you can use to hijack airborne vehicles, that I find and will find myself using often. However, the vehicle controls are a little loose, and can feel like you are driving on oil at times. But you will learn to compensate after a few minutes. All around the controls are good and responsive, and shouldn't give you too much hastle, once the driving is learned, anyway.
The graphics and sound for the game are generally great, but they have a few blemishes. First off the good. The characters and the environment look great with neat animations and detail, and the fire, well so far its the second best I've seen in a videogame. First, of coarse being Far Cry 2. From what I've played so far, I destroyed a gas station with a few, okay, a lot of grenades and rockets. A couple of missions later, it was still gone. Hopefully it will stay this way throughout the game to show off just how much of the city you have destroyed by the final mission. The sounds are cool, with each of the guns, vehicles, bombs, and characters sounding different from one another. But now comes the slightly bad news. The chatter out of cutscenes and story elements becomes on the repetitive side. I'm playing my first time through with Mattias, the Swede ex-convict. When I fist picked up an automatic rifle, he said something funny about missing the gun, and decided to name it Vera or something like it, then saying that they were going to shoot stuff up. It was funny the first two times but hearing it so far maybe six ten to twelve out of the maybe 8 hours I put into it, it kinda lost it's steam. But there are many other cool sayings from the characters, so it's not that bad. However the enemy talk can be fingernails down a chalkboard for some.
Some other bad spots come in unusual forms. Sometimes hitting a bump with cause spontaneous damage to your vehicle. Can you tell me how hitting a bump would cause my hood to buckle and bend? But this happens only once in a while, thankfully, but being technical, it shouldn't happen at all. Something else, how does flying off of a motorcycle at high speed not damage you, or having the vehicle your in blow up while causing minimal damage to you? But falling off of a off a ledge a few feet above the ground take off maybe 25% of your health? As expected, the enemy AI can take a hit sometimes. Some with sometimes stand around looking dead at you, while others shoot in the wrong direction. However, most of the time they duck and run for cover while firing and tossing grenades at you. When enter/exiting a vehicle and crouching, your gun(s) on your back disappear.
The good however always outdoes the bad in this game. For every flaw there are multiple jaw-dropping moments. Like nuking a small town or ordering in a custom Monster Truck, the game never fails to keep your hands on the controller. Also the game has a bunch, and I mean a bunch of humor. For a game like this, it is very easy to be all serious, but Mercs uses the humor in a way that keeps the game that much more entertaining.
All in all, Mercs 2 is a great sequel, but a few buggs and what not keep it from being as great as it could have been. But action/adventure/sandbox fans should be entertained for months to come.