A glitchy, cartoonish shoot-em-up free for all that ends up being surprisingly good.

User Rating: 8.5 | Mercenaries 2: World in Flames PC
I read all the reviews, many good and as many bad, and decided to get the game as it was very cheap and looked like fun.

THe game is very glitchy, and does crash rather too frequently for my tastes. No other game has ever gotten my CPU to run so hot before, and my computer is no slouch (AMD Phenom II 965 BE, with two ATI Radeon 5770s in Crossfire). But I just ended a session where I played it almost continuously for 20 hours (taking breaks only after a crash), and I must say I am totally blown away with just how mindlessly fun this is.

Mind, what they say about the AI is correct - although the enemy can kill you if you're not careful, it really is almost impossible to die outright in a fight. Frequently the AI will just stand around waiting for you to kill them, but I think this is on purpose - the game seems to be trying to replicate the equally mindless Rambo-style action movies of the '80s. And you can blow up practically anything.

You need a very powerful computer to play this game. If you already have a PS3 or XBOX 360, you're probably better off getting it for that system (I can vouch for the PS3, as I used to play this game in Gamestop on their PS3 without any problems). If the game didn't crash so frequently as you get further into it, and if the load/save routine was better, I'd give it much higher marks. But for me, with my rig and my taste for mindless violence, this is a fantastic game.

That Hugo Chavez actually banned this game in Venezuela makes playing it all the more sweeter.