Tell me why Mercs 1 > Mercs 2..

[scharmers]

So I have Mercs 2, and it's all shiny and pretty on the PC.

After playing it a while, I go downstairs on play Mercs 1 on the busted ol' PS2.

I don't know what's the matter with me. The first Mercs in its hideous fog-o-vision and adamantium chain-link fences seems so much more fun.

Am I killing PC gaming?

[Wholly Schmidt]

Single-handedly.

[Munin]

I was astounded how Pandemic could deliver such a polished AAA title with Mercenaries - one of my favourite titles last gen - , and then turn out such a messy, unfinished affair with its sequel. Actually, I'm still astounded.

[Bahimiron]

Mercs 2 may be an unpolished, rough-around-the-edges mess, but I really can't bring myself to care. It's still an absolute blast. Like playing in the mud.

I just wish they'd release a patch to turn off the random comments.

[BDGE]

This guy has been trolling Venezuela across the internet. Don't believe his Korean lies!

[zengonzo]

Co-op.

[Marged]

Originally Posted by bahimiron

I just wish they'd release a patch to turn off the random comments.

Do you mean like, the random shouting? I don't even play this game, but if I hear one more guy shouting "FIRE IN THE HOLE!" I will kill myself. I'm not even kidding.

[awdougherty]

Co-op really lets Mercs 2 shine, and while I really love just how big Merc 2 feels, the varied backdrops, etc... Merc 1 felt a little more polished and I liked the North Korean backdrop more for some reason. But Merc 2 is still a hell of a game for me and I hope the series continues.

[mittens]

The mission design in Mercenaries 2 is so much worse than it was in Mercenaries 1. In the first game you had to snipe a target before he got on to a helicopter and then everyone got pissed at you and hunted you down.

This time you have to blow up targets for every mission.

[zengonzo]

Originally Posted by mittens

The mission design in Mercenaries 2 is so much worse than it was in Mercenaries 1. In the first game you had to snipe a target before he got on to a helicopter and then everyone got pissed at you and hunted you down.

This time you have to blow up targets for every mission.

This is pretty much my biggest complaint with the game (even more than Fiona's babble).

I expect that with the complexity of their system there was much less room for complexity of mission. They had to put it back in the oven for quite some time just to get it to this point, after all.

But as a huge, open, and varied co-op game, it's doing incredibly well for me. I have a vague notion that they intend to expand on it, using the existing engine (based on things Fiona says and the 'map selection' when setting up a multiplayer game). So, here's hoping they can make up for what slipped out.

[Pogue Mahone]

Originally Posted by Marged

Do you mean like, the random shouting? I don't even play this game, but if I hear one more guy shouting "FIRE IN THE HOLE!" I will kill myself. I'm not even kidding.

My favorite is the VZ guy who always announces to anyone in earshot that he's going to go for the tank/jeep/helicopter. Which he then does. It always makes me think of Homer Simpson doing one of his stage whispers that of course everyone can hear, so it makes me laugh. But other than that, yeah, it would be good to get rid of the endlessly repeating quotes.

[Bahimiron]

Originally Posted by Pogue Mahone

My favorite is the VZ guy who always announces to anyone in earshot that he's going to go for the tank/jeep/helicopter.

I like "I'm going for the emplaced weapon!"

Cos that's how people talk. It rolls right off the mouth. The "emplaced weapon". At work I routinely shout "I'm running over to use the stapling device!"

[schurem]

in mercs one, the chinese shouted their things in chinese. its so much better to just hear 'Ni Hao!' instead of endless 'hello mr mercenary!'
also fiona and her insistent calls to come by for a hint on what to do next. its a frakking sandbox, i bloody well KNOW what to do next dammit, now let me at it.
but other than that. psssh, no competition. mercs2 is more over the top, has less fog, is more violent, is more colorful and somehow (to me) is more dumb fun. mercs2 is a lot dumber than mercs1. you can bruteforce a lot of the sort of scenarios that had you carefully puzzling and threading your tactical ways in mercs1. you can still do that, but just incinerating the bloody lot is now an option too. oh yea :)

[RobotPants]

"You picked the wrong side!"

[Bahimiron]

THERE ARE SO MANY OF THESE GUYS!

WELL, ONE LESS NOW!

OH, PETER STORMARE, I WISH YOU WOULD COME TO MY HOUSE AND JUST SAY THAT TO ME OVER AND OVER AGAIN!

(...seriously, his lines in this game are undoing all the warm feelings I developed for Peter Stormare following 'unpimp ze auto'.)

[scharmers]

Maybe it's the Merc 2 patch taking out the random swirling newspapers. I mean, that was critical to Mercs 2 a better game to some people, but not me.

LET'S KILL A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE, LAVITRA

[zengonzo]

Ammo! AMMO! Why does God punish me so?!

[zengonzo]

My favorite, though, is when he starts laughing during some action, and continues to laugh as the horror subsides. Most of the time it works PERFECTLY.

[Supertanker]

Originally Posted by bahimiron

I just wish they'd release a patch to turn off the random comments.

They are especially bad for things you already know about. Hijack a tank, hop out to call in support, then when your cursor hits your tank again you get the "I see a tank" canned speech. Um, yeah, I know about that one. Same with destroyed vehicles, very annoying & needs to be patched out.

[scharmers]

"An APC. How nice for me."

Uh, it's a friendly unit, dumbass.

[Pogue Mahone]

Woooo! Bumper cars!

[zengonzo]

The chick needs much better scripting. 'Yoo-hoo, you on the ten millimeter?' .. Really doesn't work with the fast-paced action.

More passive stuff, like Mattias' mad laughter, would go much further.

[Arioch]

Longer. Harder. Way more mission variety. Way more missions. No need to work for every side, or even to take missions except for the very first one and the aces missions. No QTEs. Spoken mission briefings, including those lines you'll only hear when you wait around or use the hotspots, and the three language thing which motivates you to play as each of the mercs. Officers preventing you from driving into every enemy base unharmed, if you didn't take care of them first. All the unessential, but athmosphere-building background infos about your targets.

Also, the X-Box version of Mercenaries 1 is far superior.

[scharmers]

Originally Posted by Arioch

Longer. Harder. Way more mission variety. Way more missions. No need to work for every side, or even to take missions except for the very first one and the aces missions. No QTEs. Spoken mission briefings, including those lines you'll only hear when you wait around or use the hotspots, and the three language thing which motivates you to play as each of the mercs. Officers preventing you from driving into every enemy base unharmed, if you didn't take care of them first. All the unessential, but athmosphere-building background infos about your targets.

Also, the X-Box version of Mercenaries 1 is far superior.

Well, there you go.

Mercs1 on the XB is better, but my XB has been long sold off.

[Miramon]

I think many of the above pro-M1 comments are correct. You do have to take these games in technological context though, so it's unfair to complain about Mecenaries 1 view distance and object complexity in comparison to Mercenaries 2; instead you should compare M1 graphics to other PS2ish games, and M2 graphics to other current generation games.

For the PS2 platform, the graphics and world design are fine in Mercenaries 1. There is a bit of a muddy palette, but then, heck, it's a war in North Korea, that's what it's going to look like.

In comparison, Mercenaries 2 graphics are very poor for its platforms. In fact, they are just flat out bad compared to most other PS3 titles that attempt detailed or realistic graphics.

I mean, it may be unfair to compare M2 to MGS4 considering the latter's far superior production values and massive cash investment, but compared to Uncharted, Folklore, and other titles that are just AAA instead of AAA+++, Mercenaries 2 just has weak graphics. Terrible pop-ins, clumsy models, weak animation, and amateurish graphics glitches (sparkle artifacts, seams, odd pixelation, bad tree physics) all over the place. Sure it's got 16 or 64 times the PS2 texture resolution and however many zillions more vertices, but it's mediocre at best, all the same.

But ignoring graphics, when you consider core gameplay, level and mission design, the meaning and value of weapons and vehicles, the way detection works, all the little features that come together into a grand design, all this stuff I think is flat out superior for Mercenaries 1. Lots of Mercenaries 2 features just seem dumb in the light of Mercenaries 1. This is already tl;dr, so I won't go on about them again.

..... Can't... shut... up.....

But yeah, the random NPC comments. I feel compelled to rant on again about them. Is it so wrong to want to kill every last human being in Venezuela just to make them shut up? At least the North Koreans and Chinese and so on in Mercenaries 1 mostly were talking in their native language, why do the damn VZ troops insist on screaming their imbecilic tactical orders in English? And they often don't even seem to be associated with individual soldiers who are actually doing something, so much as somehow being associated with the player's contextual behavior or maybe to some distant NPC's unfulfillable AI goal. Either that, or it's really really bad 3D audio sourcing.

A lot of this crappy voicing clearly has to do with a very limited audio budget. Each of the possible things that can be said in a context needs at least four times as many rephrasings to eliminate the soul-destroying repetition. Then too, as mentioned, the tactical stuff like "I'm heading for the vehicle" is just abysmal. if they are going to play this kind of useless soundscape (half the time this means some far-off hidden NPC has received a wide-area "go to vehicle" broadcast, but can't path to it and will never get there no matter how long you wait for them to show up), they should have recorded "I'm heading for the car/truck/APV/tank/boat/copter" the way someone might actually say the line in the situation. If they didn't have the budget for that, they shouldn't have done it in the first place.

[Bahimiron]

Originally Posted by scharmers

LET'S KILL A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE, LAVITRA

This one disturbs me cos Lavitra sounds like a male enhancement drug.

Originally Posted by Miramon

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, 'cept Mercs 2 is still hells of fun.

[Podunk]

WHY CAN'T EVERYTHING BE ROCKET PROPELLED?

[Miramon]

Originally Posted by bahimiron

This one disturbs me cos Lavitra sounds like a male enhancement drug.



Yeah, 'cept Mercs 2 is still hells of fun.

Actually, it is fun, but it should have been a better game. I'm not a Mercenaries fanboy at all, but I was still disappointed. It's like they hit hard at the things-blowing-up fun factor, but skimped on the heart of the game.