Tech: A tale of two sandbox sequels - "Mercenaries 2" vs. "Saints Row 2"

The "open world" or "sandbox" style of action game has been popular ever since the blockbuster success of "Grand Theft Auto III." Game developers have fallen over themselves trying to imitate or surpass the GTA series' freeform gameplay (GTA IV, the latest installment, has grossed something like 600 million dollars worldwide, so it's understandable). I've played a couple of the latest clones and found them to be as fun, if not more fun, than the games they are trying to ape.



Mercenaries 2: World in Flames



Like the title implies, Mercs 2 is mostly concerned with wanton destruction. There's only the barest attempt at a story, with most of the production resources going into the creation of a fully-destructible gameworld. You star as a mercenary who's been doublecrossed by the dictator of Venezuela, and now you have to lay waste to Caracas and its environs in order to get justice...and to make a few bucks on the side.



Mercs 2 ups the ante on GTA by including tons of military hardware right from the get-go. You'll be driving tanks, piloting attack choppers, and calling in artillery strikes and tactical nukes that can level entire city blocks. The actual on-foot gunplay isn't as precise as it should be, but you're given so many ways to blow up enemies that it rarely matters.

Almost everything you see can be destroyed, but there's a trade-off - the detail in pretty much all the models is a bit lackluster, and the game has a limited draw distance and sometimes ineffective level of detail scaling. Throw in some repetitive missions, and you have a very good game, but not a great one.

Rating: 85/100


Saints Row 2



If there was an award for crass gangsta stereotyping, SR2 would win it. Everything about it feels like an over-the-top parody of hood life, from the outrageous customizable vehicles (rims - they keep spinning) to the "cribs" that you can buy around the city. Heck, in the first twenty minutes of the game, we found ourselves beating the crap out of an army of garishly attired pimps.

The missions are much more varied than those of GTA IV. You can spray houses with raw sewage, repossess cars from deadbeats, and shoot down airplanes from a helicopter. The insurance fraud minigame in particular is hilarious fun - you throw yourself in front of traffic in hopes of causing as much damage to yourself as humanly possible.

Sadly, the game suffers from a lot of bugs. You'll see parked cars flipping end over end, bodies that clip and distort when you strike them, and even some nasty crashes and freezes. It's sad that a riotously fun game can be brought down by technical glitches - science trumps art sometimes.

Rating: 86/100