Mercenaries 2?

LookingFor

Word is that Pandemic's "Project Q" is indeed a sequel to the most awesome Mercenaries - they've got a countdown here:

http://www.pandemicstudios.com/projectq/everybodypays/index.php?id=19

Seems its counting down to E3, obviously. Some of the hints are pretty obvious. It seems the game will be taking place in Venezeula, and that fire might be a big theme?

I absolutely loved the original. Can't wait to see this, just the destruction they can do on next-gen systems Hopefully there'll be multiplayer too this time around.

Dooom

Excellent. The first one was brilliant imo, could've done a few things better and it was somewhat repetitive, but I'm really looking forward to this.

Tails

Magnificent! Was wondering about that alright, the first first truly was *hem*, awesome. Very well designed and exectuted! I can see how some people found it repetitive but i think i played it through twice, but thena again i had 100 million in the bank the second time round!:)

[STA-7]SSgt.Ste

I loved playground. Me and my friends wished there was multyplayer. If there was we'd kick A**.:D

LookingFor

Pandemic has confirmed it's Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=64306

No platform or publisher details yet..all will be revealed at E3

projectmayhem

here's hoping for some online gameplay modes

LookingFor

Article!

http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/705/705305p1.html

New dynamic fire system, everything is 'general purpose', idea is to be able to do anything, anywhere. Multiplayer co-op confirmed. No officially announced platforms, yet, but seems to be focussing on PS3.

In particular, Cameron referred to the concept of "playing with fire" as a core idea for the sequel that the team wants players to be able to mess around with. While the element is usually depicted as a visual effect in games, the designers are trying to come up with new ways to implement it as a controllable tool of destruction.

In particular, Brown demonstrated this as Mattias Nilsson, the crazy Swedish mercenary from the first title, approached an oil tanker convoy that was stopped in the middle of the jungle. Taking out a Zippo, he approached a fuel slick from one of the tankers and set it on fire, which quickly raced towards the vehicle and engulfed it in flames, resulting in a large explosion. The guards on the convoy quickly reacted to the blast, but were cut down by fire from Mattias' machine gun. Brown then turned the machine gun fire towards a nearby jeep, and showed realistic deformation of the vehicle as bullets ripped through the door, shot out the tires and shattered the glass.

He did confirm that Peter Stormare would return as the voice of Mattias, and introduced Eva, a new mercenary when he showed off co-op play, which can be jumped into at any time. "Anything you can do in single player game you can do in the multiplayer game -- there really is no limit on it," Brown said as the game move into a split screen to accommodate both views of the two players. Taking off in a helicopter while a fellow developer grabbed a jeep, the two mercenaries navigated their way from the jungle hills to a shanty town outside of a city.

In fact, we were informed that the sliver of the game map that we were being shown at the event, which wasn't even the complete world for the game, was larger than every single piece of terrain put together from the previous Mercenaries. The cities will be significantly larger than ever before, with 100 story skyscrapers that are fully destructible and crash in different procedural ways when they're blown up.

The Pandemic team will be leveraging every SPUs of the Cell processor, even tasking individual processors to take varying loads for physics and AI calculation. "Our world is very dynamic and open, and things change a lot -- this thing gets destroyed, these things move around, this faction changes its opinion of this other one -- there's a lot of dynamicism and what that presents is a lot of challenges for the AI," Brown mentioned. "Our AI needs to be so flexible and so able to negotiate its way through the world -- we have to have our AI be able to problem solve on the fly. So we're actually moving a lot of our AI processing onto the SPUs to enable us to do an enormous amount of data processing. The AI does a lot of probing of the world, building a mental map of how the world works, and that's something that we've designed from the ground up to fit on an SPU really well."

Ciaran500

ewww

LookingFor

Ciaran500 wrote:

ewww

When everything blows up, you should say wow . Seriously, that's what Mercenaries is all about, not the prettiest screenshots.

The official PR:

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20060510005478&newsLang=en

Mercenaries 2: World In Flames(TM)

From Pandemic Studios, the power of the PlayStation 3 from Sony is exploited in this open-world 3rd person shooter that allows players to enter a world of infinite possibilities where gamers get to be their own boss. In addition to providing the perfect blend of civilian and military worlds, where you can either turn up at an army base in a stolen Ferrari or roll down Main Street in a "borrowed" Abrams main battle tank, Mercenaries 2 empowers players to make the decisions they want, whenever and however they want. Set in Venezuela, there are absolutely no rules as to the weapons or vehicles that a Mercenary can acquire.

It's sort of sounding like a (temporary?) PS3 exclusive?

projectmayhem

looks like a PSP game from those shots... awful textures

steviec

projectmayhem wrote:

looks like a PSP game from those shots... awful textures

Who cares?

Gamespot wrote:

To drive this point home, the producer reiterated that the goal with Mercenaries 2 will be to be able to say "yes" in answer to any question starting with "Can you..."? So, can you shoot rockets into your mission contact's back? Can you shoot a grappling hook into a helicopter, climb up the rope, crack open the chopper's cockpit, throw the pilot to his death, and then claim his aircraft? Can you swim? Can you drive boats as well as tanks? Can you play cooperatively with another player? Can you jump on the turret of a tank, climb your way up, and throw a grenade down the cockpit to kill the crew, so you can take it for yourself? Can you shoot an oil tanker, watch all of the gas spill out of it, toss a lighter over your shoulder, and watch as the fuel trail lights up, detonating the whole thing in a spectacular explosion?

Yes, indeed.

This is the sort of thing I want from a next gen game. Completely realistically destructable environments and scope for a huge variety of gameplay. It's the sort of stuff Sony have been showing in tech demos but so far none of their own games seem to be following through. If you have to sacrifice some detail on the graphics I can live with that.

LookingFor

There's some hands-on impressions here:

http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/707/707842p1.html

Shooting holes in a tanker, leaving a trail of petrol and then setting fire to it sounds awesome