Mercenaries 2 Upcoming Update at Paradox Designs

Mercenaries 2 is a fun game. Plain and simple. But there are a few glaring omissions that, if repaired, would make it even better. Currently, it has very little replay value, depending on how you played it. If you took your time, you have pretty much done everything. If you didn’t, well you can probably play through it once more, but then you will loose interest.

Luckily, an update is coming out on the 13th for Xbox Live subscribers and later this month for the PS3.

Current issues^(Opinion)

Currently, the game’s replay value is limited by the linearity. You have to pretty much do things in the sequence they provide, or you wont finish the game. Yes, you could deviate away and get HVTs, but you still have to do the contracts eventually. This will never change.

A big problem now is running out of money, though. The only way to rack up large amounts of cash is to complete contracts. There is no way you can enter a sandbox mode and get cash.

Also, there is no way you can unlock every item for one game. Depending on who you ally with and who becomes your foe, certain items will be locked every time.

Finally, the choice of 3 characters is a bit repeditive.

Fixes

It would seem Pandemic knows about these problems, and is trying to fix them. While little is known about the update coming soon, I have managed to read about the following:

Cheats

Cheats made the first game insanely fun and gave it a HUGE replay value, basically because people like blowing things up. The new game, as shipped, does not have cheats. The update adds them. Little is known about the codes it adds, or what their functions are, aside from these few morsels. First off, there is a money cheat. Running out of money is a drag. The only way to get money is to complete contracts. This puts a cap on the fun, as you have no way to continue to blow things up, as you run out of money or gas eventually. Also, as aforementioned, there is no way you can unlock every item at once, to have maximum destruction power. There is a cheat for that.

Finally, there are 2 other obvious cheats. God mode and Infinite ammo. And with infinite ammo, I don’t know if they mean infinite ammo for EVERYTHING, or only your main gun. I hope it is the former.

A few cheats I am hoping for are:

Infinite gas cheat. Don’t have to find pesky fuel in the map. Also would allow you to call in as many airstrikes as you wanted
No collateral damage. Annoying to fuel-air bomb a city and get nothing for it.
All outfits: The outfits are quite easy to get in co-op, but it takes time.
Automatic hijack win. As soon as you start a hijack, you win automatically, and dont have to press any buttons.

New Characters

The update will introduce 6 new playable characters. I do not know if it will add outfits for them, or what else, all i know is that 6 new characters are added. I suspect they are people like Blanco, Eva, etc, but that was just based off of inline text, and could be wrong.