I wanna go boom boom

World In Flames? No kidding. This run-and-gun sandbox has enough explosive destruction to put Michael Bay into a coma. This is one of those games where you don't have to wait 10 hours to get your hands on the grenade launcher. It's airdropped into your grateful mitts within the first 15 seconds.

Six minutes later, you're already flattening soldiers with a tank.

Free gunning

Like the first game, Mercenaries is a massive free-roaming gun and vehicle fight. Think Grand Theft Auto in South America circa 2010.

Your bearded protagonist wants revenge on the Venezuelan dictator who shot him in the buttock and gets it doing missions for factions ranging from the UN to a band of Rastafarian pirates. There are tasks that advance the story, but you're essentially free to pick and choose from 79 missions across 64 square kilometres of balmy jungle, city and shanty town.

Sounds a lot like Just Cause? It is. You even get that game's exhilarating ability to grapple onto a helicopter, climb up and kick the pilot out. But the self-consciously over-the-top carnage is the big deal here.

Case in point: killing off a particular HVT (High Value Target) by stealing an enemy truck, attaching C4 explosive, pootling unchallenged into the enemy base, then ditching your ride and blowing it up from afar. Cheeky.

Mercenaries 2 knows what it likes. And that is mostly smashing apart the big country full of beautiful scenery that Pandemic has so carefully constructed. That's no exaggeration: aside from the odd vehicle race, missions really don't vary much beyond capturing or killing HVTs, assaulting bases (best done by hijacking a tank) or blowing up stuff.

Boom towns

AI is weak and befriending/upsetting factions rarely affects play to a significant extent, so Mercenaries 2 doesn't boast much in the way of tactics or choice. But then perhaps variety and depth aren't such a worry when you've got satellite-guided bombs ('You might want to back away from your target,' says your in-ear contact - she's not wrong) and bunker busters that bring 80-storey buildings folding majestically to the ground.

Granted, you might wish that as much gleeful wickedness had gone into the design of the handheld weapons. But then all guns are going to look like peashooters next to an MOAB. That stands for the 'Mother Of All Bombs' and it's pretty much indistinguishable from a nuclear explosion.

The controls are easygoing. Free aiming while running works well and is useful because soldiers left alive will scream for help into their walkie-talkies and bring pesky helicopter death from the skies. While the handbrake turns in vehicles are so deliciously over-the-top that even the game's loading screen keeps encouraging you to use them.

Oil be damned

Be warned: when you've had your fill of fireworks, Mercenaries 2's genuinely impressive moments - the subtle but infuriating physics involved in delivering a truckful of guns without any sliding to the ground; the wholesale destruction of an impossibly large oil rig - can feel a little few and far between.

But if you're looking for the freedom to experiment with one very large South American country and several trillion kilograms of explosive, then World In Flames really won't disappoint.

GAME's Verdict

• Ridiculously explosive on a preposterous scale. If you can see it, you can destroy it.
• Plenty of vehicles to 'borrow' for when you fancy a sit down.
• Solid co-operative play.

• The guns and grenade launchers just can't hold a candle to the world-shattering explosions.
• Venezuela is big but the playing area has more empty jungle than you might like.
• Mission variety is lacking but then most missions do end with a lovely big bang.

Review by: Mark Scott
Version Tested: Xbox 360
Review Published: 09.09.2008