Joystiq hands-on: Mercenaries 2 online co-op

So many things in life are just that much better when enjoyed with a friend. Ice skating, canoeing, inline skating ... grappling a helicopter to escape the blast of a nuclear bunker buster strike you've just called in. That last scenario – and more! – is exactly what we experienced during a recent game of Mercenaries 2 online co-op with developer Pandemic Studios.

Unfortunately, there's no "Hi-Five!" peripheral (yet) for the 360 or it would have gotten plenty of use during our brazenly over-the-top cooperative mass destruction of a virtual Venezuela.

We started out by getting our feet wet – quite literally – thanks to this sequel's pleasant you-don't-die-if-you-touch-water play mechanic (that sort of stifled the first game). Our Pandemic playmate, Marty, invited us to grab a waverunner and follow him to an island where we'd be, er, "borrowing" some guided missiles from a bunch of military folks he assured us had plenty to go around.

That might have been the case, but they were nevertheless displeased by our obvious lack of saying "please." Our first firefight was upon us. Marty was taking heavy fire, so he asked if we'd please save his skin by hijacking a mobile surface-to-air missile launcher. We questioned the effectiveness of a SAM unit in an infantry skirmish, but he assured us it would be quite effective. Seeing as he's, y'know, making the game, we were compelled to comply. (We also didn't want his pixelated blood on our hands.)


After charging the SAM and executing a quick (but stylish) timing mini-game to commandeer it, we found out why Marty was so insistent on us doing so – a squeeze of the trigger and we were mowing down everything in our path: soldiers, guard towers, palm trees, small shrubs, you name it.

"He flew in close so we could grapple his landing skiff and catch a ride to our next target."

We eventually fought our way to the missile caches, careful not to accidentally detonate them, then called in our helo pilot to extract them. His presence attracted other, less friendly helicopters. Marty asked if we'd kindly hold off the arriving ground reinforcements while he "took care of something."

The next thing we knew, he had fired a grappling hook onto an enemy copter and we could see him slugging it out with the pilot. We watched as his character tossed the pilot out, and we tracked his plummet onto the rocks below. After using his new ride to take out the advancing soldiers on the ground around us, he flew in close so we could grapple his landing skiff and catch a ride to our next target, a heavily guarded bunker.

Our little "army of two" tackled this scenario by hijacking a tank and simple blowing holes through the compound's fortress-like concentric walls. This gave us a clean line of sight for the laser designator we'd need to drop the aforementioned bunker buster and a clear escape route. We got the pleasure of setting off the fireworks – and oh, were they pretty.

"We got the pleasure of setting off the fireworks – and oh, were they pretty."

We wrapped up our session by tracking down pieces of a crashed U.S. spy plane and destroying them using satellite guided bombs before Chinese forces could retrieve them. All the while, Marty provided covering fire and took out soldiers radioing for backup. One of the pieces of wreckage had already been loaded onto a ship, which sank into the briny deep once our air support punched a whole in it.

We have to say, Mercenaries 2 is more impressive (and explosive) every time we see it. This co-op experience only served to up the already over-the-top action, and provide plenty of headset hooting and hollering. Factoring in co-op specific Achievements (no word on Trophies yet) this could turn out to be one of the most-played XBL and PSN titles when it rolls out next month.