Okay I have finally rebounded from the weekend’s awesome trip to Pandemic Studios.  With that said, it’s time to recap the event, show a little of the swag and share some audio coverage of the event including a great roundtable I did with Godfree (Gamertag Radio), Vicious (Talking About Games), Ryan (Marvel) and Trina (Gaming Angels).  It’s posted on Episode #157 over at Gamertag Radio.

Listen in on the roundtable discussion that we had after the event was over.  Godfree got us all together to talk about an interesting topic making the internet rounds.  Community vs. Press.  What exactly separates the two?  How are things behind the scenes at some of your favorite internet sites?  Listen in!

The Mercenaries 2: World In Flames Community Day kicked off in style as I landed in Los Angeles.  I rode to the hotel in a pimped out limousine and made my way to a pretty pimped out hotel.  I felt like a celebrity during the ride because I had free control inside the limo that included neon lights, a bar and TV.  Needless to say, I was flipping buttons and aggravating the driver.

The game itself managed to leave a good impression on me.  What’s not to love about nukes and the torpedo-car delivery.  I got much satisfaction when diving out of a vehicle only to see it continue forward making the perfect tool of death.  One thing that gave me some distress was lack of a splitscreen option.  It seems like the perfect game for it but alas, no.  There are also no cheats which may upset a few people but I hardly ever noticed a need for either when playing.  There was too much going on to even care to be honest.  There’s always an objective or side mission to complete with the different factions in the game.  The world is a lot larger than I expected.  When you’re in a helicopter you get a very good feel of what the development team has done with the scope in Mercs 2. 

I loved the challenges and the money aspect of it.  You’re a mercenary afterall so having a money making scheme that wasn’t appealing would’ve been disappointing.  The hijacking sequences in the game were a nice little addition to it.  When you run up on a tank or helicopter, you can hijack them if you perform a series of button actions correctly.  At first I wasn’t a fan but they’re not at every turn during the game so it wasn’t so bad.

It was great meeting everyone at the event and sharing some time with Pandemic Studios.  If you’re a fan of the first, then you’ll pick up right where you left off with the sequel.  I interviewed some of the team and I’ll have the audio of that sometime this week.  There are some things I can’t talk about until Thursday so I’ll release the audio around that time to give you the full blast on Mercenaries 2: World In Flames.