Mercenaries 2

Titanio said:
The continued support of PS2 is pretty amazing. It'll be interesting to see what its version ends up being like.
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It's being outsourced to another studio, and is based on the Mercs1 engine, using downgraded next gen assets. So I wouldn't expect too much, the definitve versions are PC, 360 and PS3.
 
scooby_dooby said:
It's being outsourced to another studio, and is based on the Mercs1 engine, using downgraded next gen assets. So I wouldn't expect too much, the definitve versions are PC, 360 and PS3.
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I don't expect any less, but I'm still amazed they're going to the trouble at all. It's also interesting because it forces the developer to really make the next-gen game "next-gen" or else it might look pretty bad..but I've no concerns in that regard with Pandemic and Mercs 2 :)
 
I think the Xbox360 shots look better than the PS3 version. It seems like the lighting and the shadowing is better.
 
Interesting though :
IGN: What about PS3? Does the PS3 also provide online co-op play?

Jonathan Zamkoff: Yes. To give you a sense, we are trying to give feature parity for the 360 and the PS3. We have no intention to provide one feature for one system that the other one doesn't have. So, yes, both consoles will have cooperative multiplayer -- online cooperative multiplayer.

System Differences, Similarities
IGN: Let's talk about the differences between the various versions. The PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 are very different beasts. I'm not a designer or a programmer, but I know enough from the developers I have spoken with that the PS3 and Xbox 360 are very different to design and program for. What kind of technical obstacles have you come up against and how are you solving them?

Jonathan Zamkoff: They are just very different development environments. I'm not an engineer, so I can only talk about this from knowing what my engineers have been through, but the asymmetrical architecture on the Cell on PS3 is really quite a challenge. I think it will unlock a lot of power for us, but for first generation games, it's been a complex process. Still, we're really happy with the progress of both consoles. They're both fully up and running right now. Most of our lighting and graphical features are in right now. There is a ton of memory on these boxes, which obviously gives us the ability to have much higher resolution and assets. The processors are incredibly powerful, which allows for great physics and world simulations. There is a lot of AI. You know, you are really just able to push the boundaries of what you were able to do in games before.

I can't get too deep into the complexities and difficulties of each. But I will say that both of them were really quite a challenge. We started from scratch to program for the multiprocessors on both machines. They were both in mind when we were writing the text, so we didn't want to create a PS3 engine, which was and has been, and is, our lead SKU, but we didn't want to ignore the Xbox 360. Even though we're just now announcing the 360 version, we have been working on it for quite some time. Really, for development processes, we wanted to make sure one didn't lap the other. And we didn't want to be scrambling in the last few months of the project to port over the games. So, it's been an important mandate for us to get the PS3 version up and running, and it's the lead SKU, but the 360 version is up and running fine. It's really important to have the game running with feature parity on both consoles.


IGN: Do you have two different teams working on each SKU, or one team working on both?

Jonathan Zamkoff: We have a lead, a graphics lead, for each console, who's also responsible for making sure the code works on both systems, but you'll also have a lot of platform agnostic code. So I wouldn't say we have separate teams, we have separate tasks forces or pods, but there is a lot of integration between the two of them -- and, especially when new features come online, they'll need to be ported over to each console. So you have a 360 and a PS3 lead, but they basically sit right next to each other almost constantly. In terms of timing, both games are within a week of each other in development.
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TheChefO said:
I can't see the pics as they're blocked but it seems both are getting roughly the same level of support with the edge going to ps3. Not surprising given the dev's comments in prior interviews.
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I'm not sure if that is actually from the PS3 version in the first place. Although it is stored in the IGN's PS3 section, I think they got a batch of screenshots from the recent interview in which they showed off the Xbox360 version.
 
I think I recall reading a recent IGN interview indicating that character customization is not in. They should have the different mercenaries to pick from, though.

I wanted to be excited about this game but couldn't quite get there because it just didn't have a wow factor. The most recent video blog from Pandemic showed some pre-alpha gameplay and that piqued my interest more than anything else to date.
 
That looks great so far. Decent frame rate as well. It looks like it's being played with a 360, I thought the PS3 was the lead SKU?
 
22psi said:
That looks great so far. Decent frame rate as well. It looks like it's being played with a 360, I thought the PS3 was the lead SKU?
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Thats true. I wonder why they decided to show the Xbox360 version instead. Maybe they had 2 versions of it showing and the interviewer just decided randomly.
 
Wow, not one post about this game after it came out?

This is my current "Games of 2008 I missed" tour. I picked it up for $20.

It's pretty fun, it is like GTA4/SR2 with more explosions and all the crap taken out. No playing pool, no gang bangers, etc. You are a merc and do work for money as you progress through the story of revenge.

The world is fairly large and there are many ways to tackle a mission. Want a tank? Tank-jack if one is around or have one air dropped in if there isn't. You can purchase all sorts of air drops of supplies or even bombing runs. Everything seems destructible and explosions are plenty.

while the missions not greatly varied, the driving is poor and the physics are a bit glitchy, the game is mindless fun. There is also seamless drop-in drop-out co-op, but my co-op buddy has not bought it yet.

The graphics are more than acceptable for the type of world they have constructed and the amount of stuff that is blowing up on screen. The voice acting is pretty good as is the music.
 
DrJay24 said:
Wow, not one post about this game after it came out?

This is my current "Games of 2008 I missed" tour. I picked it up for $20.

It's pretty fun, it is like GTA4/SR2 with more explosions and all the crap taken out. No playing pool, no gang bangers, etc. You are a merc and do work for money as you progress through the story of revenge.

The world is fairly large and there are many ways to tackle a mission. Want a tank? Tank-jack if one is around or have one air dropped in if there isn't. You can purchase all sorts of air drops of supplies or even bombing runs. Everything seems destructible and explosions are plenty.

while the missions not greatly varied, the driving is poor and the physics are a bit glitchy, the game is mindless fun. There is also seamless drop-in drop-out co-op, but my co-op buddy has not bought it yet.

The graphics are more than acceptable for the type of world they have constructed and the amount of stuff that is blowing up on screen. The voice acting is pretty good as is the music.
Click to expand...

It was one of my biggest disappointments of last year. I actually enjoyed it, but the first one was so much better that it soured me for this one. It just felt really unstructured and there were just a handful of story missions: Mercs 1's 'deck of cards' approach repeated would have made it a lot better. It was just sort of a grind as you work up enough respect/brownie points with the faction before they give you help with the, what, 4 story missions the game actually has?
 
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