8/28/2008

Mercenaries 2 - Good PR

Edit (10:07 PM): It appears I wasn't the only one to think that this is a great commercial.
Edit 2 (11:04 AM, Friday): EA is giving away free gas now. That's right. Free gas. At a lucky (or unlucky) little gas station in California, mercenaries will be waiting to fill up your car all day today. From a PR standpoint it's a good idea; I mean, it fits the game really well. But I shudder to think of the mass chaos this could cause. I can just imagine a line of cars from one end of Cali to the other, waiting to be filled.


I don't really know much about Pandemic's Mercenaries 2, except that their TV commercial seriously rocks. If you haven't seen it, you can watch it right from the game's website. And you can listen to the incredibly catchy song. Because that's what really makes the commercial. Every time it comes on TV I chuckle or at least grin. I think it's a testament to great marketing that a game I don't give a shit about has grabbed my attention with it's commercial (because, you know, that's what it's supposed to do, but most commercials tend to do that very poorly). Though, unfortunately, even a brilliant commercial won't convince me to buy a game I have no personal interest in playing; which should in no way be a statement to the entertainment value of the game. It's just not a genre I'm into.

I'm not very interested in GTA style FPS games (or indeed FPS games in general, or, well, I guess they're technically 3rd person shooters), but it looks good (graphic wise, and gameplay wise), and it looks like it should be a fun game (lots of majorly destructible environments). Mostly I just want to comment on the excellent marketing. I hope whoever designed the commercial got a good raise.

Mercenaries 2 comes out on August 31st (...which is a Sunday, so I assume it will actually arrive on Friday or Saturday, with a street date for Sunday) for the PS3, PS2 (lol Sony), Xbox 360 and PC. It's rated T for Teen, so I assume the violence (and the language) isn't as graphic as it is in similar games. And there's nothing wrong with that. Battlefield Bad Company has the same rating, and it's plenty entertaining (and they also had some amusing commercials).

"Until I get my vengeance, I will never end this mayhem."

3 comments:

ArmoredFoe said...

Yeah the first Mercinaries was fun, but nothing ground breaking. As you mentioned basically a GTA style game set with a more military theme. Yes its third person and the environment reacts with everthing.

I remember stealing helicopters in the first one and just leveling enemy cities.
I probably wont buy this, but I'll definetly play it. I too am tired of free roaming games excluding GTA 4 cause it had an amazing story. Mercs 2 as well, just looks like a pick up and play blow shit up and then put it down. Lets hope they put some online play into this worth the time. Either way should be intersting.

As for that commercial...I know "Oh no you didnt, sucka try to play me" funny catchy tune.

Kris said...

There will be on-line co-op, for whatever that's worth.

It's not that I'm tired of free roaming games. I just don't have any interest in the specific type. GTA never really appealed to me; the stories didn't really impress me, and the whole "I'm a member of a gang/mob" thing didn't really appeal to me. I'm not saying they're bad games, as I recognize the work that goes into them and I think they have great detail. Also, I really, really suck at driving games, and it just seemed like almost every mission required some sort of driving thing, and so I couldn't get anywhere in the story. I do like fun games, and I did occasionally have fun just goofing around, blowing things up, beating up on prostitutes. But that's all I ever did.

ArmoredFoe said...

I hear ya Kris...I think thats the one downfall of the GTA series is that there is so much to do that you get distracted from missions and you do everything but the missions. I have to say I only beat Vice City and just recently beat GTA 4, which by far GTA 4 had the best story of all to me.

Fortunately for me, I love the whole idea of the Russian Mob and criminal Orginizations (not petty thug gang members...san andreas). Either way it took me longer than most to beat GTA 4 becaue of the same reason, I get distracted and really had to focus on the missions. Your right though later on in the game you get a lot of chase sequences and if you cant drive you'll never pass them, even for me there were a few parts that were pretty hard to keep up and track the enemy down.

As for Mercs, its the same way...after stealing tanks, cars, helicopters and blowing up everything in sight I just had no motivation to atually do a mission. Even when I did complete a mission it was back to blowing up the whole city. Thats why I said to me its not a buy its more of a rent/gamefly play it for a few days (blow everything up, get some achievement points) then return it.

Keep on gaming Kris, gamer chics rock.