You can recruit up to three additional team members as you play the game, Eva, the mechanic allows you to eventually buy customized vehicles from her shop. You have to find the 100 or so special part crates all littered around the country, every 10 you find will unlock a new option in her shop. From a tank-tracked motorbike armed with a pair of heavy machine guns to a sleek sportscar that comes with a roof mounted rocket launcher.

Misha is a drunken jet pilot that allows you to deliver your own ordinance in the field, dropping bombs on any target that you choose. Ewan is your chopper pilot and will drop off goods into the field, from vehicles to supply crates. He also extracts munitions and piles of cash that you find strewn around the country. These drops respawn so you can always have a 100,000 dollar bonus or a few free airstrikes at hand. It keeps the destruction flowing nicely, and talking of flow, fuel is a valuable resource since you’ll need that to call in the various drops and vehicles.

Ewan can extract any fuel tanks you might find and your PMC has an upgradeable storage facility to allow for more. The game has a light strategy side to it in this regard as it’s important to make sure you keep an eye on your fuel reserves to allow you to deliver the right kind of destructive welcome to your enemies, and there are a lot of them.

Ewan can also fly you quickly to the various landing zones that you unlock around the large game world, this is a good addition.

There are various challenges from your crew at the PMC, Fiona, your main support operative from the first game is back and she’s now your partner in this endeavour. She’ll offer you some challenges along with Misha, Ewan and Eva. These can be a good source of extra money, especially the winching challenge that pays out nicely for a very simple task.

In terms of map, ideas, gameplay and direction the game is definitely bigger and better than Mercenaries as I said previously; it features a slew of new content and lots of hardware. There’s a grapple gun (from Just Cause) that gives you a way to hijack helicopters without having to wait for them to get too low. Both the enemy/occupied vehicle jacking and the satellite strike system have been changed in Mercenaries 2. They are now quick time event mini-games in terms of the vehicle jacking, you must respond to the right control symbols on the screen to successfully hijack the vehicle. In terms of the satellite system you just have to press A at the right time when the blip shows on the confirmation radar screen.

The core story however seems very short. There are numerous side missions to do and the destruction/HVT/bounties for the shop item unlocks will keep you going as you plough through the game’s missions. I was disappointed to find that you couldn’t stockpile vehicles and store them at your PMC. Yet with the huge amounts of cash you can rake in and various vehicles you can steal that shouldn’t be a problem.