Fun is something that is unquantifiable. One man’s enjoyment is another man’s boredom. Where someone might find endless amusement, someone else might find tedium and frustration. Mercenaries 2 is a game which falls squarely into the fun bracket, delivering an experience that sacrifices realism and continuity for its own internal game logic, providing one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences of the year.

Pandemic have managed to cultivate an entire sub-genre with their successful Mercenaries franchise. It isn’t a sandbox, because that has walls. This game is much more open, giving you more capability for imagination and ingenuity. It allows you to tackle situations in so many different ways, using such a huge variety of tactics and strategies that no two play sessions will be the same. Mercenaries 2 is more than a box of sand, it’s the whole damn beach.

Beaches are just one thing you will be seeing a lot of in the lush and vibrant Venezuela presented in the game. There are geopolitical machinations, evil bad guys in white linen suits, backstabbing and revenge, enough one-liners and kiss-off lines to fuel a dozen B-movies, and plenty of twists and turns as you rampage all over South America wreaking havoc and chaos. Featuring neatly rendered cut scenes and plenty of radio conversations, it provides a brisk pace to ferry you from one side of the country to another, creating pockets of action and drama as you go.

But in that respect, Mercenaries 2 is a precision guided bomb, focusing on one very specific aspect of game design and leaving many others by the wayside. If you expect high quality narrative or even a coherency of plot, then look elsewhere, because story isn’t a high priority here. It is just context for your actions, in many ways simply explaining why the developer wants to give you this fancy new playground in which to mess around in.

Well what is this x-factor that the game can deliver that nothing else can? It satisfies a primitive urge ingrained in our minds over millennia, a rush of adrenaline and endorphins that can only be achieved under special circumstances. Simply put, Mercenaries 2 lets you blow things up over and over again, and it never gets old. It is the most basic of design choices, allowing the player to demolish everything, and on paper seems simple. But in practice achieving such a lofty goal is a monumental achievement. Everything can be destroyed in this game. And I do mean everything. Every building, every skyscraper, shack, warehouse, bunker, treetop high-hide, oil tanker, industrial refinery, etc. The jungle itself can be razed to the ground if you so wish. You can detonate, demolish and destroy to your heart’s content.

The genius of this doesn’t become immediately apparent until you play a few hours of the game. In fact, because this is such a detraction from standard game design, you will often find yourself incredulous that you really can level every building, sometimes assuming that it isn’t interactive or is a fixed position, and finding often by accident that it isn’t. Following a slow burn introduction that allows you a taste of the weaponry to come, you fight your way to the center of an island and rescue an HVT, or high value target. This mechanic is repeated often throughout the game and is the evolution of the deck of cards featured in the previous iteration. If you extract an HVT in a chopper alive, you get paid double, and in Mercs 2, money is everything. With it, you can purchase weapons, vehicles (including everything from motorboats to attack helicopters), and airstrikes.

From a lowly cluster bomb which can pepper a small area with light shrapnel, to 10,000lb fuel air burst devices; endlessly satisfying to use, you can call them in using several methods. Once you recruit a jet pilot in the early parts of the game, he can deliver most of the advanced bombs to the battlefield immediately, using smoke canisters or electronic beacons. Even the method of delivery allows you to be creative, positioning a bunker buster so that it pierces through two buildings at once, or placing a cruise missile strike in the basement of a parkade so that it takes out the foundations. Attaching a beacon to a vehicle will home-in the strike on that position, allowing for surprise attacks or the destruction of moving targets. These aren’t tools of destruction, they are toys.

The inclusion of an oil supply resource system means that each time you call in an air strike, it uses a set amount of oil, which you collect by stealing supply drums, tankers and storage containers secluded all around the world. This means that you can only go for a certain amount of time in the field before you run out of oil, making stocking up before missions essential. Upgrades to your oil supply cap can be purchased from various factions when you become friendly with them, making your combat effectiveness more potent. This creates an impulse pacing to the game, making each mission a battle of attrition between the enemy and your own supplies, creating tension and superb action as you make each bomb count.

The factions are where the meat of the game lies. Starting off, you are introduced to two rivals, the UP, or United Petroleum forces, mercenary groups and insufferable capitalists trying to protect their exploitation of the Venezuelan people, and the PLAV, or People’s Liberation Army of Venezuela, rebel fighters based in the Amazon jungle fighting the former for control of their country. Both give you missions to attack the other and you must choose which one to really support, because keeping all factions happy is a tough job. And there are plenty of them, including Rastafarian pirates, loyalist Venezuelan military, and foreign powers looking to get their hands into the situation. Each one has unique vehicles and weaponry you can purchase from them, making your choice of faction support affect your battlefield abilities. For example, the PLAV sell the powerful Daisy Cutter bomb, allowing for imprecise destruction, but the UP forces have many more support abilities, strafing runs and transport helicopters. Each one is unique and features a plentiful supply of missions and challenges for you to do for cash and rewards, which is often simply capturing an outpost of the enemy, killing everyone inside.

When you enter an enemy base and start wrecking stuff, you won’t immediately lose favor with that faction unless they call in your actions to their superiors on the radio. You have a few seconds to incapacitate the person calling you in before they send reinforcements. This creates a frantic highpoint to an assault, as you dash across the camp to bludgeon a lone soldier to death before he can finish dialing 1-800 HELP US. Or you can just drop a bunker buster on his head, leveling the tent he is in, the surrounding tents, and half the hillside they sit upon.

Really, that is what Mercs 2 is about. Freedom to approach a situation any way you like. You can go in stealthy and plant C4 charges all around a camp, then exfiltrate with a bang, or you can just nuke the site from orbit, just to be safe. No really, you literally can deploy nuclear weapons on the battlefield. Sure, the whole country will be pissed off at you, but in Mercs 2, you have the means, the motivation and the money to take them head on. World in Flames is not just a catchy subtitle, it is an accurate description of what this game is like. You can and will destroy everything, the whole time laughing with glee as you create new and incredible ways to scorch the Earth.