So I’m still playing Mercenaries 2 a bit this moment, hammering my way through the game again using the “other two” characters. My OCD target for this game is to unlock all the unlockables (duh), fully explore the dialog trees – different for each of the characters – and check out all the FMVs in all scenarios, finishing up with three 100% character saves. Easy enough, I think – my first 100% play-through was about eighty(!) hours, but that included much faffing about capturing – rather than killing – key bad guys to garner a big fat 50-point Achievement.
This task is made particularly difficult by the fact that the enemy AI is so blinkered and trigger-happy that a careless assault can see enemy minions fill the very chap they’re supposed to be protecting – and who you want to claim alive – full of lead. Or explodey stuff.
Which is bad. And forces you to reload. And play that bit again. And, most likely, again.
Anyway, I was happy in that I’d performed that onerous task (there’s 50-ish of these High Value Targets to capture alive, rather than photograph dead) already, and subsequent playthroughs would be a doddle – I’d just airstrike them to oblivion, then stroll in and take a verifying photo when the area was scorched earth and bereft of life. But then I learned that the penultimate FMV is different depending on whether you’ve captured all the HVTs or not.
Shit. Shitting shit.
My estimate for completion for this game has just bumped out by another forty or fifty hours. And I have to chuck away a three-quarters complete playthrough with the American mercenary – by far the least fun of the three to play with. But such is life… *sigh*