It’s been two years since supporters of President Hugo Chavez accused Pandemic, maker of the US army-sponsored Full Spectrum Warrior, of priming its audience for a US-led invasion of Venezuela. The riposte was that Mercenaries 2, a game in which a ‘tyrant’ tightens his grip on Venezuela’s oil supply and is targeted for assassination, was simply entertainment. That it ‘rips from the headlines’ the backbone of a good story was, said Pandemic, its prerogative. The argument rages on.

As luck would have it, though, the finished game is so devoid of story, character and stance, its action and AI so surreal, that taking offence takes way more effort than it deserves. Long before you question its agenda, you’ll be asking why its helicopters insist on ramming each other in the sky, why your support squad was jettisoned from its transport 100 feet above the ground, or why that marksman chose to jump you from 15 storeys up.

The good news for fans of 2005’s Playground Of Destruction is that Mercenaries remains an absolute blast. Its belief that money should be no object in the pursuit of oil means that you’re seldom, if ever, out of pocket, leaving you free to bring its world to ruin at a relentless pace. By the time you’ve piled ten laser-guided bombs into various targets, robbing and salvaging the required fuel, you’ll have cashed enough pay cheques to buy 50 more. If you die, which is a rarity in all but the closing stages, the route back to your objective is seldom long and always lined with replacement weapons.

Loading screens aside, the action here is kept on a roll. The immense map is so thick with objectives, factions and artillery that you can essentially crowd surf your way from vehicle to vehicle (ground, air and now sea) before dialling up your stockpile and disintegrating your target. Most of the sequel’s additions represent a shortcut or a distraction, your new PMC allies able to chopper you to and fro, while a new High Value Target system of chance kidnappings replaces the last game’s Deck Of 52. The destruction throughout, in variety as much as scale, is tremendous.

The bad news is that, with so much to do over such a wide area, Pandemic has overreached itself. That the story and dialogue revolve around you being shot in the rear end says a lot, much of the game padded out with nominally different tasks, mission merchants and battles. The aforementioned AI bugs aren’t quite rare enough to slip from memory, and while new QTE segments, triggered as you commandeer the better vehicles, are short, they’re either pointlessly easy or impossible depending on who’s involved.

The democratically elected Chavez probably has a right to be upset by such a crass and egregious portrayal of him (let’s be honest) and his country. But his deeper suspicions are unnecessary: riotous as it is, Mercenaries 2 has too much instability of its own to be promoting it anywhere else.

6/10