Mercenaries 2: World In Flames

With Mercenaries 2, you'll blow up more stuff before noon than most people do all week

Mercenaries 2: World In Flames feels a lot like the original, but packs more explosions, missions and a new locale to destroy. It suffers from a few nagging issues, but if all you want to blow things up, this intense third person action game delivers.

First, you choose from three mercenary types and then jump into the game, forming a partnership with Venezuelan drug dealer Ramon Solano. After completing a crucial job for him, he double crosses you and you barely survive. Being a gruff mercenary, you swear revenge by taking back his empire, one little step at a time. This means working with such unlikely allies as Universal Petroleum and People's Liberation Army of Venezuela, gathering enough intel and tools to get the job done.

This is done through various missions like taking out high-profile targets, stealing necessities for your team (including fuel and cash) and making new allies, such as a helpful mechanic and a pilot. As you dig deeper, you'll find that your items become more elaborate, and you'll eventually exchange guns for nukes. Granted, this will cost you, but the heavy supply of work, along with side bets from members of your own team, keeps the cash flowing.

The key word here is "BOOM." Click to see more images from the game...

Driving around the open world of Venezuela offers a lot of terrain. Whether you're on foot or riding around in a vehicle (ranging from a mini-tank to a helicopter), the controls handle just like they should. You'll have no problem targeting bad guys and putting them in their place. In addition, hijacking these vehicles is part of the fun, as you engage in push-button minigames and then take control.

There are a couple of minor hitches, however. First off, most of the computer soldiers are dimwits. They'll spend a good deal of time shooting blindly, even when you're right next to them. The only soldiers that stand a chance of taking you down are the heavily armed ones, carrying RPGs and launching mortars at you in a tank.

Secondly, the push-button segments occur too often, especially with the concluding battle with Solano. What should be an epic showdown instead feels like a quick wrap-up.

Mercenaries' presentation gets the job done for the most part. Developer Pandemic did a great job with making everything destructible. Being able to bring down buildings with C4 and other explosives is surprisingly satisfying. There are occasional glitches that needed some clean up, however, especially on certain textures and soldier movements. Overall, it's a step up from the original.

On the audio side, the music is good, but the voice work gets out of hand. You'll constantly hear non-playable soldiers shouting out the same things repeatedly, such as "The enemy is here!", even though you've clearly indicated you're not the enemy.

Thanks to all the missions, you can complete the game and then head back through it again, going a different way and blowing stuff up. Best of all, you don't have to go it alone. It supports online play through Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network, letting you destroy things alongside a friend. There is no offline co-op, nor any competitive multiplayer. Furthermore, the co-op mode forces you to work closely together, so you can't explore two opposite ends of the city. Regardless, it still clicks.

In some respects, Mercenaries 2: World In Flames isn't perfect and it isn't entirely pretty, but when it comes to blowing up stuff alone or with a friend, it gets the job done. If you need to relieve stress, spend some time in this fictitious Venezuela.

Immigrants stow away in Army trucks

18 july 2008

A group of illegal immigrants have arrived in Britain after stowing away on Army vehicles.

The five men were discovered on Tuesday by soldiers at the Duke of Gloucester Barracks, in South Cerney, and are now being held in a detention centre, Gloucestershire police said.

They are believed to have climbed aboard the convoy returning from Kosovo at Calais.

The men included two Indians, aged 24 and 26, two Afghans aged 16 and 18, and a 15-year-old Iranian, police confirmed.

Officers used sniffer dogs to search for a number of the men within the army barracks.

The men smuggled themselves on board lorries driven by civilian contractors - not soldiers, police said.

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defence could only confirm five individuals had been detained at South Cerney and were arrested by police.

T-72 battle tank

The T-72 is a Soviet-designed main battle tank that entered production in 1971. It is a further development of T-62[4] with some features of T-64A (to which it was a parallel design) and has been further developed as the T-90. Chronologically and in design terms it belongs to the same generation of tanks as the US M60, German Leopard 1 and British Chieftain tank. More recently, the T-72's reputation has suffered following poor combat performance of export models against Western tanks such as the M1 Abrams, M60 Patton, Merkava and Challenger 1 during the first and second Persian Gulf wars and the 1982 Lebanon war. Its losses in the Persian Gulf wars, however, may have been more a consequence of the fact that most Iraqi T-72 tanks were export models (T-72, T-72M and T-72M1) using low quality ammunition and manned by poorly trained Iraqi tankers.

The T-64 was one of the world's most advanced battle tanks when introduced, but early problems with its L60-derived engine, the roadwheels and inaccuracy of its main gun prompted Soviet leadership to seek a low-tech alternative with similar performance, especially after the high unit costs and labour intensive manufacture process of T-64 became obvious. The tank was too expensive to equip all Soviet tank armies, let alone Warsaw Pact (WARPAC) allies.

An "economy" tank with the old design V-46 powerplant was developed from 1967 at the Uralvagonzavod Factory located in Nizhny Tagil. Chief engineer Leonid Karchev created "Object 172", the initial design, but the prototype, marked "Object 172M", was refined and finished by Valeri Venidikov. Field trials lasted from 1971 to 1973 and upon acceptance the Chelyabinsk Tank factory immediately ceased T-55 and T-62 production to retool for the new T-72 tank.

Russian T-72 Tank demonstration

Seventy-seven tanks and four tank-recovery vehicles donated to the Iraqi Armed Forces by Hungary arrived in Iraq and are now stationed at Taji, north of Baghdad, which is the headquarters of the Iraqi 9th Division (Mechanized). The tanks were transferred from Hungary by a combination of land and sea transport. They are expected to be operational by mid-December. This donation of more modern, newly refurbished tanks will enable the 9th Division to play an important role in providing security to Iraqi citizens.

At the end of 2004, the Government of Hungary pledged to contribute to the new Iraqi army seventy-seven T-72 tanks, especially outfitted for the Iraqi forces. The tanks were transported to the Taji Military Base in a joint effort by several NATO allies.

The Iraqi Armed Forces took possession of the tanks on November 12, 2005.