Mercenaries 2 on the PS3 is best summed up in two words: fun and balance. The game wastes no time throwing you into action, the cut scenes are swift yet add flavor and personality to the characters, the factions and dynamics between them make sense, the scale of the world is expansive, with varied terrain that poses some navigation challenges, and there are tons of things to blow up. The game mechanics are sophisticated enough to allow several approaches to every problem. You can go in guns blazing calling down airstrike thunder from the skies, or sneak in driving an enemy vehicle, or grab a chopper and roll over the hills firing rockets.

This collecton of all of the single-player trophies represents everything that could possibly be done in the game, because by late 2009 the multiplayer servers were mostly broken, causing the game to lock up on start unless you were signed out of PSN. There were reports that this was linked to a change in the terms of service, in function or form, and there was apparently some kind of workaround involving running another older EA game (like Army of Two), whose terms of service dialog still worked, to get Mercs back up and running. Pretty shitty. Then the servers were completely shut down in March 2010, nineteen months after the game was released. It is a shame, because I imagine this game would have been a lot of fun co-op. Platinum in spirit.