Crash and burn as Pandemic demonstrates Mercenaries 2 at IDF

Angus Kidman
Tuesday, 18 September 2007 22:00

Your IT - Entertainment

Pandemic's first public display of its upcoming game Mercenaries 2: World In Flames got off to a messy start when the software crashed after just seconds during a demonstration at the Intel Developer Forum.


Pandemic president Josh Resnick's demonstration of the Mercenaries sequel was designed to demonstrate the benefits of Intel's quad-core processor architecture and the physics engine created by Havok, which Intel acquired earlier this week.

However, not long after launching the demonstration at the San Francisco event, the entire screen went blank. "I wasn't prepared for that," Resnick said, breathing a sigh of relief when the software was successfully relaunched.

While the original focus of the demo was on the highly detailed world created in the game, it wasn't long before the explosions were flying. "What's the point in creating that kind of environment unless you can blow it up?" Resnick said. "You can go anywhere, do anything and most importantly for Mercenaries II, blow anything up."

"You have so many choices in how you go through obstacles," he added. The game will feature more than 130 different types of weapons.

Resnick confirmed that Mercenaries 2 is scheduled for release "early next year", but didn't offer a specific date.

Disclosure: Angus Kidman attended IDF as a guest of Intel.