"One of the most entertaining games on the PlayStation 2!"

Story- The story begins with General Song assassinating his father and taking control of north Korea. He plans to produce a weapon of mass destruction. North Korea quickly pledge their alliance to the allied forces hoping to stop general song's plan. You play as a mere mercenary, you are on nobody's side you simply offer your service to anyone who pays you. Its not just NK and allied forces, Chinese, South Korea, and Mafia are involved as well. Signing a contract with south Korea will anger North Korea, if you keep signing contracts with one side the opposite sides will become hostile, meaning they will kill you on sight. Your best bet is to keep them all happy.

Gameplay- Mercenaries is very similar to grand theft auto series. The game is free roaming, you can go anywhere on the map. You can hijack any car, plane or even tank. But what separates it from grand theft auto series is the level of destruction it boasts. You can destroy virtually anything. You see that building? You can destroy it. That car? Plane? You can bring them down. You can be very creative with it, especially with the C4, deploy C4 around a huge building and enjoy the scene. Blowing stuff up is fun and all but that's not the meat of the game. In Mercenaries you take on missions (contracts) from any side you want. Those contracts have specific requirements that you must complete. Usually its find one of the deck of 52. The deck of 52 consists of 52 men work for Song. You are to capture them alive or dead (capturing them alive nets you more money) and taking information from them on general Song's location.

Once you sign a contract, they give you supply to use. Usually not nearly enough to complete the mission. Luckily you have lots of money which you can use to buy weapons and supplies from the mafia. The amount of weapons and supplies is incredible. They range from basic guns and cars, to machine guns, tanks and anti-aircraft. How you complete the mission is up to you. They usually prefer you doing it quiet way. You can approach your target using stealth, and snipe him from a distance. Or use a smoke grenade and capture him alive. Or do it the easy way and call an air strike and destroy the entire place. There is so many ways you can take to complete your contract.

Graphics/sound-The game does a great job graphically, its easily one of the best looking games on PS2. The game capture the feeling of war accurately, special effects like smoke, explosions, and destroyed environment add to the realism. The sound is impressive too, explosions and machine guns sound very realistic, and set the mood for you. Voice acting is not the best but it gets the job done.

Value- The game is very long with over 50 missions to complete and lots of mini games and extra weapons to unlock. After you beat the game, you earn 1 million dollars, which you can use to buy the most powerful weapons in the game (with those weapons you can turn an entire city to ruins!) There are three different characters to play the game with, while the mission stay the same, the characters have different styles. So you will want to experiment the game with all three of them.

BUY/RENT- Buy. Mercenaries is an excellent action game, it gives the player an enormous amount of freedom. The graphics, sound and value are all top notch. I can't wait for Mercenaries 2: World in flames!

Final score- 10

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/03/06