Mercenaries

"Kaboomy! Now do it again! Kaboomy! (This never gets old...)"

My vision of the international Mercenary is someone who gets the job done by ANY MEANS NECESSARY. Assassinations, sabotage, big explosions, etc. This isn't the perfect vision of a Merc, but it works. Besides, the explosions be pretty (bad grammar intended). Anyway, I gotta keep this short so you can read this, so on with the review. This game is called Mercenaries. You play as a Mercenary. Duh. Anyways, Pandemic Studios, maker of war games such as Star Wars Battlefront and Full Spectrum Warrior, developed this game. Since I was blown away by Battlefront (though I won't be able to play online any time soon) and was quite impressed with FSW (though I'd rather control one guy at a time), I was expected a lot out of Mercenaries. And it delivered it all, and more. Think of Mercenaries as a cross between the GTA games, Everything or Nothing (latest James Bond game), and any military game. It all equals one heck of a time. Though it's rather short.

Gameplay/Controls: 5/5

The game puts you in North Korea, where a large fictional battle has been fought to a near stalemate, but there's still a lot of military action. The leader of the North Korean military, a dictator named General Choi Song, supposedly has the launch codes for his country's considerable nuclear weapons stockpile. The Allied Nations had sent in a task force to see to Song's capture, but found nothing. They announced a wanted list in the form of a Deck of 52 playing cards, with four suits (Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, and Spades) and a card representing each of the wanted men. Each suit consisted of nine number cards, three face cards, and the Ace. Obviously, Song is the Ace of Spades, the most wanted man. The reward? $100,000,000 alive, $50,000,000 dead. Either way, it's a lot of money, which explains why you've been dropped into this battlefield.

There is little that's wrong with the gameplay. You can destroy nearly everything in the game (except for the trees, for reasons I don't know), and it actually rewards you for it, with lots of cash. What's that cash used for, you ask? Aside from paying for the medical bills should you be KIA or when you go amok and kill civilians and Allied soldiers, you use that cash to call in Vehicle and Supply deliveries, and best of all, AIR STRIKES. Half of them are designated by laser surgical precision, so you simply point and hold until the fireworks start. Like the game says, you can drive or fly any car, jeep, truck, tank, helicopter, and everything in between in the game. You don't get to fly planes though (not even small planes), and you can't drive boats. Which makes sense, but it would be interesting to fly a plane and ditch not too high over an enemy building, sending it into the unfortunate soldiers located near where the plane crashes. Also, water (like the older GTA games) is your enemy, though you don't immediately die when you touch it, though it saps your health pretty fast. Vehicle hijacking is another great aspect of this game. Provided you take out the gunner (if the vehicle has one), it's possible to hijack a moving vehicle going at any speed, if you have enough recklessness to try so, anyway. The hijacking of armored vehicles often involves opening the hatch, tossing a grenade in, closing the hatch, covering ears, then hopping in (fortunately, they never show you the interior of these vehicles, which would be lined with enemy body parts). Like GTA, the vehicle's health takes the place of your regular health, so when you hop in, you're relatively safe (unless one of your enemies has an RPG on him). Although hijacking helicopters is understandably difficult, tanks are relatively easy to hijack, though you'll notice that you have to be at the action circle's center to actually hijack it. It's tolerable, however. Hijacking a vehicle also allows you to use vehicle disguise, which comes in handy in the latter levels where you're trying to infiltrate enemy territory without being blown to kingdom come.

The game is divided into the four suits, and further divided into contracts, or missions, that you take from each of the four friendly factions (though it's easy to make them hostile towards you): Allied Nations, South Koreans, Russian Mafia, and the Chinese. The North Koreans are always everyone else's enemy, so your faction ‘mood' is improved whenever you kill an NK soldier in front of a soldier of the other faction. However, the factions have enemies on the other side, too, so later on the contracts will often involve you sabotaging buildings of a friendly faction, increasing your mood with the contractors, but lowering the mood of that faction. Every time you complete a contract, you will get information on the relative whereabouts of the number cards of the Deck of 52. Their exact location won't be pinpointed on your radar until you're rather close. Except for the Allied Nations, each faction will have a final contract that will allow you to verify (capture or kill, then getting the money) a face card (King, Queen, or Jack). Once you gather enough intel by verifying enough of that suit, you'll be able to accept the Ace contract from the Allied Nations. Once that Ace is verified, you move on to the next suit.

Controls are a snap to learn, though somewhat complicated on paper. Left thumbstick moves your character, and the right one moves your view. Left trigger throws a grenade and the right shoots your currently equipped weapon. A button reloads, X button executes a melee attack that stuns the enemy in front of you (or kicks a small object), and B button makes your character jump (strangely, this comes in handy much more than it sounds). Y button acts as your action button and lets you pick up weapons and enter a vehicle, among a couple other things. White button swaps weapons (you can carry a max of two at a time), and Black button swaps grenades. Back button opens your PDA (which functions as a gameplay menu), and the Start Button pauses the game and allows you to load, save, be safely transferred back to the medical facilities if you get stuck, etc. The left thumbstick click crouches your character, entering stealth mode, and the right thumbstick click utilizes your binoculars (or use the sniper scope, if you're using the sniper rifle). When driving a regular vehicle, A functions as the accelerator, X as the brake, R as the handbrake, and Y and White function as different ways to ditch the vehicle. When driving a tank or flying a helicopter, the controls are somewhat similar to the ones on foot, but understandably, the thumbstick control is a lot less sensitive for the tanks and the helicopters at higher altitudes. The rumble feels as it should.

(Genre-Specific, Shooter) Explosion Quotient: 5/5

Yeah, this game has a LOT of explosions. And they look real. You take damage realistically, so try not to throw a grenade into the wall directly in front of you. And buildings are destroyed realistically and you always feel a realistic rumble on your controller as you see the building sinking down. And, as always, there are explosive barrels, but unlike most shooters, you get a lot more C4 plastic explosives…

Audio: 4/5

Sound effects are unparalleled in this game. From the everyday chatter of rifle fire to the huge shockwave explosion of the Bunker Buster penetration missile, everything sounds as it should. Music, on the other hand, gets slightly repetitive, but you'll be too busy driving or shooting to notice. Voice acting…there isn't any actual voice talent in this game (asides from the main characters), so voice samples are repetitive, but it's like the music: tolerable.

Visuals: 5/5

As I cleared up already, all the visuals regarding destruction is very realistic. You'll see smoke fly, bits of dirt, and big pieces of debris fly when you blow up a building, and whenever you shoot a rocket into the ground or to a vehicle, the ground darkens as the explosion scars its surface (this becomes very noticeable when you're in one of the everyday skirmishes outside of the contracts). There isn't any blood or noticeable bullet holes in the game, but the vehicle graphics makes up for much more of that. Shots always seem to have tracers so you can see where they're coming from, and grenades leave a white flag-like thing that allows you to see where it's going. Sure, it's unrealistic, but it's tolerable. Occasionally you'll notice the frame rate will get a little choppy, but these happen rarely.

Enjoyability (Tilt)/Replayability: 5/5

The game doesn't last too long (roughly 14 hours), but you've got so many optional stuff to collect and unlock, you'll rarely get bored. (Besides, the explosions never look bad) So is it better than GTA? On both side's terms, yes. The main story just doesn't last as long, and there isn't as much vehicle variety.

Overall Score: 24/25 (Roughly Equivalent to 9/10)
Star Rating: 4.9 Stars out of 5
Grade: A (99.9%)

Final Verdict:

Eventually, this game WILL bore you. Eventually all those explosions won't seem as pretty as they were the first time you saw them. Eventually all that hijacking, air strikes, and ultimately, the life of a Mercenary, WILL seem like crud. But by that time, there'll be a sequel to this game. It's easy to get into, and it's a better (albeit less bloodier, violent, and with a little less variety) alternative to Vice City. You may not be able to do drive-bys in this game, but all the explosions and tanks more than makes up for that.

Thus ends the long review…actually, it's not as long as the last one, but thanks for reading!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/22/05