Good Action Movie Fun!

Mercenaries plunks you down in a not too distant future North Korea working for Executive Operations, a mercenary company not unlike those really doing business in Iraq today. A violent coup kicked off an invasion of the Korean Penisula by several factions including the South Koreans, Chinese, a UN type organization and even the Russian mafia. All these factions have their own interests, some of which are mutual, many that aren't. As a mercenary, it's up to you to decide who you want to work for. Also not unlike the current situation in Iraq, there is a deck of cards representing the 52 most wanted criminals of the North Korean regime. Your ultimate goal in the game is to capture some, or all, of those 52 including the leader.

The comparions of this game to Grand Theft Auto are at once accurate while at the same time a little unfair to Lucasarts. Mercenaries is a “free” roam game in that you always have plenty of options in terms of how you want the story to unfold, in what order you do certain missions and where you're able to roam. There are also a wide variety of vehicles, both of land and air, to chose from though the selection is not as vast as GTA. Yet, there is something that Mercenaries adds to the mix that I feel sets it apart from GTA. Maybe it's the atmosphere created by fighting in a war torn country. Or perhaps it's the difference in weapons. Whatever it is, I like it.

Working on the Deck of 52 is accomplished by doing missions for the various factions or simply by checking your PDA (in the future, mercenaries will have Palm Pilots) for tips on the whereabouts of the nefarious individuals. But apart from searching for enemy VIPS, there's plenty of other stuff to do. As a mercenary, your success is ultimately measured in dollars. The capture or killing of anyone from the deck, as well as any other missions you receive earns you cold hard cash. You can also earn money by killing any North Koreans or their vehicles you happen to encounter. That cash can, in turn, be used to purchase weapons and vehicles from the Russian mob. The mob will actually airlift whatever you've ordered to your location. However, money will be deducated from your account if you should happen to need emergency medical treatment (ie, you die and need to be respawned at a MASH unit) or if you start incurring collatoral damage (killing civilians). The missions you get from each faction will add to you reputation with that faction while, in some cases, detract from your reputation with others. The Russians might, let's say, send you to steal something from the South Koreans in which case the South Koreans will be harder to obtain missions froms in the future.

One of the important parts of this game is moving around in the world without attracting too much attention to yourself. By getting in certain vehicles, you have the ability to disguise yourself as a particular faction. If you get into a Russian jeep, for example, you'll be able to move freely around Russian controlled areas. This is very useful if the Russians aren't too pleased with you at the moment. Alhtough each faction has similar vehicles, each does have some things that are unique. The UN agency and South Koreans have nicely armored Hum-Vees while the Chinese have little, lightly armored Jeeps with machine guns mounted in the back. Almost all have their own kinds of tanks, helicopters and planes.

Mercenaries gets really fun when you start to play around with all the ways you can complete a mission. If stealth is your style, you might want to equip yourself with a sniper rifle or silenced gun, using a vehicle as disguise to get yourself close to your enemy and then taking them by surprise. If it's fireworks you crave, then you can always get a nice high caliber machine gun and simply storm a fortification with a tank. This game loves explosions, however, and I love the fact that you can do some reallly fun things to create them. You can actually pack a vehicle full of C4, drive it at whatever your intended target (or victim) is at high speed, jump out of it at the last second, let it roll then detonate the explosives. It's this kind of action movie heroics that makes Mercenaries a joy to play.

One thing that Mercenaries has over GTA is the visuals: Mercenaries looks more polished. I love the character animations. There's a solid look to all the characters you encounter and that you play as, down to the detail of their persons. Mercernaries features ragdoll physics that, while not the best in the business, are pretty good, especially when you send bodies flying through the air though huge explosions. The environment is also beautifully rendered with rich textures and this nice moody fog that descends over the land at night, though on the PS2 version I noticed that while you're up in the sky, it doesn't draw anything that far in the distance.. One of the greatest things about this game is the many explosions. I can't emphasize this enough. You can really make some spectacular fireworks which simply adds to the overall destruction and mayhem you create.

The sound is good but not great. There's some nice vocal talent at work, especially the accents of the various factions. Even when charactes are speaking in their native tongues you can just tell that the actors and actresses really made an effort to provide realistic dialogue. Lucasarts also managed to record realistic weapon sounds. About the only gripe I have in this area is that the music is uninspired and can get really repetitive and annoying.

I was really impressed by the controls. Almost immediately I felt that they were smooth , fluid and easy to learn; precisely what you want in a game of this type. It's always nice when there's seperate buttons for firing a gun and firing a grenade. I wish more games employed this control scheme. In the course of the game you have access to many different explosive methods – C4, long range artillery strikes, airstrikes and and so forth. This could have been handled awkwardly but instead, Mercernaries makes it simple. I did feel however that the auto-aim system was a little too generous sometimes in that it can be fairly easy to kill the enemies, even from a distance. Jumping in and out of vehicles will be familiar to anyone who has played GTA, although there's a simplified control scheme for managing computer controlled characters that can follow you in and out of the various vehicles. The vehicles themselves handle quite well and almost from the start of the game I was able to drive and fly with much accuracy.

In the end, I highly recommend this game to anyone looking for a nice bit of action gaming. The free roaming in this game turns out to be not as a great as GTA but will provide you with hours of mayhem.