Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction

I noticed to my horror while I was writing the Just Cause review that this hasn't been reviewed here, despite it being one of the games in my life that I have spent the most time on...

Mercenaries is freedom of exploration mixed with ultimate destruction. Simple as that. Simple, but very, very fun. Unlike the sequel, this game takes a fairly more serious tone to overthrowing a government (in this case, North Korea) and this works a lot better and doesn't slowly reduce the game to a complete laughing stock. The storyline is pretty long and will take you at least 20 hours to finish, and it is absolutely fantastic. Each mission is unique and will take you to new places to do new things, be it assassinate targets or blow a lot of stuff to bits, I can't say it better than expect fun of the highest standard. The more you do, the more you unlock and this slowly builds up an impressively huge armoury of vehicles, weapons and airstrikes which are kept neatly in your PDA system. You need to use these tactically due to them being increasingly expensive but there are so few things as satisfying as blowing an NK bunker to bits with a bunker buster and watching tanks and cars blow up in chain reaction. You also are faced with many different factions which you can choose to follow or oppose; each with advantages and disadvantages, thus meaning if you play the game more than once (and I damn well did) it can be different the next time around. Factions begin to rival each other too, and not to mention you're faced with a whole new map at the half-way point of the game, so expect the game to keep changing as you play. 

Of course, you're not ever forced to do any of the main missions. You can roam North Korea: find and capture high-profile government members, raze enemy outposts to the ground, steal expensive vehicles and sell them to the Mafia, do side missions or just explore, it's all great fun and will keep you hooked even if you don't want to continue the story just yet. Destruction is a high point, somewhat obviously as it is the game's focus. Buildings are all destructible and have varying amounts of damage they can take, and although things like trees cannot be destroyed it doesn't weigh down the gameplay as it's in the context of early destruction engines and there are no points where you need to get past any huge forests or anything.

I can't find many criticisms, I enjoyed Mercenaries fully for the 100 or so hours I spent addicted. I find it is pretty much sandbox perfection for its time, I think maybe the side missions could be a little better rewarded, with new vehicles or something, and the big map would benefit from planes and a parachute (hello, Just Cause...).

So yeah, 9/10, for great originality, freedom and plenty of things that go boom. Would still recommend these days, for anyone with a PS2/XBOX.

Battlefield 1943

Having beaten the hell out of Bad Company, though not to say it ran dry, and having passed my GCSE exams I decided to be spontaneous and download Battlefield 1943, the recent remake of 1942 for the Xbox 360 arcade and Playstation 3 (PC version coming soon). It's a download-only multiplayer game which proves that time and time again Battlefield games will always be a success, with it already breaking the record of fastest downloaded game of all time.

For anyone comparing this to Bad Company, it is different in a few ways. The health system is no longer a bar which goes down and will only come up again if healed, it is regenerative in the same way as CoD, Halo etc. This may disappoint some as it admittedly takes a bit of skill out of it - at least that's my opinion. It's also using the classic Conquest game type; to anyone who hasn't played older BF games it's the same type that you play in the fairly-disappointing-yet-free DLC for Bad Company, or in the Star Wars Battlefront games. It's also limited to three classes (Rifleman, Infantryman and Scout) and no buyable upgrades or weapons, due to its download-only form which means there isn't a motherload of data, and this restriction can bring the game down in places.

The good parts of the game mainly consist of variety in playing styles, good maps and graphics. By variety I mean that you are able to use the many different vehicles - tanks, cars, boats and to my delight, planes - to get to your objective, and each class REALLY has strengths and weaknesses. For example, while you're able to take on a few men at some range with your M1 Garand with the Rifleman kit, you'll be screwed if you find a tank coming up to you, nor will you be able to fix vehicles. The vehicles work the same way, while a tank is great for capturing flags because of its firepower and it being hard to destroy, it's also a slow mover and is a sitting duck for planes. Flying in general is a strong point, once you get the hang of it it's great fun doing barrel rolls, and weaving around in elegant dogfights. This is even better with the new Coral Sea map with a planes-only gametype.

Despite the great Battlefield experience, something is still lacking. After a good 7-8 hours gameplay I can really no longer be bothered. I understand that it's a download-only game and as such it has its limits, but the lack of more than 3 classes and no upgradeable or buyable weapons, along with there only being 3 original maps and one extra, the fun will run dry at some speed, despite the fun being plentiful. The theme is great, and the gametype works well, not to mention fighting on what seems to be a real battlefield with a thousand things going on at once, but they should make a 'full' version of this on disc, with the same - if not bigger - amount of classes as Bad Company, and THEN I believe it will be what CoD WaW could have been.

So in all it's what Battlefield should be aiming to be with a WWII setting, just painfully limited. Worth the 1200 points, but don't expect to be hooked for weeks. 6/10