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.