Violence for Profit

Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction is one of the best games I played all year!

I was sitting at home and a friend had it. I told him I wasn't into war games or shooters but that he could play.

He started as Jacobs. He stole a truck and drove straight into a pack of enemies, running three of them over. He hopped out of the truck and laid some C4 down by it, ran a short distance and blew it and five enemies apart. He turned to engage the rest of his adversaries. He dodged, picked up ammo, changed weapons, blew up vehicles, killed enemies and stole a chopper which he then flew around in the air engaging in combat with other choppers he encountered.

I watched this for about ten minutes and then he finally paused his game, set the controller down, and asked again if I'd like to play.

The game had gotten me so hooked just watching my friend play, that I knew I'd wind up finishing the entire game. I borrowed my friend's copy of the game and two days later bought my own. It's the best $20 I've spent on a video game since the days of regular Nintendo.

The Game Setting

The game takes place in two provinces of North Korea, which are rendered by graphic artists but are based on genuine locations. The story is based on a coup in North Korea that places a nuclear arsenal and launch codes in the hands of a rather irrational and psychotic new leader, threatening a global nuclear crisis. As a result, the Allied Nations (based on the U.N.), South Koreans, Russian Mafia, Chinese, and of course the North Koreans themselves have each carved out portions of the country in an attempt to stabilize and consolidate control.

The player's role is to act as a mercenary operating in the theatre. The player is able to work for each of the interested parties with the exception of the North Koreans (who always hate the player no matter what).

After an initial mission (which is more of a tutorial) that has to be done for each of the factions, the map is opened and the player is cut loose. From here a player has many choices as to how to invest their time and resources.

I tend to start by going Easter Egg hunting. There are four main types of Easter Eggs in this game.

A) Blue Prints: These are boxes that have plans in them for how to design and build things. Some of them are "100 kiloton nuclear warhead plans" and some are funny, such as "Yoda's Light saber plans" and "Furry Wookie Mask." There are 110 of these in the game. Collecting these grants you access to supplies, vehicles, cash awards or cheat codes that you can use in the game. Finding one of these raises your affinity level with the South Koreans. This is important because certain actions will make them angry and hostile towards you, so you'll be wantin' to win some love by finding their blue prints.

B) Listening Posts: There are about 50 of these in the game. Finding and destroying these eaves-dropping devices raises your affinity with the Chinese. Again they offer rewards along the way similar to those of the blue prints.

C) Monuments: There are 21 of these in the game. These are statues that honor the North Korean leadership, and they really tick off the South Koreans, so gain these to help you win them back to your good side (because you'll be making them angry rather frequently). These again offer rewards as you collect them.

D) National Treasures: Again there are 110 of these. They operate the same way as the others. This type helps the Chinese feel warm and fuzzy about you, and again they grant rewards as you collect more of them.

These items are hidden throughout the game, but they're not in totally obscure places. In the course of normal game play each one should be able to be stumbled upon and they're not overly hidden. I used a guide anyway because I wanted to make sure not to miss any, but most are plainly visible if a player stops to look around the areas they are in.

The second option is to take on some of the challenges in the game such as seeing how far one can launch an empty fuel barrel, driving as a taxi, delivering goods to different places or running races with the vehicles you "liberate."

These pay good money and raise a faction's status towards the player, so they're always a good investment of time and effort.

A third option is to wander around aimlessly destroying things and shooting enemies. I did this when armed with my anti-tank rockets and my machine gun and managed to blow up quite a few vehicles. I stole a tank and began driving it around simply shooting at enemy vehicles, blowing them up, and earning funds for doing so.

A fourth option actually pertains to the story-line. A player may choose to work for one or more of the factions going on missions.

Missions differ in complexity, rewards and difficulty depending on one's own style of play. Sometimes the task is to take a reporter around and get pictures of things quickly so that whichever group one is working for gets to publish their version of the "news" first. Sometimes a player is asked to steal vehicles or assassinate certain targets for the Russian Mafia. The allies tend to be warm and fuzzy and want medicine taken places or people rescued. The Chinese will pay you handsomely to blow the crap out of... Well... Just about everyone. The South Koreans will pay well for blowing the crap out of the Mafia, Chinese or North Koreans.

Completing missions also advances the story and earns intelligence that will allow a player to locate the especially high valued targets that are referred to as aces (as in the deck of 52 that is commonly used by modern militaries).

Along the way a player will encounter many members of the deck of 52. Ideally, 52 of them. Each one is relatively equal in difficulty based on how far one is into the deck. For example the 2 of clubs is the starter mission for the game, and he's incredibly easy to take out. The ace of spades though is incredibly difficult to take out which only seems fair since that's the final stage of the game.

As players encounter cards and capture them, intelligence is gained that leads them towards their goal of the ace of that suit. When enough intelligence is gained a player may go to the Allied HQ and request a lift and clearance to pursue the ace contract.

In what order a player does things seems to be unlimited. There is a story line, however, and certain missions only come in certain orders. It's not required that one complete all of the missions, but by doing so a player is granted more rewards in the form of air strikes, supplies, vehicles, money, and affinity from that faction and intel to help them reach their ultimate goal.

Playground of Destruction

After beating the game if a player has captured or killed each of the cards in his or her journey, the game gives the player a reward: the cheat crate. The cheat crate contains a heavy machine gun that carries an absurd amount of ammo, a portable artillery launcher called the "pocket artillery" which carries 150 rounds of artillery shells that can be fired fully-auto at targets from great distances, or the grand-daddy of them all, "the portable air strike." The portable air strike is the size of a regular rocket launcher except that it carries 2000 rounds and each of the rockets is a tactical nuke.

The game then returns the player to the game world and one is unleashed to cause what mayhem they desire. It's incredibly fun to destroy entire cities in the blink of an eye without fear of consequences! I found it very gratifying to pay back some of my "allies" that made me jump through hoops to please them during the first play through of the game.

I admit I enjoyed watching headquarters after headquarters, bunker after bunker, base after base go up in a puff of smoke, fire and debris as I launched my portable air strike at them to reward them for their antics.

This pleased me.

Game play

The controls are fairly intuitive. Any person who has played a shooter before will be able to handle this. Rookies to this type of game might take a good 20 to 30 minutes to get the controls down well, and to truly master them takes a couple of hours of game play. That's really not bad considering the fast pace of the game and the multitude of actions a player can take in the midst of combat.

No matter what I did I never experienced any slow-down or skip in the games graphics. I did notice that if I tended to move too quickly through the game geographically that I sometimes missed the voice tracks of the characters later, but that's easily enough handled by slowing down now and then to let the game catch up with the havoc one has unleashed in the game world.

The artwork is very good indeed. I'm not a "game art" kind of guy at all, but the art was so well done that it even got my attention. When it was dark it was never "too dark" and when it was bright it was never "too bright."

The buildings and scenery too were incredibly well done so that they were pleasing to the eye at all times, even when it was a ruined structure.

The music that plays in the background changes depending on where a player is at, what is going on around them, and whether or not they've been there before. Despite not having an overly-wide selection of songs in the game, I never really got tired of the music or began to find it annoying or repetitive.

The combat interactions were very well done. There was a lot going on around me, but I was always able to see and the game never skipped or hiccupped causing me to die or lose my senses.

The variety of weapons, air strikes, supplies and vehicles that one could order in to help them in their mission were many. I still don't think I've driven every vehicle in the game after at least 100 hours of game time.

Bugs/Glitches/Things that sucked

If a player goes through the game world too quickly blowing things up and changing scenery and then begins a mission it somehow overloaded the PS2 frequently and caused me to miss the voice-overs for that scene. Not a huge deal, but it did annoy me.

The shotguns made no sound when they were fired, as though they simply forgot to put the sound in the game. This wasn't a huge deal either, as the shotgun was a fairly clumsy and ineffective weapon anyway. The last thing I wanted to do was get close to my enemies.

At times when loading the game if there were a lot of graphics around the player's starting point, it would be hard for the game to keep up with the drawing of images, and thus things like the Easter Eggs sometimes got left out forcing the player to leave an area, come back, look for his item, leave, come back, look for his item, and then eventually it would be there. The problem was the player had to know it was supposed to be there which defeats the purpose of hiding an Easter Egg to begin with.

As far as I know, those are the only significant glitches in the game. There likely are more, but those are the only ones I found in the entire game. None of them are game-killing glitches. All can be handled by resetting or reloading the game (except the shotgun not making noise, for which there is no cure).

The thing I disliked the most but that wasn't a bug or a glitch is that although I frequently saw allied attack choppers, and twice saw Abrams tanks and a Russian KA-50 attack chopper, I only got to use the tank in two missions, the KA-50 once, and the Apache attack chopper never (though it can be obtained, but it's difficult to do without making enemies out of the allies who are... Well armed to say the least).

Occassionally during missions or when in free-roam mode the enemies would spawn randomly, having no real "place of origin." They'd simply appear from out of nowhere which meant a player couldn't actually clear an area or set up any type of defense against a pending onslaught, because the computer would just crap the bad guys into place past any type of defense the player built and rendering it useless.

I also didn't like that if I missed an Easter Egg I had no way to figure out which one of the nearly 300 eggs it was and locate it. That was rather irritating.

My final gripe, which again is not a huge gripe, is that it was far easier to make my friendly factions mad by accidentally shooting one or two of them (or worse, a civilian) than it was to win their love by shooting enemy soldiers. It required me to spend a lot of time driving around with a member of each of my friendly nations so that they could witness me whacking their common enemy the North Koreans, and go home, sing my praises, and raise my status with that particular faction.

Overall

Overall this game is fantastic. It's a first-effort from Pandemic Studios, LLC. and I don't think they tossed too much work into it. It's relatively bug free, has great art, a simple game system with a decent but light story line, and it does what it's supposed to do.

This game almost seemed to be an accident on the part of Pandemic, as though they built the game to see what it got them and it turned out to be a top 50 game the year it was released. Their next installment will have much more funding and focus on it and promises to be another blockbuster.

I really enjoyed the variety that this game of simplistic ideas offered. It did require thought and strategy, but could also be worked as a free for all hack-and-slash addict.

Overall it's a very impressive game from Pandemic that despite the mature theme was tastefully presented and is suitable for children.