Summary

If you’re a hardcore GTA fan then you will like Mercenaries, which is an unabashed clone of Rockstar's title. If you’re not a hardcore GTA fan, you’re better off passing on this title from Lucasarts. It has the same style of open-ended gameplay as GTA, and the same problems, too. Poor save game options, lots of trial-and-error missions that quickly become tedious and frustrating, lowest denominator graphics….I was glad I only paid 20 bucks for this game.

Strength

Mercenaries is set in a near-future Korea where the UN, the Russian mafia, the Chinese, and of course the hapless Koreans are all warring for control of a devastated landscape. You can play as any one of three Mercenaries; there are marginal differences between them in terms of expertise and language skills. The gameplay is strictly from the GTA series: 3rd-person camera, lots of vehicles that you can hijack or purchase, a large set of maps with lots of hidden areas and pickups. A nice variety of handheld weapons with which to trade fire with the enemy of the moment. Much like GTA, you make inquiries with the various factions and receive 'contracts' to blow something or someone up, steal a noteworthy weapons system, escort a photojournalist from one locale to another under a time limit, etc, etc.

The first 10 - 12 hours you put into Mercenaries will go by nicely and you will have a good opinion of the game. It's when you start to get 15 or more hours into it, and you access the second map, that the problems inherent in the game design start to take hold, and eventually turn Mercenaries into a frustrating and un-fun experience.

Sound is adequate; the effects associated with guns firing, explosions and detonations, and vehicle engines revving up, all seem OK. The background music goes for an understated, quasi-classical tone rather than frankly martial scores. Voice acting is well done and the Chinese, Korean, and Russian spoken dialogue definitely lends quite a bit to the game's setting and atmosphere.

Weakness

The game's major problem is the save-game system. Much like GTA, when you fail a mission you’re transported to its start point and required to go thru the motions all over again to the point where your avatar died. On the earlier, shorter missions this is tolerable but later in the game, as the missions increase in difficulty and length, the tedium involved in replaying iteration after iteration of a given mission until, by trial-and-error you succeed in obtaining a viable strategy, is very frustrating.

The driving portions of the game are unwieldy and clunky. You are stuck with a mandatory third-person POV, which is so awful from a control standpoint that I never attempted the plentiful timed driving challenges available for extra cash. The on-foot camera setup is also a chore to work with; too many times you'll witness your character being ripped with rockets or bullets from an offscreen assailant, and the clunky controls mean you'll die before you can swivel with sufficient speed to see where they are located.

The rules governing the gameplay often seem arbitrary and unfocused. Some missions let you get away with disguises of one sort or another, while in others you'll be found out in a hurry and forced into an abrupt restart. Sometimes enemy choppers will resolutely hover above your position and blow you away, other times they'll drift off after a brief period. While choppers are available for your own use, the maps are so crammed with hidden AA batteries and bizarre 'restricted zones' that the airborne dimension of the gamespace is never really exploitable by the player. It's hard not to get the impression that the Lucasarts dev team was overly concerned with preventing the player from figuring out some sort of 'angle' with which to ace the gameplay, and as a result, burdened many of the missions with restrictions and caveats on player freedom.

In summary, there are lots of missions and plenty of opportunities for free-form gameplay in Mercenaries, but make sure you have the patience and dogged nature to put up with the game's many problems if you intend to explore all of these opportunities.

As a multi-platform release I was not expecting Mercenaries to offer anything earthshaking in terms of graphics. Expect substantial fogging and popup, as the landscapes are designed to be rendered with the PS2's 32 MB RAM. Since it is first and foremost a driving game, the minimap and onscreen pointer are OK for giving you some idea of where to go, but still, you will find yourself stopping every few moments to figure out the best direction to proceed to your mission objectives.

The overall color scheme for Mercenaries is a drab, brownish tone, something appropriate for wartime and the Korean peninsula's climate. Models and textures for vehicles and soldiers are adequate, although in one area in the second map of the game the vehicles were either not rendered, or simply rendered as skeletons devoid of textures; strange to see North Koreans floating along the road, sitting suspended in the air.

During the more intense battles there will be a lot of moving figures and explosions rendered, but I didn't notice anything major in the way of framerate drops.

Summary

I thought that the game Mercenaries had fast paced action, great graphics, and a great control scheme. There are practically thousands of different ways to do one mission. But along with this greatness can come some flaws also...

Sound

Bullets flying, choppers shooting, cars exploding. The sound in Mercenaries was great. One problem with sound FX was when things would get really hectic the sound would sometimes just be ummm...not there. But other than that great sound FX. I also thought that the game had a great score. The who does games like Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, and he wrote the music for The Incredibles. The sound really set the mood for the game. I think he did a good job writing more dramatic music than some heavy metal music that would make you think you were playing some racing game instead of a shooter set in North Korea.

Gameplay

I thought that the gameplay was great. I thought that the story was bland, boring, and dull but being able to use almost anything really helped the game along. Oh and when I say almost anything I really mean there are only two vehicles you can't use. This kinda made me mad because I destroyes all the Chinese tanks, cars, etc. so I could get the jet parked on there runway but when I got to it...I COULDN'T USE IT!!!!!! I also thought that the abilty to destroy any building added some more realism to it. I though it would have been better if they put just a little bit of blood because when you get shot, or you shoot anyone, all that comes out is dust...very strange choice...yeah. I also would have liked to see more "toy" cars if you will. The only two cars that they put in there that weren't bland was the Civilian Street Racer(Looks a little bit like a Viper GT) and the Hummer H3. I thought that being able to get a Mafia VIP car was pretty cool. One of the cool things about this is you can have your allies get in the car with you. And I don't care what anyone says but it's fun to load up a bus with Mafia guys and charge the North Korean Base. It makes you feel...powerful. Another cool feature about this game is you can call in air strikes, whether it be a precise sugical strike or a carpet bombing, it's all good. I thought another nice feature was the ability to drive helicopters. The only thing that they really need to improve on is the A.I.'s abilty to analize a situation and they should really consider adding more depth to the story.