Mercenaries

From the moment this game was announced the developer was boasting that “If you can see it you can steal it, use it or blow it up.” This is a pretty accurate description of Mercenaries, the first truly free-roaming war simulation game. This is sandbox (ahem, GTA) gameplay at its best. At the start of the game you’re dropped into South Korea where, after a few short missions introducing you to the area’s various warring factions, you’re left to do whatever you choose to get the job done in a huge playing arena. That job is to stop the ‘Deck Of 52’ from terrorising the free world. The Deck is split, much like a pack of cards, into four groups and labelled accordingly. You’ll begin by hunting down the Two Of Clubs and work your way up through the Deck to the fearsome Ace Of Spades, each suit getting progressively tougher to cut. If progress sounds too linear for you, don’t be fooled – you are required to hunt down these cards but it’s nowhere near as restrictive as it sounds. These goals are mixed up with other missions in the game or sometimes not even linked to missions at all. On one occasion we were driving down the road (minding our own, of course) only to spot one of the cards sat by the roadside with his mates having a bit of a chat over some weapon crates. The brakes were slammed, blood spilt and we continued on our way with another card from the Deck ticked off. What’s great about this game structure is that you don’t even have to find the cards in any particular order; in fact, if you don’t want to you don’t even have to catch all of the cards to finish the game. Your ultimate aim for each suit is to catch the Ace. As you catch cards you obtain information pointing towards the location of this trump card; catch them alive and you get more information. When you have enough pointers you can then take on the ‘Ace Mission’, which takes place outside the main game world. You’ll also need to undertake other non-essential missions if you want help finding some of the face cards like the Queen or Jack. To do this you’ll need to dip into the side missions and start playing the various factions of mercenaries off against one another. Here’s where the game gets tricky. The factions are the most important feature of the gameplay; they can make your life as a mercenary simple or very, very hard. In the game you’ll come into contact with the North Koreans, South Koreans, Chinese, Russian Mafia and the peacekeeping UN. In an ideal world you’d like to keep all of these factions happy, but this is never possible. As a mercenary you need to do anything you can to get hold of information on the Deck or money to fill your pocket, and this means doing the occasional job for one of the factions. As you might imagine if you work for one faction you’re going to start annoying another.

… continued