Mercenaries // Xbox
Playground of Destruction

// The skinny: A dictator in North Korea threatens to launch nuclear missiles. As a mercenary you are sent in to capture him and his deck of 52 lieutenents in this GTA-esque action game.

// Review: Scores of Grand Theft Auto clones have been spawned but most of them are sub-par facsimilies. Lucas Arts though manages to put aninteresting spin on the concept along with solid gameplay. You get to choose between playing as one of three different mercenaries set loose in North Korea as a bounty hunter going after all of the despot's officers. But you have more than the North Koreans to contend with. Americans, South Koreans, Chinese, and the Russian mafia also have a presence in the embattled region. As you complete missions for each faction, you acquire intel on the locations of various North Korean officers. But it's not a big happy family as mission objectives for one faction are often at odds with another's agenda.

/ In GTA style you can hijack any vehicle: hummers, tanks, APCs, trucks, civilian cars, jeeps, cannon turrets, and helicopters. You also have a wide selection of weapons at your disposal from snipers to RPGs. For the most part the gameplay is open ended and can choose the order of missions you want to accomplish and those you want to skip. As you progress further in the game you get a larger menu of itemslike weapons and vehicles that you can purchase from the Russian mafia who immediately air drop purchased supplies. Each mission is relatively short especially once you can buy helicopters, and they can be accomplished if a variety of ways. The same missions can be completed guns blazing like Rambo or by sniping hostiles on mountain tops before moving in.

/ When you achieve enough intel you open up the missions to go after the Aces who are the highest ranking officials. These are the most epic and difficult bounties that can take several attempts because you usually must fight through hordes of grunts and guards. The aspect of this game that added a lot of frustration was that often enemies would endlessly respawn. This can get extremely annoying because your ammo is limited, air strikes can get expensive, and just when you think you've cleared out an area a tank can respawn behind you. The missions in general ranged from easy to medium in difficulty. But the final mission was unevenly hard. It is a multi-phase mission, and if you die you start from the beginning.

// Wrap up: With short and plentiful missions you can play for 20-30 minutes at a time a feel a sense of accomplishment. The gameplay is pretty fun because of a wide variety of weapons, vehicles and mission types. Excellent voice acting, a fully destructable environment, and high production values makes this an entertaining play.

Entertainment rating: 4