Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction P2

So you've picked your merc and you're heading out to the DMZ. Right away, the game puts several enemy vehicles in your path and a rocket-propelled grenade resting visibly on a box by the road. What you must do is clear. Let that sucker fly and laugh as the rocket with the hilariously wobbly trajectory impossibly hits its mark and reduces the road block into scrap. Oh what's that? Did you just hear a cash register? That's right, for every Nork vehicle you blow up, you collect a small reward! This game rewards destruction and every building can be destroyed with enough missiles, rockets and air strikes.

The game play is more than just blowing things up. This game can be quite hard. Too much destruction can potentially kill your bounty and deny you full payment. Accidentally kill civilians and you lose cash to the agency for public image "damage control". The Norks aren't such pushovers too. Their RPG troopers inflict incredibly annoying splash damage. Bunkers continuously spawn troops or TANKS and must be taken out by a well placed air strike or enough crates of C4. Vehicles can instantly kill you by running you over and if you're careless with your ordnance, as our pal Mattias often is, you'd be vaporized in an instant. If you die, you respawn in an AN medic camp but you're money will be deducted and that's money you could have spent on shelling that small village! What a waste.

The game is fairly linear; capture every ace until you get to Song. The faction missions are well done and actually have an overarching story that explodes in the climax of the fourth act. The Chinese are enemies with the South Koreans and you're actions drive them to the brink. None of the missions feel too repetitive. There's a mission I must mention where the Mafia needs you to collect small valuable things from several people quickly so they give you a super fast, ruby red, extra delicate sports car that must be made of magnetic material since rockets seem to be drawn to it. Finish the mission with the car in one piece for an extra bonus!

Aside from missions, you could go free roaming and collect regular bounties for cash and intel. You could do challenges or collect several rare items scattered across the map to unlock new stuff in the Mafia website. You could just dick around and destroy every North Korean unit you see and you'd still get paid for it.

Combat is just fun. The best part about it is hijacking enemy vehicles such as jeeps, tanks, helicopter gunships... You can even turn them in at the Mafia garage and earn even more money! There's nothing quite like running from cover to cover, shooting, throwing grenades and calling down air strikes on wave upon wave of never ending enemies who will not stop coming until every last building is reduced to craters visible from space.

Interestingly, the game even has a very basic stealth system in it. You can use faction vehicles to sneak in faction restricted areas. It is possible to sneak around and use your rifle to pick off key targets and use satellite targeted bombs to destroy important buildings from far away. Don't expect a pure stealth run to be possible. Maybe "stealth" is the wrong word. "Tactical" seems more like it.

To avoid staleness, the ace missions take place in their own special stages as mentioned. After every act, the violence in the map escalates and the work you've done for factions start to show. After the second act, we move to a new map further north that's even chaotic. Its smart to do this.

No complaints for the voice acting. Its good. The musical score is very good too. Each faction has a leitmotif going on and the music goes well with the frantic action. The graphics are excellent for its time. Its nice that the game can handle all the explosions, gunfire and carnage in a large map with little to no lag.


The only bad things about this game is that you can't swim. Aquatic shenanigans would add to this game but its not really necessary. The trees are indestructible for some reason. You cant even run over it with your tank. That sticks out like a sore thumb.What other bad thing can I possibly mention about this awesome game? Well there's a bug where the shotgun doesn't make a sound when fired. That's about it. Oh yeah, it spawned a terrible sequel but that's not this games fault now is it?

I just might hook up my old PS2 for this.

Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction

I'm not the biggest fan of sandbox games. Ever since GTA3 became a hit, many other sandbox style games tried to get in on the action. Some were fun, sure, but only a few were awesome and memorable. Games like Prototype for example, are just mindless fun and that's about it. Sandbox games aren't just about smashing stuff in a wide open environment. You're IN that environment too after all, so it has to feel a certain way, some kind of flavor or style. Its hard to describe exactly.

Of all the sandbox games, I consider Mercenaries:Playground of Destruction the best I've played. That's right, THE BEST in my humble opinion. It was just an awesome game. It was a sandbox game done right. The gameplay, story and other elements just worked together so well. This gem is woefully underrated.

If you dismiss this game as just another "GTA clone", I will punch you in the mouth. M:PoD was developed by the late Pandemic Studios and published by LucasArts for the Ps2 and the Xbox. The setting is a fictionalized North Korea. The evil dictator, General Song, has allegedly killed his peacenik daddy and staged a coup. Also, weapons of mass destruction, oh my! A multi-national task force has moved in to take him out but who cares? You are a mercenary! You are working for Executive Operations and you're there to collect bounties and make lots and lots of money while things explode around you.


As you can see by the game's cover, You get to choose from three different mercenary characters to play as. There's Chris Jacobs, ex-Delta Force black guy who has the highest health of the three. Seriously, he can take a tank shell to the face and live. There's Jennifer Mui, a Chinese-British person born in Hong Kong, who was a member of M16. She's the stealthy one and harder to detect. Then there's Mattias Nillson, an ex-Swedish Navy artillery officer who's voiced by Peter Stormare and has an unhealthy obsession with explosions. He's the "crazy" one. He can run the fastest and can regenerate to the base 20% health faster than the others (I think). He's perfect for the kamikaze types. All mercenaries have Fiona Taylor as their ExOps radio support. She has a sexy voice and an even sexier Australian accent. Australian accents are the hottest accents ever. Its statistically proven, don't doubt me.

There are factions in the game who you take missions from and gain reputation with. There's the "Allied Nations" who are obviously American. There's the South Koreans who are there for obvious reasons, there's the Chinese who are there for shady reasons and then we have the Russian Mafiya who are there to make lots and lots of money while things explode around them. Oh yeah, there's the North Koreans, who are always chaotic evil and are just cannon fodder.

One thing that deserves mentioning is that the Russians run the weapons black market via website called "The Merchant of Menace". Through this website, you can order all sorts of weapons, vehicles and even airstrikes! Just wire some money in and uncle Sergei will convince the Americans to "test fire" a bunker-buster bomb in that "abandoned" bunker where, coincidentally, your enemies happen to be hiding in. Maintaining good relations with the Russians is a must although its a little hard seeing as how their missions, in particular, often pit you against everyone else. They are the troll faction basically.

The game works like this. You collect bounties. There's a most wanted list in the form of a deck of cards kind of like Saddam's regime in the second Gulf War. General Song is the ace of spades, the final boss you must capture dead or alive. To get to him, you need intel which is provided by the other aces. To get to the aces, you need intel from the lesser cards, from deuce to king. See how this works? The game is divided into four acts with each act corresponding to a suit of cards. Act one are club cards, two are diamonds, three are hearts and four are spades.

Numbered cards are found in the open game world. Hell, you can even stumble around and find one accidentally. Capture deuce to ten and you can unlock the ace mission. The royal card targets will only spawn in the game world if you do enough missions for a particular faction. The royals are worth more intel apiece than a numbered card. Capturing a bounty alive nets more cash and intel while a dead one is only half. Once enough intel is gathered, either from hunting down the numbers yourself or capturing a royal or two with the aid of the factions, the ace mission is unlocked. Ace missions are given by the AN and take place in their own unique maps with unique mission mechanics and set pieces. It feels more epic that way and makes taking down an ace feel like a big deal which it is. Its a nice touch. After an ace of a suit is captured, the next act begins. Cards of a previous suit can no longer be captured as a new suit comes into play.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about the gameplay. For now, I'll leave you with the epic opening theme of M:PoD. Yes, the music kicks ass too.



Ciao.