Mercenary: Compendium Edition

The Good
I loved this game because... there I was, alone on a big green planet with see-through 3d buildings, bridges, space ships, cheese(!) and I could do and go anywhere I wanted. This was a first for me in this type of game...3D and first person view and all the time in the world to do everything. And it took almost all the time in the world to finally finish it!! For the first time I was able to save a game on my Atari 800XL with cassette deck. A great story line finished the package. It even had an add-on that I bought....A big RED planet!! How trend setting is that all.

The Bad
I had an Atari 800XL and for this computer it was a very good game. The Atari ST arrived much later and was a more powerful computer and so maybe this game was more disappointing to those owners of a ST who were used to higher quality games. There was a lot of walking around through passage ways, which only difference was their colour.

The Bottom Line
Imagine you are in space, your ship breaks down and you crash on a large green planet, this is all showed in the opening scenes in full 3D first person view! You are now on a planet with two civilizations at war. You need to find a new spaceship to leave the planet, this is done by wandering around the huge city you land in and to find a number of objects that you have to bring to one of the two tribes at war. Doing this results in an aggressive attitude towards you from the other side.One of the funny objects to find,is the slice of cheese that you can also fly in! The cheese is a very fast flying machine compared to some ships and this is necessary because you need to travel great distances and heights. There is a ship floating in the sky at a great height and you need to go there to bring your objects, this can't be done with some ships, but no problem for the cheese!! After wheeling and dealing with all the objects, you find a ship and leave the planet. This does take a lot of searching and isn't everybody's idea of a fun game! But back then I had a great time!!